Samsung’s Unpacked events are as regular as someone who consumes a small wicker swing set each morning and 2025 is no exception. The first of the South Korean company’s international showcases finally has an official date and, as expected, it’s in late January. 22 January, to be wholly specific. That’s also as expected (thanks, Evan).
There’s an obvious candidate for what Samsung will show off at the event: the Galaxy S25. The only way the company could really throw a curveball would be to debut its folding phones first and launch the headliners midway through 2025 but that’s never going to happen.
Let’s get that Unpacked
Instead, expect the S25 to be front and centre in all its variants. There might be something wholly new in the shape of a Galaxy S25 Slim but that’s still a rumour at this point. If it’s real, it’s supposed to launch later in the year, after the main Galaxy S phones have had a chance to rake in some revenue.
In terms of the physical device, don’t expect anything revolutionary. As with the last few years, Samsung probably won’t see any performance leaps coming to the party, for the obvious reason that nobody has made any. If they had, we’d have heard about them. Processor and memory upgrades are incremental, as are any camera upgrades Samsung (and everyone else except maybe Apple in 2025) has in store. Instead, Unpacked will showcase a slicker implementation of that word everyone has started to hate just a little: artificial intelligence.
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That’s not speculation on our part — Samsung’s official Unpacked announcement is clear that Galaxy AI is front-and-centre this year. It’ll still be the fastest phone the brand has ever produced (the Ultra version, at any rate) but how far ahead of 2024 it moves the bar is questionable. Still, it’ll be entertaining to see the company pitching its vision of phone-based artificial intelligence for an hour or so. We’re not too enthusiastic about the Galaxy Ring 2, since that’s unlikely to launch here in SA.
Samsung’s first Unpacked of 2025 is scheduled for 22 January at 20h00 SAST (South African Standard Time). You can catch all the updates on Stuff‘s website and X feed, or on all of Samsung’s many online portals including YouTube.
