Samsung, the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer, recently held its first Unpacked event for the year, unveiling the S25 series.
If you follow tech, watched the event online, or read any initial thoughts about the launch, you’ll notice that a vast majority of people are saying the same thing: it was uninspiring.
Will that deter consumers from purchasing these phones? Absolutely not. In the Android world, Samsung remains the default choice for most consumers, and this year will be no different. Once their current Samsung device is no longer viable, many Android users will default to upgrading to the new Samsung Galaxy phones, which is what the company is relying on.
I have written and spoken extensively about how the South Korean giant no longer strives for innovation, and this year, that is more evident than ever before, at least from a hardware perspective. Apart from some battery upgrades and one or two camera enhancements – primarily on the Ultra – the only other significant change is the design of the stylus-equipped flagship. Not only has Samsung stripped the iconic Note design from the S25 Ultra, but it has also removed Bluetooth functionality from the S-Pen. Thankfully, the company has not increased the prices of the new handsets; in fact, in South Africa, prices have dropped compared to the launch prices of the S24 series.
Popular YouTuber Michael Fisher – aka Mr Mobile – said that Samsung is no longer attempting to differentiate itself on hardware and is now fully relying on software and AI.
I agree with him to a certain extent. If you look back at the S series over the past few years, you will see that Samsung gave up on differentiating itself based on hardware a long time ago. While this focus on AI is very much in line with current trends, it is also not a compelling reason to upgrade.
I spent much of Unpacked shocked at how blatantly Samsung unveiled features as if they were new, but in reality, they were just clones of things that Apple already does. Live sports scores at the bottom of your home screen, secure storage of your data so that it isn’t used to train AI, filters for your photos – all of these exist on iPhone and have for a while. Emotion detection in Samsung Health? That exists on Huawei Health. This Unpacked event was not a showcase of the innovative Samsung of old; this was Samsung at its most uninspiring and vulnerable.
The most interesting feature announced was the multi-app, multi-function capability that the company showcased, where you can simply speak a command to Gemini, and it can take action on your behalf. It looked impressive, but so did Apple’s ChatGPT-powered demo at WWDC in 2024 when the company showcased the same agentic capabilities that everyone is chasing in 2025. Whether Samsung’s implementation works as advertised remains to be seen.
This was not Samsung Unpacked but rather Google Gemini Unpacked. These features are more about Google getting Gemini onto the most popular smartphone brand so that it can train and improve its AI faster and on a larger scale than its competitors. This is something that Google desperately needs because, for a long time, it was falling behind in the AI arms race. Now, with Samsung’s scale combined with the proliferation of Google products, it’s able to not only catch up but potentially take the lead.
The real kicker is that while these features might be exclusive to Samsung for a limited amount of time, they will be coming to other OEM’s devices as well as to older Samsung handsets. This begs the question: why should you buy an S25 series handset when these features will be ported over to previous S series flagships and will most likely appear – to varying degrees – on the A series as well?
While Samsung isn’t alone in this predicament, it needs to find ways to meaningfully innovate because the power of Galaxy AI relies on Samsung’s ecosystem – which isn’t fully available in South Africa (and in the case of many of its products, is priced for the upper-middle class). In the meantime, brands like HONOR are innovating with design, camera technology, and battery technology, all while undercutting Samsung in terms of price and bringing the same Gemini-powered AI features to their handsets.
I believe that Samsung knew that people would be underwhelmed by the standard S25 series, which is why it teased the S25 Edge right at the end of Unpacked. However, not only does it not live up to the Edge moniker the company used in the past when it first introduced curved displays, but its only real drawcard seems to be that it’s thinner than the standard S25 handsets.
Samsung is in a precarious position with its declining market share and increased competition from Chinese OEMs, and I have to wonder whether this bet on Galaxy AI is going to be enough to turn the tide for the company.
This focus on AI as the main drawcard for smartphones appears to be the future, which means that as consumers, we could be in for a very uninspiring ride.