
Has AI transitioned from being a buzzword to a real game-changer? We’ve seen AI features trickle down from flagships to the mainstream, but how many of us use these on a day-to-day basis. How will AI affect our lives in the time to come? These are all important questions that keeping popping up as we traverse the tech landscape. Meanwhile, Samsung continues in its quest, adding to the list of AI goodies it crams into its smartphones… and the premium S series is the torchbearer as usual. The latest trio comes in the form of the Galaxy S25 series, and I got a chance to check out these phones at the global Unpacked event in San Jose. Read on.
Table of Contents
Design
Refinement seems to be the focus as far the design is concerned, with Samsung sticking to the same design language as before. No moulds have been broken in the making of these smartphones, basically. That said, the tweaks are noticeable, and help add to the overall appeal and usability, especially for the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Tipping the scales at 218g, it’s a few grams lighter than the Galaxy S24 Ultra (which weighs 233 grams). Samsung has also shaved off a couple of millimeters each from the thickness and width, making the Galaxy S25 Ultra a wee bit smaller than its predecessor. The difference might not be much in terms of the figures, but it does seem to make a significant difference while handling the phone. I think the Galaxy S24 Ultra is a solid phone in terms of capabilities, but its size and weight do make it a bit unwieldy. From that perspective, the reduction in size and weight is more than welcome, I feel.
This apart, the rounded edges of the Galaxy S24 Ultra have been replaced with flatter sides on the new phone, and the sharp corners have been made more rounded. The bezels around the screen also look extremely slim. The placement of the ports and controls, and the design and layout of the camera deco at the rear hasn’t changed much, so you’d find things as they were on the predecessor… including the S Pen silo tucked away in the corner, and the size of the screen at the front. Samsung lists the screen size for the S25 Ultra as 6.9mm, and also points out that the display measures 6.8-inches when the rounded corners are taken into account. Subtle, yet refined… that’s how I’d describe the design overall.
The story continues with the Galaxy S25+ and the compact Galaxy S25 as well. The S25+ weighs 190g as compared to the 196g weight of its predecessor, while the S25 has also shaved off 6g in terms of weight.
Specs
Among the spec bumps on offer this year, the headlining aspect is the inclusion of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC. The flagship chipset makes its way into not just the S25 Ultra, but both its siblings as well. This is a departure from last year. While the S24 Ultra came powered by Qualcomm silicon (the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3), the S24+ and the S24 used Exynos 2400 in India and other regions, with the exception of the US. Choosing Qualcomm over Exynos highlights not the popularly of Snapdragon SoCs, but also affirms Samsung’s trust in the capabilities of these chips to be able to deliver a premium experience to users.
Samsung says it has worked with Qualcomm to customise the Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC, incorporating Samsung’s mobile Digital Natural Image engine to enhance the display power efficiency. Specifically on the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the S25+, Samsung is promising an improvement of up to 40 percent in display image scaling quality, which basically helps with AI image processing.
All-round improvements in performance are being promised, with the main emphasis being on the S25 series’ ability to process AI tasks directly on the device in a better and more seamless manner than before. During my brief hands-on time while checking out these devices, I definitely didn’t encounter any issues and the usage experience with the smartphones was quite smooth.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra also boasts a new 50MP ultra wide camera, which is an upgrade from the 12MP sensor on its predecessor. A bunch of improvements are on offer in the camera department. 10-bit HDR recording is now on by default, videos shot in low light are supposed to be significantly better, while footage of moving objects should also improve significantly. Professionals should appreciate the Virtual Aperture feature now includes as part of Expert RAW, and the ability to shoot video in log too.
AI and software features
AI is of course, a big part of the story. Samsung’s new One UI 7, a ton of AI-based goodies, and Google-contributed smarts come together to make the S25 series quite loaded. Apart from adding a bunch of new ones, Samsung has enhanced and beefed up quite a few of those we’ve seen before, making them more capable in the process. There’s Now Bar, which looks like Samsung’s take on Live Activities, and shows up on the bottom of the lockscreen. It can show real-time info from multiple apps, with the user being able to flick through them as needed. As an example, Now Bar can display a running timer, and also navigation info from Google Maps. Twice a day, another feature called Now Brief provides a personalised summary of how your day looks, based on your usage patterns and daily routine. On a side note, Samsung is also promising complete peace of mind, and saying that personalised data is stored on device and secured by Knox Vault. With the S25 series, Samsung has also introduced post-quantum cryptography to safeguard personal data. Enhanced theft protection, and a new Knox Matrix dashboard that monitors the security across connected devices have also been added.
Then there’s AI Select, which is a new and improved version of what used to be called Smart Select. It understands the content on screen, allowing to perform actions based on what you’ve selected. For example, selecting a portion of text containing a date in an online article gives you an option to add it to that day’s calendar, while selecting a portion of the screen playing a YouTube videos allows you to send the selected portion as an animated GIF. Quite cool. Samsung also demoed new features from Google’s Gemini Live. Advancements in natural language understanding allow it to perform seamless interaction across different apps. If you come across a restaurant menu in a language you don’t understand, Gemini can not only translate it for you, but also help you filter out dishes that total a certain amount, and help you order. Similarly, it can message a friend about restaurants in the vicinity that are vegan and also pet-friendly.
Next, there’s the Audio Eraser feature that has received a big boost. The feature can detect and isolate different types of sounds in recorded videos, including noise, voices, crowd, wind and music, and allows you to tone down or eliminate as per your preferences. I saw this in action during the demo and it does seem to make a noticeable difference to the final output.
Based on the above, I think it might not too far fetched to say that use cases of AI have evolved to a point where they really seem to be making a difference, helping people save time and enhancing their productivity. Of course, this is still just the beginning, and even more compelling use case of AI will emerge along the way.
To sum it up
With the Galaxy S25 series, Samsung seems to be focussing more on delivering a compelling user experience instead of pure spec bumps, with AI and convenience being at the core. While it remains to be seen how well it can deliver on these promises, and these new flagships do face an uphill task ahead, especially given how strong the competition has become in recent times. While the devices do seem to come across as evolutionary upgrades as compared to the previous generation, the promise of an unmatched user experience is stronger than ever, with everything from performance to camera, productivity and entertainment, efficiency and security, and other core aspects, being stronger than ever.
Disclosure: this writer attended the Unpacked event in San Jose on Samsung India’s invitation