Samsung's new Galaxy AI features want to use your phone for you

Summary

The new Galaxy AI feature Now Brief gives you personalized updates throughout the day.
Samsung’s Personal Data Engine powers Now Brief, and the feature is accessible from S25’s new Now Bar.
More Gemini features and enhanced Google Circle to Search enhance are also available on the Galaxy S25 series.

At its recent Galaxy Unpacked event, Samsung finally unveiled its highly anticipated Galaxy S25 series, which the South Korean tech giant touts as a “true AI companion.” The new phones are incredibly similar to last year’s S24 lineup, and Samsung is undoubtedly hoping its new AI features will entice some users to upgrade to the S25 lineup.

One of the standout AI features showcased at the event was Now Brief, which aims to help you navigate your day with personalized updates in the morning and evening. It pulls all the relevant information it needs from Samsung’s apps and Google’s suite and then presents you with an overview of your day.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

The highest-end variant of Samsung’s flagship smartphone lineup for 2025, the S25 Ultra ships with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, a massive 6.9-inch display, and a quad camera setup.

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Now Brief is powered by Samsung’s Personal Data Engine

The feature is accessible from the lock screen’s Now Bar

Accessing Now Brief is quite simple. You can open it via the Now Bar on the phone’s lock screen or through a widget on the home screen. The morning briefing summarizes your sleep quality, provides a local weather forecast, shows you your calendar and daily reminders, and highlights key news.

Your evening summary recaps your day by highlighting events, showcasing the photos you’ve taken, and reminding you of upcoming activities like concerts or sporting events. Thanks to its new Personal Data Engine and personalized LLM (large language model), Samsung can securely deliver these insights to users with privacy in mind thanks to its Personal Data Engine and Knox Vault.

“On Galaxy S25 series, the Personal Data Engine powers personalized features by safely analyzing your data on-device to deliver highly tailored experiences that reflect your preferences and usage patterns,” Samsung said in a press release.

Samsung unveils the Galaxy S25 and S25+, introducing new Galaxy AI capabilities

Samsung has officially revealed the Galaxy S25 and S25+. The phones are available for pre-order now and launch February 7.

More Gemini features and enhanced Circle to Search are available on the S25 lineup

You can access Gemini by pressing and holding the phone’s side button

In addition to Now Brief, Samsung showed off an advanced version of Google Circle to Search, coming first to the Galaxy S25 series. It can now detect phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, and sounds. For example, if you hear a song you don’t know the name of in a video, you can open up Circle to Search and tap the music icon to detect it.

Samsung also emphasized enhanced Google Gemini integration with Galaxy AI at Unpacked. By pressing the S25’s side button, you can enable Gemini and ask it to perform cross-app actions. For example, you can ask it to look for an Italian restaurant near you with outdoor seating, text the details to your friend, and then add the date to your calendar, all through one voice command.

I’m impressed by the AI features Samsung showed off at Unpacked. Now Brief is the one that stood out the most to me, and I love the idea of waking up and having my whole day spelled out for me with one button tap. Of course, I’ll have to try it out before I can say it’s useful, but it does seem promising. It might be the first AI feature on a phone that I use daily. The Galaxy S25 series is available for pre-order now and launches on February 7.