Any mystery about what's on the agenda for this week's Galaxy Unpacked 2025 event in San Jose, California, disappears the moment you look at Samsung's invitation. The graphic used to promote this January 22 event features the silhouettes of four phones converging to form the Galaxy AI icon that appears on Samsung's handsets when features powered by artificial intelligence are available.
Folks, I don't want to jinx it, but I think Samsung is going to show off some new phones with a bunch of AI capabilities this week. Last year, Samsung showed off the Galaxy S24 models in January, so it makes sense that this month will bring the Galaxy S25 lineup into the spotlight.
It also doesn't require much detective work to figure out that Galaxy AI will be a big part of Samsung's Galaxy S25 sales pitch. The phone maker introduced its collection of new AI tools with the Galaxy S24 lineup, rolled out those capabilities to older flagships by way of software updates and included even more AI features with its foldable phone launch in mid-2024 Samsung has indicated that more Galaxy AI is coming in 2025, and Unpacked gives the company a stage to show off just exactly what it has planned.
Still, we may have a good idea about the general gist of what Samsung's planning to show off when Unpacked gets underway this Wednesday, January 22, at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT / 6 p.m. GMT. But there are a few questions about exact details hanging over the event that we expect Samsung to answer. Here's what I'm looking forward to finding out when I watch the Galaxy Unpacked live stream — and you might find the answers interesting, too.
What Galaxy AI additions are coming?
As noted, Galaxy AI figures to be the centerpiece of the Galaxy S25 announcement. Reports have surfaced claiming that the big focus of this year's Galaxy AI update will center around Bixby. Specifically, Samsung is apparently planning to use AI to make its digital assistant smarter and more context aware, with that latter improvement giving Bixby the power to follow complex commands based on information on your phone's screen.
In a teaser video, Samsung provided a better idea of how exactly this will work. A woman uses her on-device assistant to look up restaurants with outdoor seating that also accomodate pets, and then has the AI block out a calendar event and text that info to a contact. All this is done in a single command. Presumably, that's the future awaiting Galaxy S25 owners.
The new phones are also likely to offer integration with Google's Gemini AI model. Another rumor claims that S25 buyers will get free access to Gemini Advanced, with longer trial periods available for anyone who buys a more expensive model like the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
It's not just the new Galaxy AI features that I'm interested in, though; I also want to see which phones beyond the Galaxy S25 series will be able to support these new AI capabilities. Samsung has a track record of rolling out software updates that bring Galaxy AI capabilities to older phones, so we'll see if that happens with this year's improvements coming to the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S23. If they do, owners of those older models will probably be less tempted to upgrade.
What camera features will be available to the Galaxy S25 phones?
Going by the rumors, it doesn't sound like Samsung is planning big camera hardware upgrades for the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25 Plus. In fact, it's probably a safer bet to assume those phones will have the same camera setup as their immediate predecessors.
It could be a different story with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, with many Samsung watchers assuming that the ultrawide lens is going to get a higher-resolution sensor. Rumors point to a 50MP sensor replacing the 12MP camera that the Galaxy S24 Ultra features. There's also talk of a variable aperture rate for the telephoto lens, which would make zooming smoother in videos and potentially give you more control over background blurs, depending on how Samsung implements the feature.
If none of that sounds completely game-changing, keep in mind that camera improvements involve more than just hardware upgrades. There's also the algorithms that Samsung's phones use to process the images you capture so that they come out looking sharper, brighter and more detailed. My colleague John Velasco thinks that Galaxy AI — there's AI popping up again — will be the key to improving the Galaxy S25 cameras. Not only can AI fine tune photo-processing features, but it can support post-processing capabilities like the Instant Slow Mo and generative editing tools Samsung introduced last year.
Snapdragon 8 Elite performance
Let's turn our attention away from AI, and talk about what figures to be the most significant hardware change to the Galaxy S25 lineup — the addition of the Snapdragon 8 Elite system-on-chip. Reports have Samsung using Qualcomm's latest silicon in all its new flagships, rather than using a mix of Snapdragon and Exynos chipsets as it has recently.
We've already seen the benefits of the Snapdragon 8 Elite when it comes to performance, as both the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro and OnePlus 13 use that system-on-chip. Both devices saw notable performance gains over their Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-equipped predecessors, so we're likely to see a similar uplift with the Galaxy S25. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is more power efficient, too, which bodes well for the battery life on Samsung's upcoming phones.
Oh, and Qualcomm also upgraded the neural processor on its new chipset with a new architecture for its AI engine that allows the silicon to power more on-device AI features. Because it all comes back to AI, as we keep discovering.
Galaxy S25 prices: Will the new Samsung phones cost more?
Every time I preview a product launch, the price of the upcoming devices always seems to be the one question at the top of my mind. It's understandable — how much something costs goes a long way toward determining if it's going to be something you wind up buying.
There may be some bad news on the pricing front for the Galaxy S25. Persistent rumors claim the price will be going up, at least on some models. Part of that can be attributed to higher component costs — the Snapdragon 8 Elite is said to be a pretty pricey bit of silicon — while political unrest in Samsung's home market of South Korea may contribute to increases as well. The firmest evidence we have is a leaked pricing sheet supposedly showing European prices for the different S25 models — with prices generally €60 to €100 higher than what the equivalent S24 models cost.
In the U.S., the Galaxy S24 starts at $799 with the Plus and Ultra models costing $999 and $1,299, respectively. Keep those prices in mind when Samsung starts talking about what it's charging for its new phones on Wednesday.
Will there be anything at Unpacked besides the Galaxy S25?
Samsung rarely sticks to just one product announcement at Unpacked. For instance, a year ago, the Galaxy Ring got a sneak peek at Unpacked 2024 alongside the Galaxy S24 release. So it's likely Samsung would do something similar this year.
The question, though, is what might join the Galaxy S25 on stage. The Galaxy Ring 2 might have seemed like a potential contender, even if it was to only preview the smart ring and talk about new health-tracking features. But with Samsung announcing new Galaxy Ring sizes and features ahead of Unpacked, I think we can cross that possibility off the list.
Samsung is reportedly working on an ultra-thin version of the Galaxy S25, and renders of that device just leaked. But most Galaxy S25 Slim rumors have the phone arriving later on in 2025, and you wouldn't imagine Samsung shifting focus away from phones you'll be able to pre-order right away toward something that may not show up until the summer.
I think the best possibility for a "surprise" reveal from Samsung is something the company already talked about in December — a new mixed reality headset based on the Android XR platform. Samsung confirmed the existence of Project Moohan late last year, announcing that it planned to release a headset in 2025. Galaxy Unpacked seems like the perfect venue to go into greater detail about what this headset can do, even if Samsung's not ready to announce a concrete ship date just yet.
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