Samsung Galaxy S25 launch date confirmed – Galaxy Unpacked invite arrives

Samsung has set the date for Galaxy Unpacked 2025, confirming that it will be launching the new Galaxy S phones at the event. It also rubber-stamps the worst-kept secret in the mobile industry – Galaxy Unpacked will take place on 22 January 2025, in San Jose, California.

Despite lots of discussion around the phones, the timeline of Galaxy Unpacked 2025 fits in with the timeframe of last year's event, which took place on 17 January. Samsung has progressively moved the launch of its flagship phones forward over recent years. Turn the clock back a couple of years and the company would launch its new Galaxy S phones in late February – around the time of the annual Mobile World Congress show.

The shift in scheduling over recent years has likely been enforced to be more competitive with Chinese brands, which often announce new devices almost as soon as the latest hardware in confirmed. Indeed, brands like Xiaomi will stand on stage at the unveiling of the latest Snapdragon hardware and confirm their new devices – and that’s seen Samsung stepping up the launch schedule.

Samsung remains a dominant force in smartphones globally, one of the most important manufacturers for those in the US and Europe. Galaxy Unpacked is expected to give us the Samsung Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus and flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra – likely to be some of the hottest phones of the year.

It's also expected that we'll hear a little more about Samsung's new mixed reality headset, codenamed Project Moohan.

We’ve seen a huge number of leaks around these new devices, revealing that there might not be huge hardware changes – but Samsung has its focus elsewhere.

[Invitation] Galaxy Unpacked January 2025: The Next Big Leap in Mobile AI Experiences - YouTube

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Galaxy Unpacked January 2025 will be all about AI

There’s plenty to be excited about with new hardware arriving, but Samsung’s focus remains elsewhere – on the AI experience.

In the teaser video for Galaxy Unpacked, Galaxy AI is the focus. There will be more teases and trailers to come – according to Samsung – but AI might not what the appetite in exactly the way that customers want.

Amusingly, the brand has created the familiar AI "star" logo using the corners of four devices in its teaser video, before asking when the event is and to add it to the calendar – a common AI offering.

We’ve seen AI services launch from Google, Samsung and Apple – along with a number of other manufacturers – and all seem to circulate around the same sort of functions. Helping you write messages, summarising content, translation and the like get a headline billing from big tech brands, but currently aren’t thought to be cutting through to users.

The AI-powered photo skills, however, do garner a lot more attention. The ability to make generative AI edits to photos that you’ve taken, removing background elements or changing the composition of your photos can be useful and fun, but isn’t without controversy.

AI creation of images remains something of a hot potato and while Samsung adds a watermark to indication that Galaxy AI has been involved, some other services aren’t so transparent.

Whatever your position on AI, it's rumoured that Samsung will be bundling a year of Gemini Advanced with the new devices, helping drive the adoption of Google's AI service.

It looks like Galaxy Unpacked is going to push the message of how useful AI services are, but I suspect that most people will be more interested in battery gains, increased charging speed and that camera performance.