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 convey to our cellular units. Nicely, to be truthful, it is Samsung together 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 just 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 contemporary set of coloration choices, and some cool new options – all of the stuff you’d count on from a next-generation machine.
However what actually stands out on the Galaxy S25 – based mostly on a few of the demos and transient hands-on time we have had with the machine – is the truth that it has digital assistant capabilities that truly work. Plus, it provides choices for studying particular person preferences that go effectively past what’s been obtainable on different units.
In different phrases, it brings the outstanding breadth, spectacular accuracy, and extremely individualized personalization guarantees of recent LLM-enabled AI to life in an always-on, always-connected, always-with-us cellular machine.
A part of that is as a result of new degree of partnership between Samsung and Google that means a deeper degree of cooperation and co-design than has existed earlier than. For instance, up to now, it usually felt like Samsung tried to duplicate the software program performance that Google already supplied in Android. With the Galaxy S25, nevertheless, the businesses are working to convey the perfect of each worlds collectively to allow the very best consumer expertise.
Essentially the most notable instance is the default motion of robotically launching Google’s Gemini private assistant with a protracted push on the S25. Sure, you possibly can allow that possibility on Google’s newest Pixel telephones, but it surely’s not on by default, and Samsung sells a considerably bigger variety of telephones than Google. Which means most individuals will expertise this for the primary time on a brand new S25 – or earlier generations of Galaxy smartphones when Samsung gives upgrades to them.
Our expertise with Gemini – each voice-based and textual content input-based – up to now has been extraordinarily spectacular, providing an enormous vary of choices for requesting info, getting solutions, and even collaborating in lengthy conversations on just about any matter possible through Gemini Reside. As well as, Google introduced that future extensions of Gemini – Display screen Share and Reside Video, which add new multimodal intelligence capabilities that may perceive what’s at present in your telephone’s display screen and what the telephone’s digicam is seeing – can 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 knowledge personalization choices. Samsung well acknowledged that Gemini can supply a way more complete set of cloud-based private assistant options than Bixby, however Bixby has the benefit of operating immediately on the machine and getting access to each the actions we carry out on units in addition to issues like machine settings.
In consequence, Bixby and these different on-device fashions can begin to study the kinds of actions we frequently carry out, knowledge we seek for, and so on., and it will probably retailer all that info securely on the machine by way of the usage of 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 info to personal calendar integration is feasible as a result of Samsung labored with Google to permit knowledge to be handed from Gemini to a number of of Samsung’s personal apps, which have entry to the information saved on the telephone. Whereas this may seem to be a small step, it is vastly vital as a result of it is one of many first instances the power to mix these two “knowledge 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 fashionable third-party apps are within the works.
As well as, ultimately, we’ll be capable of do issues like push the facet button to name up Gemini, request a change to the telephone’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 precisely 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 Cellular Platform – is the power to find and retailer details about our private preferences and routines on the telephone. The brand new Snapdragon SoC, by the way in which, 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 increased speeds, consists of new customized circuitry to assist with the digicam processing and different AI options on the S25.
Leveraging what Samsung is asking the Private Knowledge Engine, the onboard Samsung fashions are capable of see what actions happen on our telephone display screen – whatever the app we’re operating – after which prepare the onboard mannequin to study the varieties of data we’re requesting, the kinds of actions we do regularly, and so on.
From that, utilizing what the corporate known as information graph expertise, it will probably ultimately begin to make suggestions or robotically program routines and carry out them on our behalf (all with our permission, that’s). Importantly, all of this information graph knowledge stays on the machine and by no means goes to the cloud. The Private Knowledge Engine (PDE) can be what powers the brand new Now Transient and Now Bar features, which serve up info based mostly on our preferences and the knowledge 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. Knowledge of this kind might present essentially the most detailed file about what any particular person does on-line that we have in all probability ever seen – an enormous magnet (“honeypot”) for the unhealthy guys.
Fortunately, Samsung acknowledged that and embedded the PDE knowledge into its hardware-based, on-device Knox Vault safety answer, which has now been upgraded to supply post-quantum ranges of cryptography. Due to these potential safety considerations, Samsung permits us, after all, to show off the information 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 Knowledge Engine. Making an attempt to make sense of all of it is not notably straightforward, neither is it something that the overwhelming majority of shoppers 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 an ideal deal extra work to be finished 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 comply with him on Twitter @bobodtech