A day on from Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked, I’m genuinely impressed with a Samsung event for the first time in my life. You see, I’ve been an iPhone user since 2010, when I was 15 years old, and while I write about tech for a living, the most I’ve come to using Android daily is a week or so for an experiment.
After watching Galaxy Unpacked and the unveiling of Samsung’s Galaxy S25 lineup of smartphones, I’m not only intrigued by the Android phones on offer, but I’m starting to think I should really give the South Korean tech giant’s flagship a try.
I don’t want to beat around the bush, this isn’t an article about moving from iPhone to Android, after all, I’ll continue to use Apple Intelligence on the iPhone 16 Pro Max ultimately until the iPhone 17 comes out.
That said, Samsung’s approach to AI has got me seriously contemplating a few months on the dark side, getting to know everything Galaxy AI’s mix of Google Gemini and Bixby has to offer. While I could go on about the fancy Gemini chaining features that let you ask AI to find restaurants and make calendar entries or the new Audio Editor feature that can isolate sound and remove background noise, it’s Samsung’s Now Brief AI tool that has piqued my interest.
What’s Now Brief?
What is Now Brief, I hear you ask? Well, apart from its terrible name, Now Brief is a brand-new OneUI 7 feature in the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra. The Galaxy AI-powered tool learns how you use your device and gives you a morning, afternoon, and evening briefing to help you stay on top of your life.
In the lead-up to the S25 launch, I spoke with Annika Bizon, Director of Mobile Experience for Samsung UK & Ireland, who said, “Modern life is hard. Balancing work and home is incredibly overwhelming, and we’re all looking for ways to help us juggle life’s demands.”
“We’ve reached a point now where AI has evolved to become a companion – it's knowing intuitively what you need, and when. It’s lightening your load so you can focus on the things that matter, at your own pace.”
And that’s exactly what Samsung hopes Now Brief will achieve: a way to help you keep on top of the busyness of life without the stress of having to manage multiple apps, calendars, to-do lists, and everything else that clutters your brain.
What can Now Brief do?
Like most AI tools, Now Brief launches with a lot of promise but not much to show for it. Samsung is adamant that Now Brief will improve over time as you use your shiny new Galaxy S25 smartphone. That means, in demos shown to my colleagues who attended Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked, there wasn’t any personalized information in Now Brief, just weather information, some calendar events, and a coupon with an upcoming expiry date.
Once Now Brief learns your usage patterns, you can expect to get more tailored suggestions, including the ability to open maps and activate specific playlists just by knowing you’re driving to work. Anything related to Now Brief, such as a reminder that you need to leave for work in 10 minutes, will pop up on the S25’s lock screen in what Samsung calls Now Bar. This is essentially an AI-fuelled notification that pops up whenever relevant information is deemed important. It also looks nearly identical, in terms of looks, to Live Activities on an iPhone's lockscreen.
Now Brief is Samsung’s attempt to make AI work for everyone, removing the stress of keeping on top of life and replacing it with tailored summaries of the things you need to be aware of. On my iPhone, I already have some functionality similar to Now Brief, such as Siri Suggestions for when I need to leave to get to an event on time. Still, Samsung’s way of condensing information into morning, afternoon, and evening makes me wish Apple would introduce a similar functionality in iOS 19.
I’m constantly looking for the best productivity apps and, nowadays, the best AI apps to help me take control of my life and improve my routine. Now Brief is precisely the kind of first-party functionality that I think will make a real difference to users’ lives and, in turn, showcase the true power of AI.
While it might not be enough to make me switch to Android for good, I’m interested in seeing what Now Brief is truly capable of and whether or not Galaxy AI is the true AI companion that Samsung promises it to be.
You can read our Samsung Galaxy S25 hands-on review, Samsung Galaxy S25+ hands-on review and our Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra hands-on review for more about Samsung's latest phones.
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