Samsung’s first Unpacked of the yr is arguably its most essential occasion but. It set the tone for a lot of the smartphone market within the first half of 2025 and introduces Samsung’s flagship for the yr, the Galaxy S25 Extremely. The Galaxy S25 and S25+ tagged alongside, which might be the very best reward we might give them. Oh, and Samsung teased a Galaxy S25 Edge and whereas it is that includes round 4 edges, it has little to do with its legendary namesakes.
So with out additional ado, here is our scorching tackle the sequence.
One UI 7 is nice, AI lastly appears to be like interesting
The primary half hour of Samsung’s 1 hour and 10 minutes January 2025 Unpacked presentation was all about One UI and AI, so it is solely proper we begin with that.
For the primary time, Samsung delayed its One UI replace from late fall to mid-winter. Seeing the top outcome makes that delay really feel price it. The brand new tackle Samsung’s UI feels recent and, crucially, sooner. And it brings unprecedented options, akin to a vertical app drawer – simply think about all the probabilities!
Jokes apart, the brand new Gemini-powered AI smarts really feel worthwhile – not simply gimmicks. Circle to Search can now acknowledge telephone numbers, emails, and URLs for fast actions. Multimodal AI brokers interpret textual content, speech, pictures, and even movies for pure interactions – you’ll be able to ask Gemini to discover a particular photograph in Gallery, as an example. Search is content-aware suggesting the next step – sharing a GIF, or saving an occasion.
Pure language enter lets you management sure telephone options. As an illustration, you’ll be able to voice search your Gallery and ask the AI assistant to drag out pictures out of your journey to a selected place. You possibly can even ask it to enlarge the font if it is too small!
We love the Galaxy S25 Extremely’s new design
The Galaxy S Extremely entered its rectangular section in early 2022 with the Galaxy S22 Extremely. It was distinctive and distinctive, and it lent itself adeptly for a pen-equipped telephone.
However the brand new rounded-off form appears to be like smarter and much more importantly, it brings a significant enchancment to dealing with. The Galaxy S25 Extremely is a giant telephone and this makes it a snug one within the hand.
Impressively, Samsung made the show 0.1-inch greater, the telephone 0.4mm thinner, and 14g lighter, with out compromising sturdiness or the scale of internals just like the battery!
The most effective show glass will get even higher
The Galaxy S24 Extremely remained the one telephone with an anti-reflection show available on the market regardless of rumors that different producers would come out with the identical tech. The less-reflective show proved wonderful for out of doors visibility, as our summertime battery take a look at proved.
The Galaxy S25 Extremely might’ve simply sat on that lead, however it brings an additional improved panel – the Gorilla Armor 2 retains its anti-reflection coating, however is brighter and extra sturdy.
The brand new 50MP ultrawide sounds good on paper, however early samples should not convincing
Samsung upgraded solely the ultrawide angle digicam on the Galaxy S25 Extremely – the opposite 12 cameras throughout the Extremely, Plus, and Vanilla remained unchanged. Gone is the 12MP sensor with f/2.2 optics, in comes a brand new 50MP imager with a brighter f/1.9 lens. The focal size stays at 120°.
The upper-megapixel digicam opens up 8K movies and may, on paper, produce ultrawides with extra element, whereas its upgraded aperture ought to ship nicer photographs in low mild.
Nevertheless, we’re not seeing it in our first samples. We have now two digicam comparisons between the Galaxy S24 Extremely and S25 Extremely (half 1, half 2) and we will not simply say the brand new digicam is best. The older one appears to provide sharper pictures with extra element.
That is a theme all through – the primary 200MP digicam enjoys the newer (and certain sooner) ISP of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and but, we’re seeing sharper and extra detailed pictures from the older telephone.
The Galaxy S25 Extremely is the worst Extremely on this planet at pictures
Examine the Samsung Extremely to the Xiaomi 14 Extremely, vivo’s X100 Extremely, Huawei’s Pura 70 Extremely, or Oppo Discover X7 Extremely and it’ll come out final in total imaging efficiency. It is not an excellent search for the corporate that invented the section.
S Pen downgrade, actually???
Bewilderingly, Samsung took away Bluetooth connectivity from the S Pen within the Galaxy S25 Extremely. There’s additionally no accelerometer, which means no Air Actions. The S Pen was one of the best distant shutter on this planet and now it is only a stylus. Very unusual.
Solely Snapdragon 8 Elite Cell Platform for Galaxy
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a significant step up from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The “for Galaxy” denotes barely greater clock speeds on the primary 2x Oryon V2 Phoenix L cores, the GPU, and the NPU. The “unique” SD 8 Elite has them at 4.32 GHz, whereas the Galaxy-exclusive CPU runs at 4.47 GHz.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Extremely
Followers all over the world will likely be comfortable that each single Galaxy S25 unit throughout the globe makes use of this chipset.
The Galaxy S25 and S25+ are boring
Apart from the brand new chipset, the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ are unchanged from their predecessors. They’ve the identical shows, the identical batteries, the identical charging speeds, and the identical cameras.
They did not get the anti-reflective show, the brand new ultrawide digicam, and even an autofocusing ultrawide. However hey, the Galaxy S25 now comes with the identical 12GB of RAM because the Plus and Extremely.
No world variant with 16GB of RAM
However significantly, solely 12GB of RAM on the Galaxy S25 Extremely sounds insulting. The Pixel 9 Professional has 16GB, the Xiaomi 14 Extremely tops out at 16GB, whereas the OnePlus 13 even has as much as 24GB of RAM.
Samsung Galaxy S25
Sure, there’s a 16GB Galaxy S24 Extremely, technically, however you’ll be able to’t purchase one exterior of Korea, China, and Taiwan. As soon as once more, it is not an excellent look.
There is a Galaxy S25 Edge now
Samsung teased the Galaxy S25 Edge. Rumored because the S25 Slim, the Edge resurrects a line of legendary handhelds by Samsung. The primary was the Galaxy Observe Edge which had a sloping proper edge that opened up extra performance, just like the Edge display screen. Others, just like the Galaxy S6 edge, S6 edge+, and Galaxy S7 edge had two sloping edges that felt as sharp as a knife again then.
The new Galaxy S25 Edge appears blunt by comparability. It appears to be like extra like a Galaxy Alpha.
Are there now too many fashions?
There could also be at the very least one Galaxy S25 mannequin too many now. If Samsung brings out a Galaxy S25 FE afterward, it will make the sequence even tougher to navigate. We could also be prepared for a world the place the smallest Galaxy S or the center one is unneeded.
