Samsung’s Galaxy S25 series spirals down the AI rabbit-hole

As promised, Samsung has pulled away the veil of secrecy surrounding the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S25 Ultra at its latest hardware showcase.

Revealed as part of Samsung's Unpacked event this week, all three handsets are due to land in Australia from mid-February. While there are definitely a few design tweaks and spec bumps to keep track of here, those looking for major redesigns or improvements over last year's Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus and Galaxy S24 Ultra may struggle to find all that much to latch onto here.

In line with the last few generations of Samsung smartphones, the company's latest lot of high-end handsets look very much how you'd expect them to look. The first cab off the rank here is the Samsung Galaxy S25.

Like the S24 before it, this smartphone is built around a 6.2-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with FHD resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. The Galaxy S24 Plus is a little larger with at 6.7-inches and the Galaxy S24 Ultra rounds things out with at 6.9-inches. These larger handsets also up the ante to QHD in terms of resolution.

While this distribution of displays isn't all that much of a departure from last year's Galaxy S24 Series, the newer devices do boast reduced bezels and sleeker curved edges. As a result of these and other physical tweaks, the Galaxy S25 is about 5g lighter than its 2024 counterpart. The Galaxy S25 Plus and S25 Ultra boast similar subtractions of 7g and 15g respectively.

All told, this year's Galaxy devices are said to be Samsung's thinnest to date. Those worried that this weight loss has come at a cost to durability can rest easy though. In addition to the usual IP ratings you'd expect from an Android flagship, the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25 Plus come coated in Gorilla Glass Victus 2. Then, the Galaxy S25 Ultra raises the stakes with the new Gorilla Armor 2.

The heaviest handset of the three also features an improved titanium design that offers improved drop protection and scratch resistance.

 The Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S25 Ultra will ship on the latest version of Android and Samsung's new One UI 7 interface. If you get in at launch, you're looking at looking at seven years of OS updates and seven years of security updates.

Under the hood, all three devices are powered by a version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset that's been tuned to take full advantage of the larger vapor chamber inside Samsung's new smartphones. According to Samsung, this silicon setup will offer a 40% improvement in NPU performance, a 37% improvement in CPU performance and a 30% improvement in GPU performance over what you could expect from the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

So far as the cameras are concerned, there's only really one major change to talk about. The ultra-wide lens for the Galaxy S25 Ultra has been traded out for a new 50MP one. In theory and in combination with the new processor, this should translate into more detailed macro shots and better low-light performance. Videographers will now also be able to shoot in 10-bit HDR by default and there are also two new AI-powered camera features in the form of Audio Eraser and Best Face. These are neat inclusions but not all that different from the Magic Audio Eraser and Best Take features found on last year's Google Pixel 9 Pro XL.

What's more, it's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Samsung's growing roster of AI features. Where the Galaxy S24 arrived with a handful of AI applications and features, the Galaxy S25 and its siblings are being touted as the first with an AI operating system "down to the framework level."

A byproduct of close collaboration with Google, Samsung says this goes far beyond just swapping out the Bixby shortcut for Gemini. To start with, there's a new AI Select feature that allows you to highlight something on your screen and get contextual suggestions for it. In addition, the Settings and Gallery apps on the new devices can also now be navigated by more intuitive conversational prompts.

There's also a new Morning Brief feature, which promises to surface relevant information at a glance when your phone is locked and in more detail via a dedicated app. According to Samsung, these new features will be coming to older Galaxy devices. However, they will run faster on the new devices and some features might also run locally versus in the cloud on the newer handsets.

The most ambitious part of Samsung's efforts to put more AI in the palm of your hand is the promise to offer support for multi-step and cross-app tasks.

In some ways, Samsung's pitch for stuffing an AI agent inside your smartphone isn't all that dissimilar to what the likes of the Rabbit R1 promised to offer. One example being shopped around is that pull up Gemini and ask it to find a list of vegan restaurants and then text them to a friend. 

It's early days but it'll be interesting to see the exact degree to which final product can deliver on that open-ended potential, what the limitations end up being and how long it takes for Google to incorporate those same features into its own Pixel smartphones.

In Australia, the Samsung Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S25 Ultra are available to preorder from today ahead of a 14 February 2025 launch. The Galaxy S25 starts at $1399, the Gaslaxy S25 Plus starts at $1699 and the Galaxy S25 Ultra starts at $2149.

All three devices will be available outright, via retail and through major carriers like Optus, Telstra and Vodafone. If you preorder any of the three, you'll get a free storage upgrade on top of any other bonuses or incentives your provider of choice is shopping around.