5 things we love about the Samsung Galaxy S25

Now Brief

Naturally we’re not talking about underwear here. Now Brief is a new daily summary that’s compiled by Galaxy AI to let you know where you’re at in your day, with morning, commute time, and bedtime bulletins.

So, when you hurl yourself out of bed – or before if you’re really groggy – you can tap the Now Bar on your home screen, the widget if you’ve added it to your main screen, or from the Edge Panel, and it will update you with such info as the weather for the day, what’s in your Google Calendar, even suggested playlists for the day.

Playing music? Just tap your screen without logging in and the Now Bar will tell you what’s playing, complete with cover art and pause, forward, band back controls.

There are oodles of types of content that can be included, even traffic updates and YouTube shorts.

AI assistance

We’re now well and truly in the artificial intelligence age, and the S25 harnesses it for good with several really helpful features.

One that we really love is the ability to voice search our rather sizeable image collection. Just pop into the Photos app, tap search then the microphone, and ask.

On a recent trip to Japan, we spotted a super-cute yellow car in the backstreets of suburban Tokyo. It had nothing to indicate what make it was and had remained a riddle ever since. So, it was time to solve this mystery, using two of the S25’s great AI features.

One “Find pictures of yellow cars” later, and we had the image onscreen. Time for part two – holding down the home – or circle - button at the bottom of the screen to invoke the Circle to Search functionality. We drew a little ring around the car and…

It’s a Suzuki Twin. Just like that. Brilliant!

Zippiness

With the introduction of the S25, all models now feature 12GB of inbuilt RAM, which is up from 8GB in the standard S24. Once our favourite apps had downloaded after being transferred across from our old phone, we set about playing.

Wow! Everything just runs smoothly – we encountered no stuttering, and, best of all, we could run more than a couple of apps simultaneously without any of them closing down. In these days of multitasking, we don’t need to tell you how handy that is.

Not that we were taken completely by surprise, for Samsung claim that the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 processor delivers 45% faster CPU processing, 48% GPU, and a whopping 68% NPU – the brains behind AI’s efficiency.

Getting snappy

We mentioned our rather sizeable photo collection earlier because hey, we’re carrying a camera around with us all the time, so why not use it? Take a dud photo? Delete it! Plus, you never know if you might just catch just the right thing at just the right moment.

So, you want your phone camera to be a good one. Comparing a bunch of test images that we snapped with our new S25 to those from our old phone – an S22 – we were super-impressed.

Without even touching the settings, the shots taken were clearer all over, and night shots particularly had a new pop to them, likely thanks to the upgraded Nightography functionality. Then there are the zoom pics – Samsung have really nailed this for clarity, with the new 5x digital zoom delivering impressive results.

Feeling safe and future proof

When it contains so much of your life, feeling that your device is secure is a critical requirement. So, knowing that Samsung’s Knox security encryption has been bolstered to include coverage of the on-device AI functionalities without being connected to a server is huge. Plus, you can selectively opt out of features if you’re still finding the whole AI thing a little iffy.

Meanwhile, with a flagship smartphone being a relatively sizeable investment, knowing that it’ll stay up to date for years to come is a vital factor when considering what model to purchase. With the S25 offering seven years of Android, One UI, and security updates, we’re confident that we’ve made a smart choice.