The first major smartphone launch of the year has taken place this morning in San Jose, California, with Samsung revealing its Galaxy S25 series, which will be available in Australia in mid-February.
The company launched its first key artificial intelligence features this time last year with Galaxy AI in its S24 series, beating Apple to market.
Nathan Rigger, head of product for mobile at Samsung Australia, told 9News that adoption of AI was strong in Australia.
“Interestingly here in Australia our usage is around 70 per cent and continues to grow month on month,” he said..
“About one in 10 Australians use Galaxy AI on a daily basis to make their lives easier, to give them the information they need when they need it.”
Samsung’s biggest competitor, Apple, took an additional 10 months to launch its AI software, with Apple Intelligence launching in Australia just over a month ago.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 series is powered by a new Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, a chip customised for Samsung with performance boosts of more than 30 per cent across processing, graphics and the neural processing which is so important to AI.
“We’re thrilled to launch the new Galaxy S25 series, with a new look – inside and out,” Samsung Electronics Australia head of mobile experience Eric Chou said.
“The S25 series has next-level Galaxy AI capabilities, powered by One UI 7, making it our most intelligent smartphone yet.
“Our research reveals demand for mobile AI is quickly rising; and the S25 series aims to exceed that consumer expectation.
“The Galaxy S25 series and evolution of Galaxy AI will create effortless and intuitive experiences, via human-like AI agents which learn and analyse user patterns and context, to provide seamless and personalised actions or insights.”
Underpinning Samsung’s smartphones has always been the Android operating system, built by Google and customised for Samsung devices. With the S25 it appears Samsung is working closer than ever with Google via its latest operating system updates, as well as incorporating Google’s strong AI features.
With the S25, you can press the side button to initiate what Samsung calls a “human-like AI agent” which is in fact Google’s Gemini. This integration allows for a strong natural language use of AI.
You can ask multiple things in a single command that may work across several apps. For example ask it to set an alarm, and start navigation to a location. Both commands will be initiated and completed with no additional interaction.
Samsung has added its own AI features, with AI select taking what was “circle to search” to a new level. Select any feature on your screen and AI will determine and suggest what your next action might be. If you’re reading the website for an event and the date and time are on screen, use AI select to highlight that text and you can almost instantly create a calendar event from that text.
There are also some features similar to those Apple has launched with iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence. Call recording allows you to record phone calls, with all parties on the call made aware via a voice prompt, allowing you to get a summary or transcript of the call afterward.
The Now Bar mimics Apple’s Live Activities, meaning if you have an Uber coming or are mid-navigation, the progress can appear on your lock screen and notification bar, along with sports scores, timers and step counting.
If you’re sick of taking videos in loud public spaces that are hard to make sense of, the Audio Eraser feature uses AI to separate background noise, music, voice, animals and much more on a single video so you can mix them to a new level to enhance a single part like voice. It’s a remarkable feature that might not be for everyone, but many will love.
At a physical level, these are the slimmest S series Samsung Galaxy devices, and they are between six and 15 grams lighter than last year’s model.
Most stark are the design changes to the S25 Ultra. The device for several years at the top of the Samsung range has been a bit different to the rest, taking lead from the original Note series devices. Now its corners are rounded and it looks more part of the S25 family.
All three models will go on sale on February 14, with the S25 starting at $1399, S25+ at $1699 and the S25 Ultra $50 less than last year’s model at $2149.
For Aussie fans of Crocs – there’s even a dedicated collaboration releasing a case for S25 models for the shoe/phone fashion combination we never knew we needed.
