At the close of its Unpacked presentation in San Jose, California, Yesterday, Samsung Electronics unveiled its newest Galaxy S25 smartphone, powered by Qualcomm’s chips and Google’s artificial intelligence model. With the new AI features, the South Korean tech giant hopes to seal its global smartphone sales chart leadership.
Samsung was faster than Apple in launching an AI-powered smartphone but failed to regain its crown in the global smartphone market last year. The market has since seen impressive rollouts from other leading players, especially from Apple with the unveiling of the iPhone 16 in September.
Consequently, Samsung has lost a significant share of the Android market to fast-growing device makers from China such as Xiaomi and Vivo. Despite this, the latest report by Counterpoint Research’s Market Pulse indicated that Samsung’s first AI-centric smartphone, the Galaxy S24 series, outperformed previous iterations and was especially popular in Western Europe and the U.S.

“We are one step ahead of the industry in terms of offering AI features. I believe we are going in the right direction,” Park Ji-sun, the executive vice president who leads Samsung’s Language AI team told journalists at the launch event.
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More about the new Galaxy S25
The new Galaxy S25 uses Gemini offered by Google as its default AI engine and features Samsung’s upgraded in-house voice assistant, Bixby. Gemini will be easily accessed with a simple press of the side button. It can also take actions across Samsung apps like Calendar, Notes, Reminder and Clock.
Gemini can now connect to multiple extensions in a single prompt. For example, you can ask Gemini to find restaurants nearby and send them to a friend using Google Messages all in one go. The AI feature will also allow users to add images, files and YouTube videos to conversations for more contextual and personal interactions.


Another notable feature of the Samsung Galaxy S25 is the Now Bar. The bar will provide relevant updates to the lock screen including sports scores and Google Maps directions. This is different from the Circle to Search feature which will provide a helpful snapshot of perspectives from across the web without switching apps. It also features one-tap actions, automatically identifying phone numbers, email addresses and URLs.
In addition, the Galaxy S25 will offer a more personalized AI experience. For example, its “Now Brief” service will make recommendations to users based on personalised data that is stored and processed on the phone for privacy reasons.
Plus, the phone will be able to carry out multiple tasks with a single command, such as finding upcoming sporting events and then adding them to users’ calendars.
Samsung used Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform for the entire Galaxy S25 lineup. The tech company did not say why it decided not to use its chips in the new model. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that Samsung is looking to use the Exynos chip in its foldable phones to be launched later this year.
Samsung also promised to launch an ultrathin version of its Galaxy S25 phone in the first half of this year. The move sets up a showdown this year in the skinny smartphone segment. Apple also is expected to add an ultrathin version to its iPhone line later this year.
For Apple, a skinny model is its latest attempt to find a new phone size that consumers embrace. In recent years, it has offered a mini iPhone and a Plus model, but neither of them were big hits. The Plus version will be replaced by this new thinner variant, which some are already calling the “iPhone Air”.
The Galaxy S25 series will be sold between $799 and $1,299.