Samsung just held its biannual flagship event, Samsung Unpacked, at San Jose, California, this year. The event happened at 2 am MYT, and saw the long-awaited launch of Samsung’s newest flagship, the Samsung S25 Series.
Rewatch the actual launch here:
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Jennifer chevron_right
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Samsung Galaxy S25 Series
Of course, the star of the show is the brand-new Samsung Galaxy S25 series. As the brand's flagship, the Galaxy S Series has taken the pioneer spot year after year. Last year, the Galaxy S24 series brought us Galaxy AI—this year, the Galaxy S25 series brings us... Galaxy AI.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 series, which includes the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and Galaxy S25 Ultra, is powered by the custom Snapdragon® 8 Elite Mobile Platform for Galaxy, boasting a 40% improvement in NPU, 37% in CPU, and 30% in GPU. Basically, this means better performance and better AI processing, which, like last year, is the main focus of this year’s launch.
Cameras
While the camera specs of the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ remain the same as those of the previous generation, the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s upgraded 50MP ultrawide camera provides an exceptional smartphone photography experience—even elevating it to a DSLR-like experience on mobile.
For one, all videos are now recorded on 10-bit HDR. This means that you can get richer and more vibrant colours in your cinematic shots, allowing you to capture details in any lighting condition.
Galaxy Log is a new feature introduced in the Galaxy S25 series, designed to enhance video production by offering advanced options for video editing. Mostly, it allows you to adjust the colour of your videos to give them a more cinematic and professional feel.
This feature is integrated directly into the Galaxy S25 series, so you won’t need to rely on third-party apps or complicated editing software to achieve that high-quality look.
Portrait Studio has also been upgraded to include more personalized avatars that can replicate real-life expressions even closer, and Filters adds a more cinematic feel to your photos and videos with its new analog-style, well, filters.
Design
The design of the Galaxy S25 series “builds upon Galaxy’s Essential Design”, which is to say, they look pretty much identical to each other and to the previous generation. The Ultra model has slightly more rounded edges, but that’s really all the difference in appearance to the naked eye.
As the big brother of the Galaxy S25 series, the Galaxy S25 Ultra sports the biggest and best upgrades across the entire lineup. Apart from the titanium chassis, it also sports a 6.9” Corning® Gorilla® Armor 2 display that is more durable than glass, providing advanced drop protection.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ sport 6.2” and 6.9” screens respectively, both with Dynamic AMOLED 2X display and a robust aluminium chassis.
Across the board, the Galaxy S25 series is the lightest, slimmest, and most durable Galaxy S Series yet—no surprises there.
Galaxy AI & One UI 7.0
Hardware aside, the Galaxy S25 series come out of the box with the most comprehensive Galaxy AI features to date. Powered by Google Gemini, these Galaxy AI features are deeply integrated into the phone, allowing you to access AI with just the tap of a button almost everywhere on the phone.
Samsung has packed these devices with powerful upgrades that focus on context-aware and personalised experiences, starting with the new One UI 7. With multimodal AI agents that can seamlessly interpret text, speech, images, and even videos, AI interactions now feel more natural.
Thanks to the NPU processing power, Generative Edit, which was previously cloud-based, is now able to be processed on-device.
Circle to Search with Google, which debuted last year with the Galaxy S24 series, now works smarter by instantly recognizing things like phone numbers, emails, or URLs on your screen, allowing you to take action—like making a call or visiting a website—with just one tap.
Google Gemini on the Samsung Galaxy S25 series is now smarter than ever. It can connect effortlessly with Samsung, Google, and supported third-party apps, so you can use the voice assistant to look up just about anything you want.
Besides that, Samsung has also expanded its Galaxy AI productivity tools. Now, Call Transcript can transcribe your calls and summarize them with one tap of a button; Writing Assist, no longer confined to just the Samsung Notes app, can summarize content or reformat notes in your current app.
Drawing Assist is another fun one—it lets you combine sketches, text, and images to bring ideas to life. And if you’re into photo or video editing, the Galaxy S25 series introduces features like Virtual Aperture for DSLR-style depth-of-field effects and Audio Eraser, which can remove unwanted sounds from your videos.
Another new addition is the Now Bar, an AI-powered feature designed to offer proactive, context-aware suggestions directly on the lock screen. It's part of Samsung's aim to make the Galaxy S25 a "true AI companion”, allowing the phone to guide its user through the day via the Now Brief.
Besides that, the Galaxy S25 series also has a Personal Data Engine that deals with personalized AI features by keeping everything on-device, meaning your data never leaves your phone. All personalised data is kept private and secured in the Knox Vault.
Sustainability
As always, Samsung places quite a lot of importance on the sustainability of its new lineup without compromising on performance or durability.
For the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, Samsung has used a minimum of 50% recycled cobalt for its battery, which is a big step toward reducing the environmental impact of mining raw materials. Incredibly, some of the cobalt used in the batteries comes from previous Galaxy devices or the cobalt extracted from old batteries that might have otherwise gone to waste.
Additionally, the Galaxy S25 series is built with recycled materials in the device's exterior components, such as plastic. Samsung has increased the use of recycled ocean-bound plastic in some models, further helping to reduce plastic waste.
Every model on the Samsung Galaxy S25 series will come with seven years of security updates and up to seven years of OS updates, ensuring that your device stays relevant and secure for a longer period.
And just as we all thought the event was over, Samsung announced a surprise: the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge! What is that about?
... Well, we don't know either, because that's the extent of the announcement. Literally, just the name, and a very short teaser video. Is the Galaxy S25 Edge going to be a more edgy version of the phone? More powerful? More rugged? Tune in next time to find out!
Want to know more? Check out other Samsung Unpacked 2025 products, price & pre-order promos here!