Samsung sold me the future but sent me the Galaxy S25+ instead

As it was presented, I expected the Galaxy S25+ to change the way I used my phone or at least feel AI aiding the user experience. However, the sales pitch doesn’t match reality, and while many of Samsung’s enhanced AI features sound great on paper, their implementation leaves much to be desired.

Galaxy AI needs some more time in the oven

Not ready to headline a phone

Typically, I’d start by evaluating my experience with the marquee hardware changes on a new smartphone, but that doesn’t seem necessary with the Galaxy S25+. Samsung is positioning software as the reason you’d buy this device. Unfortunately, despite my initial optimism surrounding Samsung’s multimodal AI improvements, I don’t think most users will find it game-changing in its current form.

If you couldn’t tell by now, there is little reason to upgrade to a Galaxy S25+ from an S24+ or even an S23+, but I don’t think Samsung cares.

Let’s look at Now Brief, Samsung’s personalized information dashboard. It’s meant to bring together several areas of your day to make you more efficient and keep you up to date on news curated for you. However, my experience matches that of my colleagues, where Now Brief is an annoying widget hub with outdated information and news stories that have nothing to do with my interests. If there’s been a murder or violent crime committed in the US in the last 24 hours, Now Brief can’t wait to tell you about it. It’s also anything but personal, as AP’s Phone Editor, Will Sattelberg, and I have had the same news article pop up simultaneously despite him having the Galaxy S25 Ultra several days longer.

I tried clicking through stories I’d typically read on Samsung News, hoping that Now Brief would learn something, but nothing has changed. Samsung also pushes it in our faces with a Now Bar notification about the different Now Briefs for segments of the day that you must long press to get rid of — it’s a disaster. I’ll get into my various One UI 7 misgivings in the full review. Still, I’ll summarize my thoughts by highlighting that Samsung’s default software settings choices for the One UI 7 are unintuitive and downright bizarre, encapsulated by a frustrating misadventure I had trying to set up Samsung Health to interact with Now Brief.

Then there is cross-app integration, a feature Samsung touted as a triumph of the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset, despite it coming to your Tensor G4-powered Pixel devices shortly. Cross-app integration is still not more straightforward than just looking up something and texting it to your friend. I asked my Galaxy S25+ to look at my meetings for the day and text them to a friend. I had to constantly refine my query, ensuring I told the phone to pull from the proper app and send the message via text or WhatsApp. Next time, I will do it myself if I have to do that much work. I don’t want to sit there and parse words on a query if you’re going to change my user experience.

As it’s early, I’m willing to wait and see about many of these features. I’m beginning to form themes for my full review, but the early returns aren’t promising, and I hope Samsung is working hard on a Day One patch. It’s part of a more significant theme that AI is not mature enough on smartphones to be the headlining sales pitch. It’s like a shiny concept car you see at an auto show. It looks and sounds cool, but when you start to drive it, you realize it still has to do a good job getting you from A to B. Still, some of this might be forgivable if Samsung gave us anything to be excited about with the Galaxy S25+’s hardware.

A level of copy-and-paste that would make Apple proud

I don’t understand the stagnation

If you couldn’t tell by now, there is little reason to upgrade to a Galaxy S25+ from an S24+ or even an S23+, but I don’t think Samsung cares. The company has been upfront, telling us that the Galaxy S25 series is for users upgrading from a Galaxy S22 or S23 model. Sure, you’ll notice an upgrade from an S22+, as the Galaxy S25+ includes more RAM, a better display, and is lighter and thinner than your older Galaxy, but these devices don’t exist in a vacuum. Samsung is counting on you not to do research or be so infatuated with its ecosystem that you’ll ignore more tempting devices like the OnePlus 13 at the same price. The company wants you to ignore the $1,000 price tag and only think about the $30 you pay monthly on your carrier bill.

In addition, Samsung is still gatekeeping features from the Galaxy S25+, luring you into spending more money on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. For $1,000, would it have been unreasonable for Samsung to include the new 50MP ultrawide sensor on the S25+? I don’t think so. It’s a complacency Samsung slipped into because it doesn’t seem to consider Google Pixel devices as competition, and OnePlus isn’t anywhere to be found in carrier stores, so who will we turn to?

I want to stress that the Galaxy S25+ is not a bad smartphone. The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is as powerful as advertised, even though I would’ve loved 16GB of RAM to futureproof for all these AI features Samsung is pushing. I like the feel in the hand, and the phone is noticeably lighter and thinner than previous generations — it’s a pleasure to hold. But it’s frustrating that Samsung’s latest and greatest hardware in 2025 isn’t a complete no-brainer purchase for someone coming from a three-year-old phone. Good enough used not to be the standard for Samsung, but it seems enough people respond to upgrade cycles to make Samsung forget its roots.

You might have to hold your nose and purchase

I can be critical of a device, but I understand plenty of people will buy it — and for some valid reasons. The Galaxy S25+ is a better choice for many people than the Galaxy S25 Ultra and some diehard Samsung fans don’t mind many of the things I’ve highlighted. It’s our job to give context to new smartphones and provide a lens that would otherwise be missing to cut through much of Samsung’s sales hype. Yes, the Galaxy S25+ is a good phone, but it’s not the flagship we should’ve gotten this year for $1,000, and while I can recommend it to certain people as the phone in the Galaxy lineup you should aim for, Samsung doesn’t get a gold star for phoning it in.