What was arguably one of the best phone series of 2024 has received a successor, as Samsung  Electronics Co., Ltd. kicked off the year by announcing the local availability of the new Galaxy S25 series.

Together with One UI 7, Gemini is officially available at launch in 46 languages, making it easier than ever to perform seamless interactions across Samsung and Google apps.Having used Gemini for quite a while now, it has quite clearly grown from strength to strength and become considerably more useful and responsive.

“The Galaxy S25 series is a fundamental shift in how we interact with our phones,” said TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. “We are thrilled to see how our users will enjoy this true AI companion that offers seamless and intuitive solutions in their daily lives.”

What quickly became clear at the launch is that the S25 series stands out not so much by hardware specs – it is largely similar to the S24 in many respects – but rather in its implementation of AI.

On the Galaxy S25 series, AI agents with multimodal capabilities are integrated within the One UI 7 platform to perform complex tasks seamlessly across apps and enable natural user interactions through speech, text, videos and images. Now Brief provides tailored suggestions to guide through the day and Now Bar offers a new hub for ongoing activities. From enhanced productivity with Writing Assist to limitless creativity unleashed by Drawing Assist, the expanded capabilities of Galaxy AI continue to empower users in every aspect of their daily lives.

According to the company,  interactions with the Galaxy S25 series are also more intuitive. With just a single command, Gemini can effortlessly find a user’s favourite sports team’s schedule and add it to Samsung Calendar. Additionally, Google’s enhanced Circle to Search now gives users more helpful information with AI Overviews and one-tap actions.

The Galaxy S25 series further refines and enhances the core capabilities that define the Galaxy experience. Powering the Galaxy S25 series globally, the Snapdragon^® 8 Elite Mobile Platform for Galaxy fuels on-device processing for more responsive AI experiences. With unique customisations for Galaxy, including ProScaler and Samsung’s mobile Digital Natural Image engine (mDNIe), the Galaxy S25 series boasts enhanced AI image processing and display power efficiency.

One of the biggest upgrades over the S24 is the newly introduced 50MP ultrawide camera sensor for the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which according to Samsung, will ‘’delivers epic shots from every range in exceptional clarity.’’

Additionally, professional grade controls like Virtual Aperture and Samsung Log turn any photo or video into the ultimate visual experience.

Samsung enthused that the Galaxy S25 series is the industry’s first smartphone lineup to support Content Credentials, based on the open technical standard from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).

Samsung has also joined the C2PA as a member, alongside industry leaders including Adobe, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Publicis Groupe and more, all collaborating to establish Content Credentials as the universal standard for digital content provenance. In line with its commitment to responsible mobile AI innovation, Samsung adopted this standard to enhance transparency for content created and edited with generative AI.

 Starting February 14, the Galaxy S25 series will be widely available through carriers and retailers and on Samsung websites. Galaxy S25 Ultra is available in Titanium Silverblue, Titanium Black, Titanium Whitesilver and Titanium Gray. Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ come in Navy, Silver Shadow, Icyblue and Mint.

 All Galaxy S25 devices will come with six months of Gemini Advanced and 2TB of cloud storage at no extra cost. The question is whether it is worth an upgrade. While that is a more difficult question to answer if you are still rocking a relatively new S24 series device, for those on older phones, the S25 might just be the most futureproof of Samsung’s offerings to date.