Samsung took the wraps off its latest line of smartphones at its Galaxy Unpacked 2025 event, with the devices boasting upgraded AI capabilities and an overhauled operating system (OS).

Samsung is locked in a race with Apple to pack more AI-enabled features and hardware into its devices.

TM Roh, president and head of mobile experience business at Samsung Electronics, stated the company’s goal is “to provide personalised experiences by integrating AI agent 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 OS called One UI 7 that also works on Galaxy 24 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 AI 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 personalised experience across multiple contexts,” explained Drew Blackard, VP of mobile product management for Samsung Electronics America.

The Cross App Action feature uses the AI system to allows users to manage multiple tasks with one command. Users can ask the device to find a local restaurant with reviews before adding it to their calendars and texting the details to friends.

Google’s self-explanatory Circle to Search function can now automatically identify if there is a phone number, email address, or URL, that a user may want to interact with.

It can also identify a song playing in the background of a movie 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 that 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 provide an alert for leaving a meeting based on other calendar appointments or traffic conditions.

Galaxy 25 devices
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 is taking preorders for all three starting today (22 January) with general availability on 7 February.  

All three S25 models are equipped with customised Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chips that improve performance and processing power. Samsung executives stated the chip is fine-tuned for gaming and power-intensive functions. The chip is the first 3nm processor for Galaxy smartphones

The GPU is 30 per cent faster than last year’s Galaxy S24 models while the CPU is 37 per cent faster and the NPU features a performance boost of 40 per cent.

The S25 Ultra model features a 50-megapixel ultrawide rear camera, which is an upgrade over the S24’s 12-megapixal rear camera.

The S25 Ultra also includes a 200-megagpixel wide camera, as well as 10-megapixal and 50-megapixal telephoto lenses.

The other two S25s have a single 10-megapixal telephoto lens, a 50-megapixel wide camera and a 12-megapixel ultrawide lens.

The Ultra is clad in Corning Gorilla Armor 2, which Samsung claims is the industry’s first scratch-resistant, anti-reflective glass ceramic cover material for mobile devices.

Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight, said in a note that “there are some clever enhancements included in the Galaxy S25 line-up, but it’s unlikely they’ll be enough to have consumers rushing out to upgrade their phones prematurely”.