A New Era of Galaxy AI: All from Galaxy Unpacked 2025!

Well, here’s our first major tech event for this year!

Samsung’s 2025 Galaxy Unpacked appears to showcase a mix of hardware and software announcements, pushing more and more improvements to its AI suite as time goes. In fact, the whole S-series lineup right now is being marketed as steps taken towards building a “true AI companion” whatever form that may take.

But we’ve got some hardware to cover. So, let’s unpack these major announcements from the latest Galaxy Unpacked event:

Samsung Galaxy S25 Lineup: Snapdragon Elite for Galaxy

While the talk may have kicked off with the assortment of AI features they’re bringing in, let’s take a look at the hardware first. Compared to last time, we’re getting a total of four models: the Galaxy S25, the Galaxy S25+, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and the Galaxy S25 Edge.

The Galaxy S25 Edge, which is the official name for the speculated S25 Slim, was only teased however, and will be revealed at a future date. So in the meantime, we’re only taking a look at the three main models.

First off, anyone concerned about performance discrepancies between regions can rest easy. The whole S25 lineup will be shipping with the custom Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy across the board, backed by 12GB of RAM even on the base model. There’s a 16GB RAM variant for the S25 Ultra on the upper end though but it won’t be available in all regions.

For storage, the base Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ starts at 128GB and goes all the way to 256GB. The S25 Ultra starts with 256GB and goes all the way to 1TB for particularly heavy users.

Samsung claims this chipset’s entirely custom, featuring not just higher clock speeds but also better camera integration. It has some Galaxy IP built in the form of a “mobile Digital Natural Image engine” which should supposedly help improve display power efficiency.

All three models also feature bigger vapor chambers which should help tame the chip’s thermals while under heavy load.

In terms of connectivity, all phones feature WiFi 7 compatibility, Bluetooth 5.4 with Auracast, and Snapdragon Satellite, which can unlock messaging with narrow band non-terrestrial networks (NTN). Particularly useful to help those in remote areas connect to the internet.

Camera Hardware and Software

Moving on to the cameras, they’re pretty similar to last year’s Galaxy S24 lineup aside from the Galaxy S25 Ultra. There’s the 50MP main shooter with OIS, the 12MP ultrawide, and the 10MP 3x telephoto lens with OIS for the non-Ultra models.

The S25 Ultra gets some slight improvements, primarily in the ultrawide sensor, which has been bumped up to 50MP, a 120° field-of-view, and an f/1.9 aperture. Its main camera is 200MP, complete with OIS for more stable shots. Samsung also claims that this new sensor should also capture better macro photos as well, making up for the lack of a dedicated lens for it. There’s a 10MP telephoto capable of 3x optical zoom and a 50MP periscope telephoto with 5x optical zoom. Both come with OIS.

The front camera is the same resolution for all three models, with 12MP. The S25 Ultra however, is capable of recording in 4K and at 120 fps. The others are locked at 4K at 60 fps. All are also capable of recording video at 8K at 30 fps.

Samsung seems to have focused their improvements on the software side, including 10-bit HDR video recording which should help increase the dynamic range. Nightography has been improved with a new Spatio-Temporal Filter support for sharper images and less noise.

AI rears its head in this department as well, in the form of virtual aperture, depth of field, and even brightness adjustments via the Expert RAW app.

A Few Headscratchers

So far, so good, if not a bit iterative. There’s a number of baffling decisions made with the new phones however.

For starters, while the Galaxy S25+ and the Galaxy S25 Ultra both support ultra-wideband (UWB), which helps with locating Samsung SmartTags on things, the base Galaxy S25 doesn’t. Kind of odd considering that there’s barely any difference between the Galaxy S25+ and the Galaxy S25.

What’s weirder though is that the S-Pen in the Galaxy S25 Ultra no longer supports Bluetooth gestures, particularly Air actions. Samsung reports that most users didn’t use them enough which is why they’ve been removed. Still, an unfortunate omission, considering the Pen is one of the Ultra’s most distinguished features.

Galaxy S25: Design and Colors

As you can already see, there’s not much design difference between the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ compared to their S24 counterparts. There’s some slight change on the S25 Ultra as it introduces rounded corners on its titanium frame and it’s now protected by a layer of Corning Gorilla Armor 2.

Samsung is optimistic about this new protection in particular, claiming that ever since they introduced the first generation Gorilla Armor on the S24 Ultra, there’s been 60% fewer screen-related damages and repairs. The brand appears to be hoping the second generation should bring it down even further.

The Gorilla Armor doesn’t just offer drop protection and scratch resistance. They’ve also added an anti-reflective surface treatment to the display for better legibility even under direct sunlight. We’ve been able to notice some of the difference with the same treatment on the S24 so we’re quite optimistic for this one.

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 and S25+ will come in a light “Icyblue” color, a light green “Mint”, Navy, and a gray “Silver Shadow” color. You can also get them in a black “Blueblack”, a stunning “Pinkgold”, and even “Coralred” when ordering it exclusively from Samsung.

The S25 Ultra on the other hand, continues its titanium theme, with Titanium Black, Titanium Gray, Titanium Blue, and Titanium White Silver. Exclusive colors include Titanium Jetblack, Titanium Jadegreen, and a similar Titanium Pinkgold.

Make sure to catch the best deals on other Samsung Galaxy devices here at Kimstore!

One UI 7.0 and other AI Updates

Alright, let’s move to some of the AI chops featured in the phone. All of this will be powered by the much awaited One UI 7.0 based on Android 15. The S25 will be launching with this OS out of the box, while older S-series smartphones will reportedly get them by the end of the first quarter, which is in March 2025.

The new OS promises plenty of updates from smoother animations all the way to customizable shortcuts and other things. And of course, further integration of Galaxy AI across their suite of devices. Their partnership with Google also allows them to bring a few more Gemini features to the Galaxy lineup.

Simply press the side button and you can access Gemini any time. As for actual functionality well, first we have ‘Gemini Live’, which they did show off during the event. It’s basically a way for you to converse with the AI, kind of like with a real human being. The demo for instance, showed the AI making suggestions to a photo the presenter took such as lighting and composition.

Then of course, there’s Circle to Search as well as their AI Overviews. Now, you can immediately see an AI summary whenever you use Circle to Search.

Gemini’s also further adding extensions for Samsung Notes, Calendar, Clock, and Reminders which should be good for people who prefer Samsung’s version of these apps.

Same as last year, the S25 lineup will be receiving 7 years of OS and security updates. Additionally, new S25 owners will reportedly get 6 months of Gemini Advanced and 2TB of cloud storage at no extra cost to the additional purchase.

By the way, Bixby is still there for anyone who prefers to use it. Probably much better at integrating with features like Samsung SmartThings.

Galaxy S25: Availability

The Galaxy S25 will be released for general availability on February 07, 2025. And rest assured we’ll also be monitoring further announcements surrounding the much slimmer Galaxy S25 Edge for anyone after a slimmer flagship model!

Make sure to follow us in order to find out when we’ll be getting these new Androids in-store, all for the best prices!

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