Samsung's Galaxy S25 Phones Once Again Lean Heavily on AI

At Galaxy Unpacked today in San Jose, California, Samsung unveiled the new Galaxy S25 series of flagship smartphones loaded with AI capabilities and LLMs. "Currently, the Galaxy S25 range is comprised of the Galaxy S25 ($800), Galaxy S25+ ($1,000), and Galaxy S25 Ultra ($1,300)," reports Wired. "The phones are available for preorder today and will officially go on sale February 7." Since the hardware is relatively unchanged from last year's Galaxy S24 series, here's what Wired has to say about the new AI smarts: The Galaxy S25 is a tale of two AIs: Gemini and Bixby. Yes, while Google's Gemini AI assistant sits at the forefront -- it can finally be triggered through a long press of the power button-- Samsung is bringing its original Bixby voice assistant out from the shadows. Bixby has been enhanced with large language models but is still designed to handle phone functions, like changing device settings. Gemini is meant to be used for general web queries and more complex actions. You can even have two hot words, one for each assistant. I foresee all of this being confusing [...].

The highlight AI feature debuting on the Galaxy S25 series is "cross-app experiences." These are tasks you can ask Gemini to perform, even if the task requires multiple apps. For example, you can ask for the schedule of this season's Arsenal matches and then add it to your calendar; Gemini will then search and add every Arsenal FC game in the season to your schedule. Or you can ask it to find pet-friendly vegan restaurants nearby and text the list to a friend. It even works with images too -- snap a pic of your fridge and ask Gemini to find you a recipe based on the available ingredients. These cross-app experiences work with Google apps, Samsung's Galaxy apps, and select third-party apps, like WhatsApp and Spotify.

All these AI features have culminated in a new app: Now Brief. Samsung calls this proactive assistance (remember Google's Now on Tap?) where a morning brief arrives with the weather, upcoming calendar events, stock details, news articles, and suggestions to trigger routines. There's also an evening brief with a summary of the day's events with photos. Since the feature can plug into email, it'll send reminders about expiring coupons and upcoming travel tickets. Samsung claims it can even suggest changing an 8:45 am alarm even earlier if it sees a 9 am meeting on the schedule. On the lock screen, a "Now Bar" widget persists at the bottom, much like Apple's Live Activities. It'll offer quick access to the Now Brief app, but it will also show updates for favorite sports teams, along with glanceable directions from Google Maps.

The rest of the AI features are playing a bit of catch-up to Apple and Google's Pixel phones. There's Drawing Assist, a generative AI tool to craft new images in different art styles based on sketches or text prompts. AI Select works with the S Pen stylus on the S25 Ultra and understands what is selected -- for example, if a video is selected, it will suggest turning it into a GIF. Audio Eraser is an editing tool to cut out background noise in videos post-capture, canceling out the sound of a crowd's chatter or an ambulance's siren. Finally, Samsung's Generative Edit feature, which lets you erase unwanted objects in images, now works locally on the device and is much more accurate and faster. A full list of specs can be found here. You can watch a recording of the event on YouTube.

Great, More Crap I Don't Want

[Rinnon]

I really gotta look into getting a custom ROM on my S20 FE. It's EOL but still runs flawlessly; I don't WANT to buy a new device every few years for no reason, when the one I have runs fine.

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[jellomizer]

The S24 does have an extended life span. I upgraded my S20 to the S24 mostly because it went EOL and I didn't want my work to cut me off if it wasn't secure enough.
But the S20 worked fine without any issues. The S24 is fine too. The AI features mostly the search by image and translate is handy, but still I mostly just want to browse the web quickly.

NIMBY

[JamesTRexx]

Let them have fun at whatever they do, as long as they don't infect my Xcover 7.
And if it comes with a future update, if it can even run on this "budget" phone, there's always adb to disable it. Even if I have to disable everything up to call and SMS functionality.

Puzzling.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

What I find curious is the (as best I can tell not even handwaved) explanation for why the hardware OEMs would be so bullish on capturing all the Glorious AI Value, rather than either application vendors or silicon vendors, in this situation.

If customers do actually care about 'AI' that will help Samsung shift this year's featureless black slabs in the face of competition from last year's; and might drive some people a bit upmarket rather than the usual 'meh, they're all pretty fast by historical standar

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[abulafia]

Most of the weird shit you see them doing is explainable once you realize LLMs are "too big to fail". The HugeCos trapped each other in a Red Queen's Race, and now they are desperate to figure out how to make that investment worthwhile in ways that don't involve firing programmers and call center workers. All the stupid marketing around it has managed to raise the stakes even higher.

Like Microsoft shoving LLM bullshit down the throats of Office users. That's because in Redmond there's someone whose bonus

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[sarren1901]

Global warming is really a secret plot hatched by dolphins and octopus to cover the land with water!

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[alvinrod]

I think it may just be FOMO on the part of manufacturers. No one really knows if it's actually important or not, but if it is and your device doesn't have it then you're pretty much screwed. It's also a new marketing point for devices that have largely run out of avenues for improvement after nearly two decades of incremental but continuous improvements. The screens are all high resolution and bright, the cameras more than suitable for consumer use, the processors fast enough to run typical workloads, etc.

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[drinkypoo]

What I find curious is the (as best I can tell not even handwaved) explanation for why the hardware OEMs would be so bullish on capturing all the Glorious AI Value, rather than either application vendors or silicon vendors, in this situation.

You don't understand why a corporation is pursuing profit?

Finally

[peterww]

All the features I never asked for, at a price I can never afford. It's perfect. For keeping me on my current phone.

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[PsychoSlashDot]

All the features I never asked for, at a price I can never afford. It's perfect. For keeping me on my current phone.

To quote Marvin, the Paranoid Android, "“Ghastly, it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it."

I've been dropping serious coin for my last couple phone purchases (Pixel Fold, Surface Duo), but the selling points have been physical. These AI examples aren't remotely encouraging. It can look up and add the schedule for a team to my calendar? That the most exciting example they can come up with? I mean... are sportsball fans known for "fuck me, I just never know when the team I lik

Samsung Phones Are Just Android Mad Worse

[machineghost]

My last phone was a Samsung because I figured all Android phones were the same. Unfortunately, what I learned is that Samsung replaces the standard Google suite of apps (phone, calendar, etc.) with their own Bixby suite ... and that suite is terrible. Every app, across the board, is inferior to their Google equivalent.

Of course, you can still install and use the Google apps, but you can't get rid of the Samsung ones. Also, the Samsung ones are triggered when you switch to the left-side apps pane, hit the Bixby button, etc. There's no way to change that behavior, even if you never use Bixby, so you wind up always triggering the Samsung thing when you want the Google one.

This time I learned my lesson ... and just bought a Pixel phone.

expensive software update

[Turkinolith]

"Since the hardware is relatively unchanged from last year's Galaxy S24 series..."

And it was already barely changed from the S22 before that.

I'm not paying for an expensive software update that I didn't ask for. This trying to churn out some big "new model" each year feels like it's hit the wall.

Downgrade of the stylus pen.

[Skyhi69]

No more Bluetooth enabled stylus pen = no more me buying the s25 ultra. Dumb bean counter decision to remove a feature from a phone a lot of people buy for photography. Keep your gestures, let me control my shutter with my pen. Samsung just lost my money, as I was set to upgrade my s22 ultra.