Last night, as expected, Samsung took the stage in Korea to show the world its 2025 flagship smartphone series: the Galaxy S25 series.
Comprising 3 devices in the standard Galaxy S25, the Galaxy S25 Plus and the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the series also has a sleek sibling that’s not launching at this time. Showcased on stage at the Galaxy Unpacked event last night is a Galaxy S25 Edge, a futuristic-looking member of the series that’s likely to show up in the third or fourth quarter of the year.
What’s new?
At a glance, not much has changed when it comes to the Galaxy S25 trio. Samsung has gone for incremental updates, a recurring theme over the last 3 years.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra, the hero model of the three, features a slightly tweaked design that tries to get away from the boxy look of its predecessor, the Galaxy S24 Ultra, by having rounded corners, slightly smaller bezels and a lighter body resulting in the display area growing by a hair… All while keeping the Titanium frame that came to the Galaxy S series last year and the camera lens placement at the back.
There’s still the same anti-reflective glass coating that we loved on the S24 Ultra, in fact, it has been upgraded to Gorilla Glass Armor 2. The screen sizes and overall display tech remains unchanged from 2024.
Under the hood, Samsung is now going with a specially customized version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset from Qualcomm and completely eschewing its in-house and much maligned Exynos chips in favour of the American company’s option.
Also being sidestepped is the 8GB RAM option that the Galaxy S series’ standard model had been stuck on. According to the company’s global communications team, all Samsung Galaxy S25 devices arrive with 12GB RAM out of the box. The base model Galaxy S25 still gets 128GB onboard storage and, with those good cameras that we saw last year getting some tweaks to make them relevant this year, this may not be so good for all your happy snapping… Which is why you’ll probably want to jump on the pre-order gifts Samsung is offering in Kenya (more details below) if you’re looking to score yourself a Galaxy S25.
The lighter weight of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, specifically, is as a result of some subtractions. The battery on one of the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s signature features, the stylus (dubbed S Pen), has been removed. That means that Bluetooth functionality on the accessory is gone. And so are the Air Actions – the ability to use the S Pen to perform certain functions on the device remotely when it is detached from its hold.
For instance, by default, double pressing the button on the S Pen on the Galaxy S24 and some earlier models triggers the camera app and, a single press after that results in either video recording starting or stopping or a snap being taken. Samsung says that less than 1% of the Ultra’s user base was taking advantage of these features so their axing had been coming for a while.
AI
While Samsung may have been less gung-ho with the hardware upgrades this time around (there are some new rings on the Ultra’s camera, if that counts), its executives did spend at least 25 minutes hyping up the device’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities.
Dubbed Galaxy AI and driven by One UI 7, the latest iteration of Samsung’s own custom take on Android 15, it features multimodal AI agents that interact with pretty much every action. Even Knox, Samsung’s own security software suite, is coming in to make sure much as all this AI processing is happening on-device and remotely, personal data is protected.
Gemini, Google’s AI model, is at the centre of all things AI on the Galaxy S25 series, with the device series, alongside Google’s own Pixel 9 series, being the launch device for Gemini Live. Gemini Live, in addition to working across various Google services like Maps and YouTube, also works with Samsung’s own apps and services like (Samsung) Notes, Reminders, (Samsung) Calendar, etc.
This builds on Google’s collaboration with Samsung last year to launch Circle to Search (which has also received some notable upgrades) first on the Galaxy S24 series before it eventually cascaded to other Android smartphones. Long-pressing the side button on the Galaxy S25 series triggers Gemini Live, helping provide users with context to pretty much anything they are doing on their device at any given time.
Important for Kenyans and East Africans at large, Samsung says that it has been working hard to bring some local functionality to Galaxy AI with the first dividend to be paid likely being the addition of Kiswahili language as an option when translating, making transcriptions, using writing assistance features and the like.
Pricing and availability
Galaxy S25 Ultra
- 512GB storage – Kshs 188,400
- 256GB storage – Kshs 172,800
Galaxy S25+
- 512GB storage – 147,800
- 256GB storage – Kshs 132,000
Galaxy S25
- 256GB storage – Kshs 116,200
- 128GB storage – Kshs 108,300
It should not be lost on us that the above prices are a remarkable step down from the steep pricing of the Galaxy S24 series.
Pre-orders are live for the Galaxy S25 series in Kenya and can be made online through the Samsung website and offline at Samsung brand stores and other dealers countrywide.
Samsung is offering to double the storage for those who pre-order any of the Galaxy S25 series devices. For example, if you pay for the standard Galaxy S25’s base model (with 128GB storage), what you get when the pre-order window lapses will be the 256GB variant.
There are other incentives as well, thanks to Samsung’s partners. Those who bank with Loop, for instance, get a Kshs 5,000 cashback immediately they place their order.
Financing options also exist from various institutions.
