Allison Johnson
We love a bento box.
We’re getting a recap of the S25 series with a nice big bento of the new features — narrated by, the voice of Bixby itself? Maybe? Phones are shipping February 7th.
Samsung
Founded in 1938, Samsung is the largest chaebol in South Korea. The myriad of companies under its brand are some of the biggest in their respective industries, but Samsung Electronics is the most notable. It makes some of the most popular phones in use today, and its flagship portfolio includes the Galaxy S-series and foldable Z-series devices. It also makes televisions, tablets, computers, headphones, and many of the displays, chips, and batteries found in devices from Apple, Sony, and others.
Victoria Song
Say “Circular battery supply chain” six times fast.
We’ve reached the customary sustainability / greenwashing part of the presentation. There’s a lot of talk about our oneness with the ocean, but the one that caught my eye was this program to recycle the cobalt from old Samsung gadget batteries into new ones.
Victoria Song
What’s that whooshing sound?
It’s me unleashing a great, big, fat sigh as Samsung talks about a new Antioxidant index that’ll come later this year to its Health app.
Samsung said nada about how it’ll track this, but it’s giving the same energy as the AGES index it introduced last year that supposedly tracked your metabolic health. I’ll believe it when I can test it.
Allison Johnson
Samsung is doing the face swap thing, too.
The S25 will come with its own photo face swapping feature called Best Face. It looks a lot like Google’s Best Take on Pixel phones, letting you pick the best face from a series of photos so you can make sure everyone’s eyes are open in a group photo. No full body swaps, though.
Chris Welch
Can Samsung’s Galaxy S25 camera actually freeze motion for once?
In the middle of this Unpacked rundown on the S25 Ultra’s camera specs and new log video capabilities, I’m just offering a gentle reminder that Samsung’s phones have routinely struggled at capturing sharp images of moving pets, children, and so on. That’s the important stuff. Hopefully the company has made some progress in these situations as well.
Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Jay Peters
Samsung says the Galaxy S25 series’ blue shades are “inspired by the brilliance of AI.”
...okay. Though they admittedly do look nice.
Photo by Dominic Preston / The Verge
Allison Johnson
The S25 series will come with six free months of Gemini Advanced.
Google’s Gemini VP Sissie Hsiao took the stage to show us how Gemini Live will now allow users to ask questions about images or PDFs onscreen. She also says Galaxy S25 owners will get six months of Google’s Gemini Advanced plan to try out the latest Gemini models and features. Not quite the year that Pixel 9 owners get, but nice!
Victoria Song
Project Moohan sighting!
Sure, it was up onstage for about two seconds with a brief mention of glasses and Android XR, but it was there! You can also read more about my hands-on with Project Moohan from December if you’d like to know... literally anything about what Samsung and Google’s ideas for mixed reality wearables are.
Victoria Song
Samsung understands AI photo search is for pets.
The demo video showed a lady asking AI to find a picture of Max the pomeranian wearing a bathrobe and cucumber slices on his eyes. (Also, him wearing a red sweater and eating cake.) This is 99.999 percent of what I, too, will do with natural language AI photo searches on my phone.
Allison Johnson
“Paradigm shift with S25.”
Samsung is doubling down on the “AI will change your life” stuff. TM Roh calls it a “paradigm shift,” and it seems like “paradigm” was even the internal codename for the S25 phones — at least that’s the name that I spotted on a spec sheet last night. Setting the bar pretty high here!
Victoria Song
TM Roh in the house.
Roh is kicking things off, and as you guessed, his little opening speech tips that AI is the name of the game for today’s event. Starting with Gemini.
Dominic Preston
Google Gemini works across multiple apps at once on the S25 and will be the default.
Google’s AI assistant can now complete multi-app tasks in a single prompt, like finding a restaurant and sending it to a friend. The upgrade isn’t exclusive to the S25 phones, but it will work across Samsung and Google apps. It’s part of a wave of AI updates announced by Google today.
Source: Google
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Dominic Preston
The S25 phones don’t have Qi2 — but they are Qi2 Ready.
Confused? It just means Samsung’s new flagships lack the magnets that Qi2 certification requires, but they will wirelessly juice at up to 15W on a Qi2 charger when using one of Samsung’s official Qi2 Ready magnet cases. They’re the first of what are expected to be a lot of Qi 2 Ready Android phones this year.
Allison Johnson
Dominic Preston
Victoria Song
Today’s wait music has staff divided.
It’s a time-honored Verge tradition to critique the wait music before an event. Let’s say it’s... elevated elevator music, or as David said, knockoff jazz. Some of us are agog and aghast. Others say the jaunty tune has their toes a-tappin’. (They’re wrong.) Taking bets on whether it’s Galaxy AI-generated.
David Pierce
Samsung’s pre-show music is so weird Shazam can’t identify it.
The best way I can describe the vibe on the stream, 20 minutes before showtime, is “knockoff jazz music.” It sounds like the soundtrack for the waiting lobby in a video game, if the game you’re about to play is about to get sued by Nintendo. Does any of that make sense? All I know is it sounds AI-generated, and Shazam can’t even figure out what it is.
Allison Johnson
We’re ready to unpack.
We’re here in San Jose ready to see some new Galaxy phones! This is the second year in a row Samsung is hosting this event in a hockey arena, and all I’m saying is I’d better hear some air horns this time.
Jay Peters
Samsung’s Galaxy S25 “Slim” may not launch in the US.
PhoneArena published a list of 39 countries that may get Samsung’s rumored, thinner Galaxy S25, but the US isn’t on it.
We’ll have to wait and see if Samsung mentions the phone at Wednesday’s Galaxy Unpacked event.
Dominic Preston
Most Popular
Most Popular