Samsung announced the release of its next flagship phone, the Galaxy S25, on Jan. 22 at the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked S25 presentation. As is essential for any tech presentation in 2025, generative AI was at the forefront of the event.
“We are making it [AI] a reality right here right now,” said ™ Roh, Samsung’s president and head of Mobile Experience. “To make the shift possible, we built an AI OS from the ground up.”
Samsung Galaxy S25 offers business as usual outside the AI
The Samsung Galaxy S25 comes in three standard variants:
- The base model Samsung Galaxy S25 has a 6.2-inch display and up to 256 GB of storage.
- The Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus has a 6.7-inch display and up to 512 GB of storage.
- The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has a 6.9-inch display and up to 1TB of storage.
All three variants include the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip and Google Gemini as its AI assistant. The largest model, the Ultra, weighs just 218g.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 can be preordered now, with the phones hitting store shelves on Feb. 7. Samsung offers Gemini Advanced and 2TB of cloud storage with purchase. The S25 retails at:
- $799.99 for the base model.
- $999.99 for the Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus.
- $1,299.99 for the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Samsung says the S25 offers the longest battery life of a Samsung phone yet — up to 31 hours of video.
Google Gemini stretches through all aspects of the S25
With the rest of the specifications not varying much from the S24, Samsung wants AI — and particularly its partnership with Google — to provide a reason to upgrade. After introducing the S24 with Google Gemini last year, Samsung has woven AI even more deeply into the S25. A dedicated side button will activate Google Gemini. This replaces most of the requests a user might have made to Samsung’s own Bixby digital assistant before.
Gemini is multimodal, able to respond to voice commands, answer questions about live video, or identify music being played. It can create transcripts and summaries of calls during the call.
SEE: OpenAI and Microsoft joined an AI infrastructure initiative that pledged $500 billion over four years to data centers and more.
AI will have access to any app on the phone and can draw information from all of them. An AI-curated “Now Brief” on the home screen will collect information like weather, upcoming meetings, and sports scores from Google every morning. An “Evening Brief” sums up the day at night.
As expected from generative AI nowadays, Gemini on Samsung will be able to generate text, summarize text, edit images, and answer questions about pictures.
AI data stays on the device
“As AI becomes more powerful, it must also become more personal to deliver class leading personalization we are introducing the Personal Data Engine,” said Roh. “Now you can enjoy tailored experiences while keeping your personal information secured on your device, not in the cloud.”
Essentially, the Personal Data Engine means AI data from individual phones is not used for model training or advertising, Samsung said. Some AI queries may be deleted after the interaction is complete.
To protect copyright and disclose when AI has created an image, Samsung has adopted C2PA cryptography.
One UI 7 emerges from beta
Underneath the hood of the S25 is the One UI 7 OS. Roh said that Samsung is leveraging the operating system to reimagine Android “with AI at the core.” One UI 7, debuting in general availability with the S25 series, enables:
- Expanded writing tools, including call transcripts.
- The “Now Bar,” which includes timely notifications on the lock screen.
- Redesigned camera UX.
Developers and partners will soon have access into the new UI, Roh said.
AI is the new normal on smart phones
The Samsung Galaxy S25 series competes primarily with:
A slim version of the S25 is coming
At the end of the Unpacked presentation, Samsung dropped a tease of Galaxy S25 Edge, the upcoming ultra-slim variant. A release date or details have not yet been announced.
