The future of smartphones involves delivering plenty of artificial intelligence features. Every year, phones get launched with minor tweaks on the hardware front — better processor, a slight bump in camera specifications and other cosmetic overhauls like fun messaging tools.

Samsung changed the game with its ‘AI for All’ vision last year. It was taking baby steps but this year, the South Korean company has taken big strides into the AI world. The changes on the AI front feel more radical than before. Of course, there are several updates on the hardware front, especially a first-of-its-kind customised Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform for Galaxy chipset that delivers greater on-device processing power for Galaxy AI and superior camera range and control with Galaxy’s next-gen ProVisual Engine.

Ask AI to create recipes based on a picture of what’s in the refrigerator

We were at the phone’s launch in San Jose and what blew us away was the number of AI features. Here are a few AI options that you need to know about.

One activity, multiple apps

Called Now Bar, Samsung has come up with a clever implementation of AI that involves keeping track of an activity while involving multiple apps. You want to travel from Location A to Location B, during which you want to track the time taken, steps walked and, of course, the movement on the map. Three apps need to be used at the same time — Samsung Health, Timer and Google Maps.

Lock the screen and the Now Bar will be visible at the bottom of the screen. You can scroll through the different apps, tap on them to get more information or dive into a particular app full screen.

Drawing Assist unlocks fresh ways to bring ideas to life through combinations of sketches, text or image prompts. Picture: Mathures Paul

How is it different from the Dynamic Island on the iPhone? Dynamic Island is about keeping track of an app or two. Here, you get multiple apps required to finish a single activity. The approach and UI are quite different.

If you are wondering whether Now Bar can handle only three apps, we will have more clarity when we start reviewing the phone. But you can certainly add music into the mix by adding Spotify, which makes it the fourth app on the Location A to B activity.

Your day, your summary

Now Brief offers a personal summary of the day, available in the morning or at night. The feature will give an overview of your usage pattern and your routines. On Galaxy S25, the Personal Data Engine powers personalised AI features by analysing your data on-device to deliver tailored experiences that reflect your preferences and usage patterns. These insights enable customised experiences such as searching for an old photo in the Gallery using natural language or being guided through the day with Now Brief.

AI Select

Some may know this as smart select from the past but the feature has been greatly updated under the name AI Select. It understands what you are looking at. Let’s recall Circle to Search, which involves drawing a circle around any object on the screen to bring up similar results. Instead of remaining only a search tool, AI Select is about context awareness. We decided to take a look at Samsung’s Unpacked invitation. Once the picture turned up, it was possible to select the date mentioned on the invite and add it to the calendar. Earlier, you had to close the app, load the calendar app and then make an entry. On selecting a date, the device knows what you are looking for — in this case, the calendar.

Being multimodal, the device can understand speech, text, images and videos. Picture: Mathures Paul

Being multimodal, the device can understand speech, text, images and videos. So AI Select works on videos. Who doesn’t like GIFs? But making a GIF file can be complicated, involving several steps. Now you can cut through the chatter. Choose AI Select, open a video and draw a box around the area you want converted to GIF. The dimensions can be changed. Click record and wait for, say, five seconds before getting a GIF file. To keep copyright infringement at bay, the technique will not work on videos, say, from Netflix.

Draw and write with some help

We often conduct interviews on the phone and that calls for Call Transcript and summary. Then there are Writing Assist features like summarising content or automatically formatting notes can be enabled where texts can be selected, without needing to switch between applications. Then comes Drawing Assist, which unlocks new ways to bring ideas to life through combinations of sketches, text or image prompts.

Audio Eraser

When iPhone 16 launched, Apple had a clever implementation of AI in the audio department, allowing users a more cinematic experience. Samsung has taken a different route. With the Galaxy S25 comes a range of tools once limited to specialised software, making advanced editing accessible for all.

Audio Eraser simplifies the removal of unwanted noise in videos. When we shoot videos, there is a lot of background noise, affecting the audio of the subject, which can be a musician or an actor. Audio Eraser helps to clean up audio by isolating categories of sounds, including voices, music, wind, nature, crowd and noise. You can control what to tone down or eliminate entirely.

Audio Eraser simplifies the removal of unwanted noise in videos. Picture: Mathures Paul

Power up Gemini

Galaxy S25 represents a breakthrough in natural language understanding, making everyday interactions easier. Simply ask and intuitively find a specific photo in Samsung Gallery or adjust the size of display fonts in Settings.

How to go about it? Just press and hold the side button to activate Gemini and perform seamless interaction across Samsung and Google apps, plus third-party apps such as Spotify. For example, find your favourite sports team’s season schedule and add it to Samsung Calendar — with a single command.

It’s now the era of asking AI to create recipes depending on a picture of what’s in the refrigerator. The camera took a look at the ingredients inside a refrigerator — there was plenty of vegetables and herbs. We were suggested a Greek salad and a vinaigrette involving citrus juice, dijon mustard and so on.

Seamless experience across apps

Galaxy S25 eliminates the need to jump between apps several times a day because of the integration between Gemini, Galaxy AI and popular third-party apps. Galaxy AI, Bixby and Gemini work together to provide simple, intuitive responses to your asks, it even works across applications, with current support for Google apps, Galaxy native apps and even third-party apps like Spotify and Whatsapp.

The task at hand was to look up vegan options around me and send the list to a contact on my phone. All this involves working on different apps simultaneously.

That’s not all: We worked on a menu that was written in French. The phone’s camera took a picture of the menu card. Since we were on a budget, we asked Gemini to help curate a menu depending on our budget and preferences. Further, some of our friends were yet to arrive at the restaurant. To order on their behalf, we asked the device to send the choices to them.

Portrait Studio

It is one of the AI features that we expect youngsters to use. There are moments when we want our pictures transformed into avatars or sketches. All you have to do is take photos and turn them into a style of choice, complete with true-to-life facial expressions. Filters introduce new analogue-style filters, delivering a film-like aesthetic for their photos and videos.

(The reporter is in San Jose on an invitation from Samsung)

Also there on Samsung Galaxy S25…

Combined with seven generations of OS upgrades and seven years of security updates, the Galaxy S25 series ensures a reliable and optimised performance over a longer lifespan.

All Galaxy S25 devices will come with six months of Gemini Advanced and 2TB of cloud storage at no extra cost. Gemini Advanced comes with the most capable AI models and priority access to the newest features like Gems, custom AI experts for any topic, and Deep Research, which acts as your personal AI research assistant.