With the S25, Samsung might have cracked the code to be your "true AI companion"

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra boasts a larger 6.9-inch display, a new custom Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, and a new 50MP ultra-wide camera, but that's not the headline for this phone, which the company revealed on Wednesday here in San Jose, California.

AI is irrefutably the story of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

The launch event and my session with Samsung made this clear: Most of both were spent on new AI functionality while quickly breezing through formerly attention-devouring features like the cameras.

Samsung Smartphone Product Manager Charles Uptegrove tells Laptop Mag that Galaxy AI "was one of the key reasons for our users to purchase the device (Galaxy S24), but more importantly, our customers are utilizing Galaxy AI."

Currently, Circle to Search is the most heavily used feature, with 10 million users in the U.S. and 20% using Galaxy AI daily.

The new Galaxy AI features are designed to drive those numbers up considerably in 2025, with upgrades to existing favorites like Circle to Search and AI Select, while the new Now Brief and multimodal natural language voice commands could prove the most impactful.

Now Brief is your gateway to Galaxy AI

Now Brief is new with One UI 7. It gives you an overview of your day and other useful information based on your habits. For example, if the weather is bad, it may advise you when to leave for a meeting on your schedule, or it may try to refer you to some news articles or YouTube videos that you find interesting. This will improve over time as Galaxy AI learns your habits. Critically, this is all happening on-device for the privacy-conscious.

This is already using Galaxy AI, of course, and presuming it does its job effectively, it could quickly become a fixture in many Galaxy S25 owners' daily usage, but it also feeds you into additional Galaxy AI features. For example, Uptegrove showed Now Brief, reminding him it was a friend's birthday and offering to create a generative AI image to send them along with a happy birthday text.

One of the biggest hurdles that Samsung and others face is getting people to buy into and use AI. Now Brief seems like one of the most straightforward, practical implementations I've seen, and it also encourages people to try other AIs.

Multimodal natural voice commands are what make Galaxy AI feel like a "true AI companion"

The multimodal natural voice commands feel like a long-awaited promise finally fulfilled. They allow you to string together multiple actions in a single query, much like how you would phrase a question or request to a person. For example, when Uptegrove asked Galaxy AI to "Summarize YouTube videos about the Galaxy Z Fold 6," it took approximately 20 seconds to process and summarize that information in a note.

This is all happening on-device, which is another critical point for Samsung with the Galaxy S25. The "Personal Data Engine," as Samsung calls it, gives you an LLM on your phone that can leverage everything it knows about you and your habits without sharing it with the cloud.

Uptegrove also offered a more straightforward example: simply asking Galaxy AI when the Warriors' next basketball game was happening and adding it to his calendar. This would typically require jumping back and forth between your browser and your calendar, but it's done in seconds without opening a single app. These quick interactions with Galaxy AI are priceless if you are trying to limit your screen time.

Now, this isn't quite the slam dunk that Now Brief is, as it requires users to proactively use an unfamiliar feature instead of being regularly presented with it on screen. However, this is a compelling feature if Samsung can deliver on its promise and get people to buy in.

At launch, this feature works only with apps in the Google suite, Samsung apps, WhatsApp, and Spotify, but Samsung is working to add other services over the course of the year.

Circle to Search, AI Select, and your Settings sherpa

Samsung's most popular Galaxy AI feature is still Circle to Search. This feature allows you to circle any image or text on your display and have Galaxy AI offer you search results. It can do the same for music if an audio element is detected on your screen.

AI Select is another helpful feature that gets an upgrade for 2025. You just need to slide over the Edge panel, and it will offer you contextual options regarding different things you can do with the content on your screen. One example is if you are watching a video you can just select it and automatically convert a portion of it into a GIF. You can also use AI Select to translate text between languages or summarize a long article.

Finally, for those unfamiliar with the labyrinthine settings menus or the full capabilities of their phones, Galaxy AI will now make recommendations on settings to change based on any issues you are experiencing. If your eyes are irritated, it may recommend turning on blue light reduction or dark mode.

If you are having trouble reading what's on the screen, it may offer to increase the text size for you. We've seen Apple Intelligence do something similar, answering basic how-to questions about Apple devices; this essentially takes that one step further and walks you through the process.

What's next?

Samsung focused on Galaxy AI when it announced the Galaxy S24 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold 6, and Galaxy Z Flip 6 in 2024, but the Galaxy S25 series takes that to a new level.

AI is the defining feature of this round of phones. Only the Galaxy S25 Ultra offers any notable hardware changes beyond the move to the custom Snapdragon 8 Elite chip; Galaxy AI must almost exclusively drive Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus upgrades.

While AI has been the buzzword on everyone's lips for a year, that killer feature hasn't emerged.

I don't think Galaxy AI has a single killer AI feature yet. Still, it is building out a compelling set of features and making them more accessible to users without expressly driving them to an AI app or hub. This may be as big a hurdle as building out the features themselves, as the best AI apps and services will be worthless if users don't integrate them into their lives.

While you could argue that Samsung is playing it safe with the Galaxy S25 series this year with minimal hardware upgrades, in another sense, it is taking a massive swing that Galaxy AI is enough to convince people to upgrade.