I’d like the Samsung Galaxy S25 just as much without the AI

I’ve been using the S25 for just over three days now, and being a fan of small phones, I’m loving the compact hardware. But the hardware is hardly new; the S25 series is all about One UI 7 and Galaxy AI, and I can’t say I’m as enthusiastic on that front. Here’s how I’m feeling about the new Samsung Galaxy S25, 72 hours in.

The Galaxy S25 feels great

Samsung’s premium hardware has always been some of the best you’ll find in the smartphone space, and the Galaxy S25 is in keeping with that legacy. The S25 looks and feels a lot like last year’s Galaxy S24, but it’s slightly (read: almost imperceptibly) smaller and lighter.

I’m a little torn about this. On the one hand, the general look and feel Samsung’s been working with for three generations running now is quite nice: it’s clean and minimal, and the S25 feels good in the hand. It’s a smaller and more comfortable device than Google’s Pixel 9 or Pixel 9 Pro, which makes it an appealing option for anyone into compact phones.

But while it’s a little more svelte than the newest Pixels, the Galaxy S25 also doesn’t have much character to it. In reviewing the larger Galaxy S24+ last year, I said that it looked like what you’d get if you stopped someone on the street and asked them to draw a phone: the Galaxy S24 and S24+ are plain rectangles with some cameras on one side and a screen on the other.

And so is the Galaxy S25. The design is inoffensive and the hardware feels good overall, but there’s nothing to point to in the S25 as a definitively Samsung piece of design. It’s just… a phone. A well put together phone, but not an especially exciting one.

People tend to keep phones longer than they used to, though, and anyone upgrading to the S25 from an Android phone released more than a couple of years ago won’t mind that, visually, it looks like Samsung’s released the same phone three years in a row. Next to a modern Google or OnePlus phone, though, the Galaxy S25 looks awfully basic.

I’ve only run into a couple of issues with the hardware, and both are nitpicks. For one, the power button is a little wiggly — not ideal in an $800 phone. There are also small gaps between the rings surrounding the three rear cameras and the back glass of the phone. I’ve only been carrying the S25 for a few days, but I can already tell the cameras are going to be a hotspot for pocket lint and pet hair.

I don’t think One UI 7 is my cup of tea

The Galaxy S25 series is debuting Samsung’s newest One UI 7 software, built on Android 15. I don’t like it very much.

The most notable new UI element is the Now Bar, Samsung’s take on features like OnePlus’s Live Alerts and, to an extent, Apple’s Dynamic Island. The Now Bar pops up at the bottom of the lock screen under certain conditions — when you have a timer going, for example, or when you’re playing media. It gives you info at a glance, which can be handy, and it’s visible on the always-on display by default, even when your notifications aren’t.

Most of the time when the Now Bar has popped up in my first few days with the S25, it’s to show me One UI 7’s new Now Brief. Now Brief is sort of like a legacy Google feature called Google Now: both try to surface relevant information at helpful times, including weather, calendar events, traffic information, and the like.

I’m open to the possibility that Now Brief will get more useful over time as One UI comes to grips with my phone habits, but inside my first 72 hours on the Galaxy S25, it’s been patently useless. It always shows the hourly weather forecast, which is nice. It also surfaces recommendations for news stories, user-generated Spotify playlists, and YouTube Shorts — which, so far as I can tell, don’t take my preferences into account.

Now Brief is ostensibly AI powered, of course, but I’m yet to see it do anything yet that regular, non-AI algorithms haven’t been handling on smartphones for years (Google Now debuted in 2012). It also surfaces content I definitely don’t need AI to find: if I’m wondering what the weather will be doing in a few hours or I want to listen to some music, it’s no more difficult to manually open the weather app or Spotify than it is to access Now Brief. The most AI-y thing I’ve seen Now Brief do is surface photos I’d taken earlier that same day (ah, memories), and even that doesn’t seem like it should require any AI intervention.

The one place I’ve seen Samsung apply its AI in a way that really makes sense is in the settings app, where you can search in natural language — so if you didn’t know what specific setting you need to find, you can search something like “my eyes hurt” to reach display settings. Not something I need personally, but a practical application of the tech.

Another noteworthy AI inclusion: Google Gemini is the default digital assistant on the S25. Bixby is still around, but Gemini is pre-installed and mapped to a long press on the power button. You might not be especially interested in Gemini, but I don’t think many people would argue Bixby provides a better assistant experience, especially now that Gemini can interact with Samsung’s stock apps. (If you’re a true Bixby sicko, you can remap the button to Samsung’s in-house assistant.)

For me, One UI 7 still requires a lot of tweaking before it feels comfortable. Samsung ships a lot of bloat on its flagships (get out of here, Facebook and LinkedIn); the default app drawer is annoying; Edge panel and Samsung Wallet shortcuts get in the way. The default display density is weird, too — it seems tuned for an even smaller phone, with text rendering large and UI elements in many apps surrounded by unnecessary negative space. If you’re a One UI fan, these things might not bother you. But coming from any other major US smartphone brand, the Galaxy S25’s software feels… busy.

A word on performance (the word is ‘good’)

I’m not an especially demanding user, but the Galaxy S25’s performance has been top notch so far. I haven’t experienced any slowness, any hanging, any hiccups. Granted, the most intensive tasks I’m likely to do on a phone are navigating in Google Maps or playing a few matches in Pokémon TCG Pocket. But the S25 is certainly up to the task.

Battery life’s been fine, too. I haven’t run the S25 into the ground yet, but based on my usage so far, it’s looking like I’ll be getting about six hours of screen time on a full charge — with the AOD wallpaper active. That’s hardly exceptional, and I’d happily sacrifice a little performance headroom or thinness for another hour or two of use between charges. But six hours is fine for my needs. If you can’t live with that kind of battery life, the S25+ might be more your speed.

There’s still plenty of testing to do

I’ve only been using the Samsung Galaxy S25 for a few days, so there’s plenty I don’t know about it yet. I’m really keen to get a better idea of camera performance; Samsung’s cameras historically haven’t been my favorites, and I’m hoping this can be the year that changes.

Look out for our full review sometime in the next week.