Here’s a surprising statistic Samsung uses to explain the overwhelming AI focus in its new Galaxy S25 phones: According to customer surveys, AI features are the second-largest factor in peoples’ purchase decisions.

Maybe that’s because people want to see what the hype is about, or because they’ve been adopting AI tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini and want easier access to them. Or maybe it’s because Samsung lumps a bunch of other desirable features—like camera quality and battery life—into an overall “performance” category that remains the bigger selling point.

In any case, the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra are loaded with AI features, which Samsung says are more deeply integrated on both the hardware and software levels compared to last year’s phones.

“We have built AI in, from the Android framework and even the chipset AP (application processor) on up,” says Blake Gaiser, the director of product management for Samsung Electronics America.

Samsung’s AI push

A big part of Samsung’s AI push involves interacting with on-screen content. Swiping in from the right side of the screen brings up an “AI Select” button, which will identify potential actions such as turning a video into a GIF or turning a text message invitation into a calendar event. (Earlier Samsung phones have a similar “Smart Select” feature, but it requires an extra step of manually selecting on-screen items first.)

Samsung’s also leaning more on large language models for search, with natural language queries supported in both the photo gallery and settings menu. That means users can say things like “How do I make text smaller?” to find the appropriate menu section.

These kinds of interactions will all feed into what Samsung calls a “Personal Data Engine,” which can offer different actions based on users’ behavior over time. As an example, Samsung pointed to its new “Now Brief” feature, which offers a summary of weather, stock prices, calendar events, and other things that the user frequently looks at.

Arguably the most useful AI function, though, is “Audio Eraser” for videos. Similar to Audio Magic Eraser on Google’s Pixel phones, this isolates wind, background noise, and speech in videos, offering separate volume sliders for each. It’s an easy-to-use feature that will make countless videos significantly better.

An assist from Google

Samsung isn’t just adding new AI features to the Galaxy S25 series on its own. It’s also getting a lot of help from Google and its Gemini AI.

Gemini, for instance, will now come up by default when users hold down the S25’s power button, effectively marking the end of Bixby as Samsung’s preferred voice assistant.

Google’s also adding multi-step commands to Gemini, supporting things like “Find links to Galaxy S25 reviews on YouTube and send them to me in an email.” While that feature won’t be exclusive to Samsung phones, Gemini will be able to control Samsung apps such as Notes and Clock using voice commands.

As with earlier phones, Google’s Circle to Search feature is on board as well, letting users highlight image, text, or other information to look up more details. Samsung says it’s been a popular feature, with 10 million total users (20% of whom activate it daily), and it’ll now support extra functions such as taking action on phone numbers, email addresses, and URLs.

Still a nice phone

Compared to all the AI features, the Galaxy S25 series’ hardware improvements come across almost like a footnote, perhaps because there aren’t a lot of them.

Screen sizes and camera configurations on the S25 and S25+ are the same as their predecessors, and all three phones have the same battery capacities as the S24 models. Phone design is similar on the smaller models as well, though the S25 Ultra now adopts the same design language with flat edges and rounded corners. All three phones also use Corning’s Gorilla Armor 2, a glass-ceramic hybrid that’s supposed to be stronger and less reflective.

The biggest across-the-board improvement seems to be on the processor side, with Samsung using a custom Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip from Qualcomm. Compared to the S24 range, Samsung says it provides a 40% boost in neural processing, 37% more CPU power, and 30% more graphics power. As such, certain AI tasks that used to require cloud processing now work offline, including the Generative Edit feature that removes unwanted objects from photos.

Improvements in camera quality are mostly on the processing side as well, with Samsung touting a new image processing engine that improves image quality and makes low-light videos clearer. While the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s ultrawide lens gets an upgrade from 12 megapixels to 50 megapixels, the other cameras are unchanged.

But does it work?

A lot of Samsung’s AI features sound useful in theory. The challenge is getting them to work outside the confines of a canned demo.

With the Galaxy S25, for instance, Samsung has decided to split quick settings and notifications into separate menus, similar to iOS. I cannot stand this behavior, and was unsuccessful in asking Samsung’s Settings app how to change it back. And when I asked the app to suggest some privacy settings that I might want to manage, it didn’t come up with any useful answers.

Contextual awareness can sometimes fall apart as well. While looking up an article on Fast Company, Samsung’s AI Select tool offered to summarize it, but it was only able to capture whatever text was on the screen and couldn’t capture the article in full. And when I tried using Samsung’s image generator to create a stylized photo of my face, the result was so slick that it didn’t resemble me at all.

There’s also the matter of tying AI into third-party apps and services. Personal Data Engines and multi-step actions are of limited utility if they only work with Google’s and Samsung’s built-in apps, but it’s unclear if these systems will open up in any significant way.

These challenges aren’t unique to Samsung. Apple, for instance, is in the process of pulling back AI notification summaries for news articles after the feature repeatedly botched the facts, and Google’s still trying to make up for missing features after replacing Google Assistant with Gemini on its Pixel phones. But when Samsung’s press release boasts primarily about AI and claims to offer “a true AI companion,” the bar is arguably a bit higher.

The Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra have the same prices as their predecessors, starting at $800, $1,000, and $1,300 respectively, and they ship on February 7.