Editor’s take: After years of half-filled guarantees and underwhelming realities, it appears to be like like Samsung has lastly succeeded in bringing the sort of seamless expertise that all of us hoped AI, digital assistants, and brokers would or might deliver to our cell units. Nicely, to be truthful, it is Samsung along with Google (together with some assist from Qualcomm) that is making the magic occur contained in the just-launched Galaxy S25.
From the surface, Samsung’s new S25 cell phone is solely the newest iteration of the corporate’s long-running line of premium Android smartphones powered by Qualcomm’s newest era Snapdragon processor. It is also obtained a pleasing, rounded-edge design, higher cameras, a recent set of colour choices, and some cool new options – all of the belongings you’d count on from a next-generation machine.
However what actually stands out on the Galaxy S25 – based mostly on a number of the demos and temporary hands-on time we have had with the machine – is the truth that it has digital assistant capabilities that really work. Plus, it affords choices for studying particular person preferences that go effectively past what’s been obtainable on different units.
In different phrases, it brings the exceptional breadth, spectacular accuracy, and extremely individualized personalization guarantees of recent LLM-enabled AI to life in an always-on, always-connected, always-with-us cell machine.
A part of that is because of the new degree of partnership between Samsung and Google that implies a deeper degree of cooperation and co-design than has existed earlier than. For instance, up to now, it typically felt like Samsung tried to copy the software program performance that Google already provided in Android. With the Galaxy S25, nevertheless, the businesses are working to deliver the most effective of each worlds collectively to allow the very best consumer expertise.
Probably the most notable instance is the default motion of mechanically launching Google’s Gemini private assistant with an extended push on the S25. Sure, you’ll be able to allow that choice on Google’s newest Pixel telephones, nevertheless it’s not on by default, and Samsung sells a considerably bigger variety of telephones than Google. Meaning most individuals will expertise this for the primary time on a brand new S25 – or earlier generations of Galaxy smartphones when Samsung offers upgrades to them.
Our expertise with Gemini – each voice-based and textual content input-based – to this point has been extraordinarily spectacular, providing an enormous vary of choices for requesting data, getting strategies, and even taking part in lengthy conversations on just about any matter possible through Gemini Dwell. As well as, Google introduced that future extensions of Gemini – Display screen Share and Dwell Video, which add new multimodal intelligence capabilities that may perceive what’s at the moment in your cellphone’s display screen and what the cellphone’s digital camera is seeing – will probably be coming to S25 first.
But it surely’s not simply the Gemini integration that makes the S25 spectacular. Samsung has additionally built-in Bixby in addition to a number of different customized AI fashions it created for on-device information personalization choices. Samsung well acknowledged that Gemini can provide a way more complete set of cloud-based private assistant options than Bixby, however Bixby has the benefit of operating straight on the machine and getting access to each the actions we carry out on units in addition to issues like machine settings.
Because of this, Bixby and these different on-device fashions can begin to study the forms of actions we repeatedly carry out, information we seek for, and many others., and it may retailer all that data securely on the machine via using Samsung’s Knox machine safety framework.
Better of all, Gemini and Samsung’s onboard fashions can work collectively in some fairly compelling methods. For instance, we are able to ask Gemini for details about an upcoming occasion and have it placed on our private calendar.
This public data to non-public calendar integration is feasible as a result of Samsung labored with Google to permit information to be handed from Gemini to a number of of Samsung’s personal apps, which have entry to the info saved on the cellphone. Whereas this would possibly look like a small step, it is vastly vital as a result of it is one of many first instances the power to mix these two “information worlds” has been enabled. Extra importantly, it means the expertise is as fully seamless and intuitive because it must be for normal individuals to really use these sorts of capabilities.
At current, these integrations are restricted to Samsung native apps, Google’s suite of apps, in addition to Spotify and WhatsApp, however apparently, plenty of integrations with widespread third-party apps are within the works.
As well as, finally, we’ll have the ability to do issues like push the aspect button to name up Gemini, request a change to the cellphone’s settings, and have Bixby carry out the operation. Within the meantime, the 2 can work side-by-side, and we are able to launch both of them by voice utilizing the suitable key phrase if we do not need to use the {hardware} button. Regardless, hiding the workings of a number of fashions behind a easy, unified consumer interface of Samsung’s OneUI 7 is strictly what makes the mixed design efforts on the S25 so intriguing.
One of many different vital benefits of getting Bixby run on the machine – with assist from the NPU on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Cell Platform – is the power to find and retailer details about our private preferences and routines on the cellphone. The brand new Snapdragon SoC, by the best way, will now be constructed into each S25 worldwide – the signal of elevated collaboration between Samsung and Qualcomm as effectively – and as an alternative of simply providing barely larger speeds, contains new customized circuitry to assist with the digital camera processing and different AI options on the S25.
Leveraging what Samsung is asking the Private Information Engine, the onboard Samsung fashions are capable of see what actions happen on our cellphone display screen – whatever the app we’re operating – after which prepare the onboard mannequin to study the sorts of data we’re requesting, the forms of actions we do frequently, and many others.
From that, utilizing what the corporate known as information graph expertise, it may finally begin to make suggestions or mechanically program routines and carry out them on our behalf (all with our permission, that’s). Importantly, all of this data graph information stays on the machine and by no means goes to the cloud. The Private Information Engine (PDE) can also be what powers the brand new Now Transient and Now Bar features, which serve up data based mostly on our preferences and the data gleaned from the information graph.
It is this degree of customization that has the potential to show on-device AI into one thing that evolves from a intelligent parlor trick into an indispensable private digital assistant. After all, it additionally has the potential to create an unbelievable privateness and safety nightmare. Information of this kind might present probably the most detailed file about what any particular person does on-line that we have most likely ever seen – an enormous magnet (“honeypot”) for the unhealthy guys.
Fortunately, Samsung acknowledged that and embedded the PDE information into its hardware-based, on-device Knox Vault safety resolution, which has now been upgraded to supply post-quantum ranges of cryptography. Due to these potential safety issues, Samsung permits us, in fact, to show off the info monitoring options if we do not need to leverage them. It is a difficulty that any sort of AI-powered personalization machine or service goes to face.
Collectively, Samsung is asking all of those numerous AI-related capabilities Galaxy AI – a phrase that has expanded to cowl the corporate’s personal AI fashions, the extensions that combine Gemini with Bixby, the AI options constructed into a number of of its apps, and the personalization enabled by the Private Information Engine. Making an attempt to make sense of all of it is not significantly straightforward, neither is it something that the overwhelming majority of customers will ever actually care to grasp. But it surely’s the mix of those Galaxy AI options together with the clear integration of Google’s Gemini within the S25 that makes this such a compelling providing.
To be clear, there’s nonetheless a terrific deal extra work to be carried out at a mannequin integration and app ecosystem degree, however ultimately, it appears the promise of AI on units is lastly coming to life.
Bob O’Donnell is the founder and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Analysis, LLC a expertise consulting agency that gives strategic consulting and market analysis companies to the expertise trade {and professional} monetary neighborhood. You’ll be able to observe him on Twitter @bobodtech
