Samsung Loves To Talk AI, but It’s the Galaxy S25’s Basics That Still Interest Me the Most
watch for one hour Galaxy S25 Unboxing Event You’d be forgiven for thinking Samsung isn’t launching any new devices but just new software. As with other recent tech events, AI is all the rage and dominating the show.
Galaxy AI adds new features like “Cross-App Action,” which lets your phone’s digital assistant tap into multiple apps to respond to your requests. The new “Conversational Search” should make it easier to adjust settings by typing in natural language. Saying “My eyes hurt” in Settings prompts the phone to guide you through brightness and blue light adjustments without having to hunt for a personalized menu.
At first glance, the new Galaxy S25 series looks a lot like last year’s S24 and 2023’s S23.
But to me, one of the most interesting parts of this phone is much simpler: battery life. As people continue to use their phones for longer and longer, and generally show limited interest in artificial intelligence, Samsung’s claim that the S25 series has “the longest battery life yet” makes particular sense.
The company claims the S25 Ultra has 31 hours of battery life, an hour longer than the S24 Ultra, but how it performs in practice remains to be seen.
the latest one CNET Investigates Found that U.S. buyers still don’t care much about artificial intelligence on their phones. But they do care a lot about better battery life. Camera capabilities are also important, and Samsung bumped up the ultrawide sensor to 50 megapixels on at least the S25 Ultra. (The S25 and S25 Plus cameras have the same resolution as last year’s models.)
Samsung already has impressive cameras and solid software (beyond AI) on its older phones. While I’d like to see a more ambitious design shift (Samsung seems to be working with Galaxy S25 Edge teased for being thinner), you can’t really think the company needs to do something radical with its already popular main model.
The Ultra gets thinner bezels, moving the screen from 6.8 inches on the S24 version to 6.9 inches on this year’s phone, which is a small but beautiful design. All three models appear to have a thinner, lighter profile. These aren’t big enablers on their own, but they can give you a better experience if you’re upgrading from a device from a few years ago.
Maybe AI features will be useful in the future. With Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and 12GB of RAM now standard across the board, and Samsung’s promised seven years of software updates, perhaps these phones are already powerful enough to handle at least some of these future features.
The most important feature to me now and in the near future is battery life. While it may not be as flashy or sexy for an hour-long keynote, at the end of the day it’s what prompted me to consider the S25 when it came to upgrading.
Now if Samsung can finally put The magnets on the phone itself can be used for Qi2 wireless charging Rather than having users rely on purchase cases…
