Samsung puts all its weight on AI for the Galaxy S25 series

At Unpacked this morning, Samsung officially unveiled its Galaxy S25 series of smartphones. Like previous years, the S25 comes in three different versions: The flagship S25 Ultra, the larger S25 Plus and the cheaper Galaxy S25.

Samsung has been making exceptional smartphone hardware for over a decade now, and the S25 series looks like an iterative continuation of that trend.

Samsung has rounded the corners of the S25 series, making each model a bit less jagged in the pocket of your jeans. It also opted for the SnapDragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor for all three models.

But otherwise, the list of spec updates in the S25 series is fairly understated.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Series specs:

The biggest change in 2025 is the improved processor. The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy runs across all three models this year, with no Exynos processors to be seen.

Samsung worked with Qualcomm for this processor, and the "For Galaxy" moniker represents that this version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite has custom elements only found in Samsung's phones.

These include a new pro scaler, a mobile digital neural and image engine and a spatio-temporal filter. The first two work together to produce a 40% improvement to image quality on the S25's display, including better colour production and upscaled image quality.

The spatio-temporal filter helps detect the difference between static and moving objects when recording video, allowing the phone to capture more detailed video.

Samsung claims the new chip delivers increases of up to 40% in NPU, 37% in CPU and 30% in GPU compared to the S24 Ultra.

On the camera front, Samsung has boosted the Ultra-Wide lens on the S25 Ultra from 12MP on the S24 Ultra to 50MP on the S25 Ultra. But that's the only real hardware update to the cameras.

Instead, Samsung has jumped headfirst off the hardware update cliff into the murky waters of AI software. The vast majority of the features Samsung are promoting are tied back to Samsung's idea that the future of the smartphone is in AI.

All in on AI

At the foundation of this idea is the updated One UI 7 user interface that sits on top of Android to create that familiar Samsung smartphone experience. One UI 7 is a complete reworking of the platform to place AI front and centre, so you can contextually analyse anything on your phone for an AI response to it.

In last year's Galaxy S24 Ultra review, I lamented that many of the (useful) AI features were buried in menus and difficult to find, let alone know they existed. With the S25 series, One UI lets you analyse anything on your phone's screen and receive AI-generated prompts for that piece of information.

Scan an address? AI prompts you to open maps. Scan a phone number? AI prompts you to give it a call. Scan a video of someone playing golf? You'll be prompted to download the video, save it as a gif, or add it to drawing assist.

Admittedly, it's easy to use, easily accessible with minimal effort.

There are also more specific AI features, like call recording that lets you record a phone call, notifying both parties and then giving you a transcript of the conversation using AI to transcribe what is said.

There's also a new feature called Now Brief, which offers a real-time brief of your day, contextually based on what you're interested in and when, meaning it will change multiple times throughout the day.

In the morning, for example, it will give you a weather update and your schedule for the day. It will analyse your schedule, recognise you have a meeting in the city, register there's lots of traffic, and suggest you take a certain route or leave at a certain time.

From a more technical standpoint, One UI 7 is a software layer designed to connect to third party AI solutions. At launch it will work with Google Gemini, but it's designed to connect with other third party offerings in the future.

While all the AI features keep personalised data secure in the Knox vault, I can't help but feel that the pivot to AI as the primary reason to upgrade is going to come back and bite Samsung in the long run.

Pricing and availability

The Galaxy S25 Series is available for pre-order now, with the phones hitting store shelves on 14 February 2025.