Samsung Galaxy S25: AI Takes Center Stage in Next-Gen Flagship

With Samsung Galaxy S25 launch, AI will take center stage

The Samsung Galaxy S25 phones arrive next month, at least if rumors of a likely January launch date prove accurate. And we should be in for some pretty exciting new flagships based on leaked details about Samsung's latest devices. The Snapdragon 8 Elite tipped to power the entire Galaxy S25 lineup is big news, of course -- not just because of the performance improvements we've seen the chip deliver in preliminary benchmarks, but also for how it could help Samsung's phone better manage power efficiency. If you're awaiting the Galaxy S25 Ultra, you could see a lot of significant camera upgrades from a higher resolution ultrawide camera to a telephoto lens with variable focal lengths. And it's already been confirmed that Samsung's long-awaited One UI 7 interface powered by Android 15 will debut alongside the new S25 models. It's all very exciting, and all of it should take a backseat to the Galaxy AI features set to debut on the new phones. The Galaxy S25 launch will mark the rarest of occasions for a new smartphone -- any hardware enhancements or additions will play second-fiddle to the new software that's arriving on the device. And make no mistake: Samsung is putting most, if not all, of its eggs in the Galaxy AI basket with the Galaxy S25. Back when the company's quarterly financial report confirmed plans to bring new flagships to market in the first part of 2025, Samsung executives talked up "plans to enhance the Galaxy AI experience to drive innovation in everyday life." That's setting expectations rather high. But you can understand why Samsung plans to make AI the big focus of its upcoming phones -- everyone else is doing it, too. When Galaxy AI features made their debut onboard the Galaxy S24 earlier this year, Google was already several generations into highlighting the AI-powered capabilities as the centerpiece of its Pixel flagships. Since then, Apple has thrown its hat into the AI ring with the launch of Apple Intelligence shortly after the iPhone 16 arrived this past fall. Samsung still finds itself well ahead of Apple, its chief rival in the smartphone market, when it comes to AI features. The initial round of Galaxy AI capabilities arrived fully formed for the most part and have since made their way down to previous versions of Samsung flagships. The Apple Intelligence rollout figures to continue well into the next year, and it's limited to just the new iPhone 16 models plus 2023's iPhone 15 Pro offerings. The Galaxy S25 launch gives Samsung the opportunity to maintain or even extend that lead in AI capabilities. That's why it's so crucial for the phone maker to build on the success of the initial Galaxy AI launch, which excelled primarily because the standout features -- real-time translations and transcriptions, enhanced searches and supercharged photo editing -- fit so easily into how we already use our phones. So what does Samsung do for an encore with the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy AI? That's a lot harder to answer. Hardware improvements are easy to anticipate because a lot of them -- make the battery last longer, make the processor faster -- are pretty self-evident. Add that to the fact that phones makers have supply chains, and those supply chains are apparently filled with people who've got nothing better to do than share things with leakers, and we get a pretty good idea of what's going to change about a phone long before its launch event. Software is different. Since it's developed in house, you're a lot less likely to come across any loose lips letting slip a company's plans for new phone features. And that's why when it comes to upcoming Galaxy AI improvements, we're largely in the dark. Still, some details have trickled out, mostly involving Bixby, the often-overlooked assistant on Samsung flagships. Reports suggest that Samsung wants to make Bixby smarter, adding generative AI features that make it behave more like ChatGPT. To some extent, this effort is already in motion. At the launch of a foldable phone in China, Samsung showed off a revamped version of Bixby, and according to Sammobile's account of events, the next-gen assistant is a lot better at understanding context. Specific examples include you asking Bixby for what the weather's like in a given location and getting a forecast, followed up by asking how long it will take to get there and getting details on traffic conditions. All of this happens without you having to specify what exactly you're talking about -- Bixby is able to follow the context of the conversation because it's gotten a lot better about support natural language queries. In a more promising example cited by Sammobile, you can agree to meet at a specific place with a friend in a chat and then turn around and tell Bixby to get you directions there. Bixby knows what you're talking about just by the information that's on the display of your Galaxy device. A lot of this sounds like things that Apple is already offering or hoping to offer with Apple Intelligence. That greater understanding of on-screen context, for example, is a feature Apple's promised as part of it retooled Siri assistant. Another new capability that's apparently part of Bixby -- the ability to offer step-by-step instructions on how to use your Galaxy phone -- is something that launched with Apple Intelligence in the iOS 18.1 update. And a rumored deal that would add ChatGPT to Samsung devices is something that's launching soon on the iPhone with iOS 18.2, which is already in public beta. And that brings us back to the challenge facing Samsung with Galaxy AI and the Galaxy S25 launch. With Apple now adding AI capabilities to its own devices, Samsung is going to need to differentiate the features that Galaxy AI brings to the table. Based on the reports we've heard so far, it sounds like a lot of the same things. So I'm hoping that whenever Galaxy Unpacked happens in January, Samsung can offer up a few software surprises. AI features on our phones are going to continue to evolve -- adding more features as the models get smarted and the hardware improves to support more on-device capabilities. So it would be overstating things to say that the Galaxy S25 is a make-or-break moment for Galaxy AI. But people will be a lot more open to the idea of AI-focused phones if the features being added feel more essential and less like gimmicks. That the task facing Samsung as the Galaxy S25 launch gets closer.

How Samsung Could Make the Galaxy S25 the Android Phone to Beat

Expertise Apple | Samsung | Google | Smartphones | Smartwatches | Wearables | Fitness trackers The Galaxy S24 included a mix of functional and forward-looking changes, such as longer battery life on the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus and Galaxy AI across all models. Now, with the Galaxy S25, I'm hoping to see Samsung take a similar approach. Given Samsung's emphasis on AI, there's a strong chance the Galaxy S25 will come with new Galaxy AI features. Samsung essentially said as much during its developer conference in October, during which it teased its new One UI 7 software update that will be debuting on the S25 lineup. Otherwise, it'll likely include Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite processor (at least the US variant of the phone) and routine upgrades to the design and camera. There are also rumblings of a new slimmer version of the Galaxy S25 arriving sometime next year, according to ETNews. Samsung's current Galaxy AI features show promise, but I want the next iteration to have a bigger impact on the overall phone experience. The current features feel very targeted at specific use cases that may not come up all that often, such as language translation and photo editing. Aside from more useful AI tools, I'd like to see faster charging and other optimizations to core elements of the phones such as the camera and display. Read more: Why Google's New Android VP Says 'People Don't Want to Hear About AI' Right now, Galaxy AI and other non-Samsung generative AI features feel like just the beginning. Samsung started by applying generative AI to obvious and practical use cases, such as erasing objects from photos, translating text conversations and real-time phone conversations, generating polished images from rough drawings, and previewing videos in slow motion and saving the results. What I really want is a more dramatic rethinking of how basic tasks get done on our phones that makes using them feel easier and faster. Of all the AI features available on Samsung phones so far, Circle to Search embodies this idea the best by cutting out the middle step of launching Google to search for an object. More of this, please! I want new AI tools that help manage the endless stream of notifications, data and media on my phone. The Pixel 9 lineup's new Screenshots app, which lets you search for content within your screenshots, is a good example of this, as are the notification and text message summaries in Apple Intelligence, which just launched as part of the company's iOS 18.1 update. Although they're far from perfect, message summaries ended up being one of my favorite new features in Apple Intelligence. Sally Hyesoon Jeong, Samsung Electronics' executive vice president and head of the framework research and development team, hinted that Samsung's next mobile software update could align with this theme. During the company's developer conference, she said One UI 7 would be better equipped to understand your intention and "minimize complexity," although she didn't divulge specific details about the software. That direction also falls in line with previous comments that Patrick Chomet, Samsung's executive vice president and head of customer experience, made to CNET about the company's approach to software. "[You'd] never have to go to the settings, or you never have to look for the next action," he said in a previous interview when discussing how the company wants to make the software on Samsung phones smarter. "You may not need to open [an] app." As I wrote in my review, I think Samsung missed an opportunity and should have given the Galaxy S24 Ultra exclusive Galaxy AI features that aren't available on the cheaper models. This would not only help justify its high price but reinforce the Ultra in the phone's name. We'll see if it takes a different approach next year. Changing the way we use our phones is no small feat. Given how much we rely on them for basic tasks, asking consumers to adopt a new way of doing things could be more disruptive than helpful if done the wrong way. I don't expect Samsung to change the entire operating system in a few months, but I'd like to see a step in a new direction, similar to Circle to Search. Read more: What I Learned After Swapping My Apple Watch for Samsung's Galaxy Ring I'm glad Samsung boosted the Galaxy S24's battery life. Now, it just needs faster charging. The Galaxy S24 supports 25-watt wired charging, while the Galaxy S24 Plus and S24 Ultra support 45-watt wired charging. It's been that way for years, at least since the Galaxy S20 generation. With companies like OnePlus offering blazing-fast charging speeds, I'd like to see some improvement from Samsung. The OnePlus 12, for example, offers 80-watt charging in the U.S. and 100-watt in the UK, which enabled my colleague Andrew Lanxon to replenish the battery fully in just 26 minutes. Samsung, it's time to step up. One of the Galaxy S24 Ultra's most underrated features is the screen's Corning Gorilla Armor for reducing glare and reflections. With the screen arguably being the most important part of the phone, any improvement is welcome. My colleague Lexy Savvides was particularly taken with the S24 Ultra's antiglare screen, finding that it was easier to see than the iPhone 15 Pro, Pixel 8 Pro and Galaxy S23 Ultra on a sunny San Francisco day. This coating is only on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Since screen quality is so essential on a phone, there's a strong case to be made that Samsung should expand this to all Galaxy S25 models. The Ultra's giant screen, S Pen and more sophisticated camera are more than enough to separate Samsung's super high-end phone from the rest of the lineup. Read more: Don't Buy a New Phone Just for AI. At Least Not Yet Samsung made a splash with the Galaxy S23 Ultra's 200-megapixel main camera when it debuted in 2023. Megapixels only tell one side of the story when it comes to photography. Factors like sensor size, pixel size and aperture, along with the chip's image signal processor, are just as important as the sheer number of megapixels when it comes to determining how good of a camera your phone can be. Samsung has made improvements in these areas too over the years, but now that it's facing fresh competition from Xiaomi, it has to work harder if it wants to truly be the king of smartphone photography. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra has a massive image sensor that's larger than the ones you'll find on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, enabling it to achieve impressive shots with a wide dynamic range that CNET's Andrew Lanxon called some of the best images he's ever seen from a phone. A larger sensor enables a camera to capture more light for improved image quality, lessening the need for noise reduction. I'd also like to see more practical editing features. I was enamored with the iPhone 16's Photographic Styles feature, which applies an effect to an image customized to the scene. I'm not saying Samsung should launch its own version of Photographic Styles, but I'd like to see new tools that elevate the aesthetic of your photos that don't have anything to do with using generative AI to alter the photo's content. Overall, I'm hoping Samsung levels up the camera, display and charging speeds, all while introducing new software features that make its phones feel more intuitive than before. Samsung typically releases new Galaxy S phones in the first quarter of the year, so we're expecting to hear more in the coming months.