Sure, the S Pen lost its Bluetooth features with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. But you know what hasn’t changed? It still smells kinda bad. I confirmed this myself when I unboxed the phone in San Jose, and have verified with another colleague who remarked that it smells “plasticky.” And guess what? That’s not even the only thing that stinks about it.
8
Verge Score
Still big. Still great. But Samsung is losing the plot on what makes the Ultra so extra.
We’re getting a recap of the S25 series with a nice big bento of the new features — narrated by, the voice of Bixby itself? Maybe? Phones are shipping February 7th.
The S25 will come with its own photo face swapping feature called Best Face. It looks a lot like Google’s Best Take on Pixel phones, letting you pick the best face from a series of photos so you can make sure everyone’s eyes are open in a group photo. No full body swaps, though.
Google’s Gemini VP Sissie Hsiao took the stage to show us how Gemini Live will now allow users to ask questions about images or PDFs onscreen. She also says Galaxy S25 owners will get six months of Google’s Gemini Advanced plan to try out the latest Gemini models and features. Not quite the year that Pixel 9 owners get, but nice!
Samsung is doubling down on the “AI will change your life” stuff. TM Roh calls it a “paradigm shift,” and it seems like “paradigm” was even the internal codename for the S25 phones — at least that’s the name that I spotted on a spec sheet last night. Setting the bar pretty high here!
