Samsung

Samsung stripped Bluetooth features from the stylus in the Galaxy S25 Ultra as a cost-cutting measure, citing a survey reporting only one percent of users took advantage of the Bluetooth controls and Air Actions anyway.

Nepograndbaby Jay Y. Lee was found not guilty of accounting fraud and stock manipulation around activities that secured his succession to the Samsung throne. The decision — presumably granted in response to an impassioned “It doesn’t even make any sense! I’m the eldest boy!” plea — can still be appealed to South Korea’s Supreme Court. The scandal dates back to 2017.

Yes, it does look a lot like Apple’s Vision Pro, but that is actually Project Moohan, the Samsung / Google project we tried out last month and saw again recently at Samsung Unpacked.

The radar-based technology can detect movements as slight as breathing, so it won’t turn the lights out on you when you’re sitting on the couch.

Head of customer experience Jay Kim mentioned “multifold” devices during his section of the keynote, though we didn’t get any more detail than that. So far only Huawei has released commercial hardware that can fold more than once, but Samsung has demonstrated the tech in concept devices, and is rumored to have a launch planned this year.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...okay. Though they admittedly do look nice.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.