Galaxy Unpacked 2025 Impressions – Focus on Tailored AI Experiences Over Incremental Hardware Improvements
After covering tech and smartphone launches for over a decade, I think we’ve reached a point where OEMs will spend more time talking about software and experiences than hardware. At the just-concluded Galaxy Unpacked 2025, Samsung spoke at length about AI agents and how the new and improved Galaxy AI is here to deliver a more personalized experience.
Yes, hardware is the backbone for unlocking these experiences. Qualcomm’s customized Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC for Galaxy did get a mention, but the real narrative is more about how Samsung, Qualcomm and Google’s partnership is making the smartphone smarter and more of a personal companion than ever before. As someone who is a big fan of Marvel’s Iron Man, Jarvis’ voice at the keynote opening and at the end summarizing the event, was the highlight reel for me. Because of course, Jarvis, and now Friday, are some of the best AI examples most of us can relate with. I could quickly connect with what Samsung was trying to show here! Below is my quick take on Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2025.
Google-Samsung Partnership: Deep Gemini Integration
· Partnership with Samsung is a big win for Google in getting Gemini at the core of Galaxy AI and taking those experiences to more markets globally.
· Gemini Live exclusively coming to the Galaxy S25 series first – with features like Screen Sharing and Live Streaming.
· Gemini integration goes deep beyond Google apps, to Samsung’s Bixby assistant and first-party apps as well – bringing multimodal capabilities irrespective of apps you use.
· Galaxy S25 users get complimentary access to Gemini Advance for 6 months, and 2TB cloud storage.
· Invoke Gemini by pressing and holding the “Power Button”, though I wish voice commands like “Hey Galaxy” or so arrive later for touchless operation.
· Gemini also gets conversational intelligence, where you can ask it to do multiple things, like – “search for flights under a certain budget, and send that as a text to someone”
One UI 7: More About Improved AI Experiences
Now Brief
· Using personal data engine and knowledge-based AI from apps like calendar, contacts, dialer and reminders – to offer tailored information about upcoming meetings, sports updates from your favourite team, and much more right on the lock screen.
AI Select
· Presently, Galaxy AI features like Text Summarization and AI Writing tools are limited to certain apps, but AI Select removes those barriers.
· It can recognize the intent and context from the screen - a simple swipe from the Edge Bar and tapping on AI Select – you can summarize text, check spelling and grammar, improve tone, convert it into table or compose a new one.
· For images, you can use drawing assist or generative edit to convert into artwork, or add edits to the photos right on the screen without opening any app, and share right from that screen.
· AI Select can also pull out details from photos like phone number, date, time, venue from a ticket, and even suggest adding to the calendar.
More Contextual AI
· As the assistant gets more contextual, settings can recognize a few things – like when you say “my eyes feel strained” it can turn on the blue light filter.
· In the gallery app, you can search for something specific – like photos from Seattle with airplanes, or photos from the US with red car.
· We will test more when we get more hands-on with the devices.
Improved Photography and Videography
· The S25 Ultra now gets a brand new 50MP camera sensor with ultrawide lens.
· Samsung is bringing LOG mode and 10-bit capture to Galaxy S25 series, to enable pro-grade recording and color grading in post-production using Davinci Resolve and Premiere Pro apps.
Recommended by LinkedIn
· The Expert RAW app now gets Variable Aperture – enabling users to control the aperture from wider f/1.4 to narrow f/16 – giving flexibility to control the depth of field.
· With more users now creating video content on smartphones, Samsung has added Audio Eraser feature that uses AI to detect wind, waves, crowd, music and nature sounds – allowing to reduce them right on the phone, and thus have clear vocals.
· There is also a new Best Face feature that captures a burst of photos, and later allowing to remove those with close eyes, and pick one with open eyes. Best use case with group photos.
All this with Privacy at Core
· With privacy a major concern, Samsung is ensuring on-device processing for most of these AI experiences to ensure your personal data is processed on your device, not in the cloud, thus ensuring maximum privacy.
· Knox Vault: Thanks to Samsung's security platform, it adds an extra layer of protection.
Will share more insights when I test the new Galaxy S25 Series.