Samsung Unveils Its Galaxy S25 Series

Samsung announced its latest line of smartphones at its Galaxy Unpacked 2025 event. The vendor praised new devices, boasting upgraded AI capabilities and an overhauled OS.

TM Roh, president and head of the Mobile Experience business at Samsung, stated the company’s goal is to provide personalized experiences by integrating AI agents and multi-modal capabilities into every touchpoint of the interface, regardless of what agent or app you use. The expanded AI features are enabled through Samsung’s new proprietary One UI 7 OS which also works on Galaxy S24 devices.

Most of the AI features are handled by Google Gemini, but there are also some on-device capabilities developed by Samsung in what it calls a hybrid approach. Similar to Apple’s use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini will seek answers to questions or queries, but will not store a user’s information. A new feature dubbed AI Select uses the OS to identify areas where AI can be used, based on what is on a user’s screen.

“It is seamlessly integrated into the core of the operating system so that features, services, and interactions across apps speak the same language, delivering a more fluid and personalized experience across multiple contexts,” explained Drew Blackard, VP of mobile product management for Samsung America. The Cross App Action feature uses the AI system to allow users to manage multiple tasks with one command.

Google’s Circle to Search function can now automatically identify if there is a phone number, email address, or URL a user may want to interact with. It can also identify a song playing in the background of a film or video clip without needing to open a separate music app. The Now Bar function displays sports scores, navigation directions, and other live data from the device’s lock screen.

There is also the AI-enabled Now Brief capability which proactively provides summaries of items such as weather updates, sleep data, reminders, and calendar items. It can also provide suggestions based on a user’s habits or an alert for leaving a meeting based on other calendar appointments or traffic conditions.

The Galaxy S25 smartphones come in three variants with the high-end Galaxy S25 Ultra starting at $1,299, the S25+ priced at $999 and the S25 costing $799. Samsung began taking orders, with general availability due on 7 February.   All three Galaxy S25 models are equipped with customised Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chips which improve performance and processing power over previous models.

S25 Ultra features a 50MP ultrawide rear camera, a 200MP wide, and 10MP and 50MP telephoto lenses. The other two S25s have a 10MP telephoto lens, 50MP wide and 12MP ultrawide. Samsung claims Corning Gorilla Armor 2 fitted to the Galaxy S25 Ultra is the industry’s first scratch-resistant, anti-reflective glass ceramic cover material for mobile devices.