Samsung has been placing more and more of its tricks in the AI basket. It’s another way of saying that the future of AI gadgets is phones, which brings me to the fate of Galaxy S25.
The South Korean electronics giant has pushed a few hardware and design updates to its new flagship series of phones but, of course, a lot of attention has gone towards Samsung One UI 7 software that runs the show.
Audio Eraser simplifies the removal of unwanted noise in videos. By isolating categories of sounds — including voices, music, wind, nature, crowd and noise — you can control what to tone down or eliminate entirely
If somebody appreciates the best flagship tech in the smallest form, the basic Galaxy S25 is compelling. It’s a flagship phone with a flagship chip, has the same new software and most of the same specs as the S25 Ultra, yet it’s cheaper.
Hardware chops
Let’s take a step back and start with the physical design: It’s lighter, thinner and rounder but the cameras are now blacked out. It comes in four different colors plus some online exclusives. All the colours are solid choices.
There’s still Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front and colour-matched armour aluminium rails on the edges, so durability should be similar to last year. Unfortunately, Samsung did not add the anti-reflective display we saw on the Galaxy 24 Ultra last year.
It’s still a 6.2-inch full-HD, Dynamic AMOLED 2x, 120hz display. That’s a lot to say and it’s a solid display. Full-HD is fine because most people don’t update to Quad HD on their phones.
Flipping over to the back, the camera panel looks slightly different but they are essentially the same specs as last year — a 50MP primary lens (f/1.8 adaptive pixel optical quality 2x), 12MP (f/2.2) ultrawide and 10MP telephoto (f/2.4) with 3x optical zoom. We are still getting 4K@60 and 8K@30 video. There are some differences in camera performance.
Taken under uneven restaurant lighting, pictures have very little noise and a good degree of colour accuracy
Do I have anything to complain about? We have had the phone for a couple of days and evening shots are coming out well, with very little noise. A detailed review of the camera on all three new Samsung Galaxy S25 phones will be ready in a few days.
We are getting things like an Audio Eraser. So you can take a video, it’ll analyse and detect several categories of sound, like wind, environmental noise and so on. The machine will delineate those and allow you to adjust the volume of each of those independently and then put them back together to form a new audio file. So you can remove the wind or even remove the voice and just have the wind in the video. It’s quite impressive. Now you can recover a video shot in a windy environment and get away with it.
The iPhone 16 too has something called Audio Mix but it works differently, allowing more cinematic or studio sound to channel in.
AI features like AI Select and Now Brief are easily accessible from the sidebar
All muscles
Diving in, there is Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform for Galaxy chipset. It is probably the best Android chip we’re going to get this year and it’s also there on the Galaxy 25 Ultra.
The chip can deliver a performance boost of 40 per cent in NPU, 37 per cent in CPU and 30 per cent in GPU compared to the previous generation. This power fuels the Galaxy S25 series’ ability to process more AI experiences on-device without any compromise, including previously Cloud-based AI tasks such as Generative Edit.
We’re also getting 12 gigs of RAM this year instead of eight on the regular model, so that’s helpful, especially with the addition of so many AI-based features. There are two storage variants for India — 256GB and 512GB. We suggest you buy the higher variant because the phone will easily last a few years.
Other things: This has Wi-Fi 7 now and the battery is still 4,000 mAh hours but there is improved battery life with the new chipset.
AI magic
There are several AI-focused features that come with the lineup. First, Now Brief. You wake up, and the phone will summarise the weather and the news… it kind of learns your behaviour and shows you what it thinks is relevant. It’s also going to be a widget on the home screen and you can tap into it. iPhones have had something similar but this feels a little bit different here. There is also a kind of end-of-day, daily diary that will show you the photos you took, a summary of events, meetings and options like that. All the relevant highlights of the day are shown. And even things like, your favourite game begins in 30 minutes or if you missed a game, then the scorecard.
Second, we have some AI agents. Last year we had Circle to Search, which was a huge feature. How can it be extended? You can search for audio as well. If you are watching a video and you want to know what the music is, just press and hold the bottom of your phone and then tap the audio button. It can identify the music.
Samsung has added another feature within Circle to Search; it’s called AI Select. If you swipe over from the left side, you get a little panel where you can tap on AI Select. It allows you to highlight different parts of the screen and make a little screen recording or turn a part of a video into GIF.
You can also have your writing tools pulled up to summarise and translate… or search through screenshots.
Third, AI Search through the photo gallery, which is kind of expected. We see that on other phones but a natural language search is helpful. If you have a lot of photos and you ask for pictures of, say, burgers that you had six months ago, the phone can find it, saving you a lot of time.
Fourth, AI Search through settings. It’s useful if you are somebody who always has to help grandparents as if you are an IT guy. It could be nice for anyone who doesn’t know the ins and outs of Samsung settings and there are lots of them. For example, how do I change my screen brightness or how do I move from light to dark mode?
Samsung is making clever use of widgets, allowing easy access to information like scorecards
Next, integrated AI platform. If you long press the power button you access Gemini. It is going to do a lot more now, so think of better integration with apps on your phone, like you could ask when an upcoming sporting event is and add it to your calendar, you could ask to summarise videos and put them in Samsung Notes, you could find restaurants and text the list to friends… the possibilities are endless.
A lot of the AI features are very impressive. Your phone feels more personalised than before. The Personal Data Engine, in essence, is supposed to learn from user info about Internet usage, Gallery content, health, wallet, calendar and files. It’s all done on the device. These insights enable tailored experiences such as searching for an old photo in the Gallery using natural language or being guided through the day with Now Brief.
For example, it can suggest routines. If you always turn Bluetooth on when you get in your car and off when you get out of your car, it can do that automatically. Or control the thermostat at your home. The idea is to learn about your behaviour and suggest new things. Maybe you want the temperature to be reduced when you are sleeping or maybe you want to turn lights off. If you fall asleep, the TV volume can be turned down.
Make the call
I love small phones and this one offers a flagship chipset and features at an affordable cost. Plus, there are long-term software updates, which will stop me from rushing towards other brands. How long? Combined with seven generations of OS upgrades and seven years of security updates, the Galaxy S25 series appears reliable.
With Galaxy AI firmly in place, Samsung now has more bandwidth to keep improving its flagship Galaxy S line, even if the industry is collectively turning its attention to the foldable future. Overall, Galaxy S25 is a solid upgrade.
At a glance
Device: Samsung Galaxy S25
Price: Upwards of ₹80,999
Also: All Galaxy S25 devices come with six months of Gemini Advanced and 2TB of cloud storage at no extra cost.
High notes
Small and beautiful
Most powerful Android chipset
New AI features
Long-term software upgrade cycle
Bright display
Muffled note
There could have been an option for less-reflective screen coating
