So you bought a Samsung Galaxy S25. Now what? You’ve got Samsung’s latest flagship in your hand, whether it’s the tiny but powerful Galaxy S25 or the all-you-can-eat-buffet, also called the Galaxy S25 Ultra. After you get your accounts and apps set up on that new device of yours—hoping you found a deal on it because new smartphones aren’t cheap—there are a couple of things you’ll want to tweak first for an almost pain-free experience. We’ll start with that first, and then we’ll talk about a few features you should learn to use to make you feel like upgrading to the latest Samsung model was worthwhile. I’m here to validate you!
See Galaxy S25 Ultra at Samsung.com
See Galaxy S25 Series at Samsung.com
Turn off the news in the Now Brief
I’ll be honest: I’m not using the Now Brief several weeks into having the Galaxy S25 Ultra, though you should have a trial run with it before figuring out whether it fits into your phone usage. The Now Brief got a lot of stage time at the last Galaxy Unpacked. It uses Samsung’s Personal Data Engine to learn how you use your device and then surfaces apps, information, and whatever else it thinks is relevant when you check-in.
I had to immediately turn off the news feature as part of the Now Brief, which I complained already was pushing through the more abhorrent, dysregulating headlines whenever I checked in. Most of the information that the Now Brief presents you is helpful. It offers weather forecasts for now and later, plus links to your calendar and other apps. But when the content pushed through is irrelevant, you can’t edit it to make it so. You are better off eliminating the feature from the Now Brief altogether. Tap in the Now Brief settings panel, tap Content to Include, then scroll down to News. Toggle it off and continue living headline-free. Your blood pressure will thank me.
Learn to use the Smooth Zoom Slider
Samsung’s interface tweaks aren’t all gimmicks. The smooth zoom slider is one of the best new additions to the camera app on the Galaxy S25 series. Hopefully, we’ll see the ability pop up on older Samsung phones in a software update.
The slider pops up when you tap on a zoom amount while in video mode. Slide it to the left to zoom out into wide-angle mode or to the right to zoom in and focus. I love making a panning zoom-in shot as I record the landscape from a train or a virtual pet from afar. Use it to add a dramatic flair to your videos.
Scrub bad noise using Audio Eraser
If there is an annoying sound or voice in the background of your otherwise perfectly shot video, you could use the AI-powered Audio Eraser on the Galaxy S25 to scrub that person from the background. It works like a charm, sort of. The only thing to remember is that you’ll have to record with the Galaxy S25 to use the effect.
Audio Eraser is not the perfect way to eliminate a voice from a video filled with cackling and commotion, but it can help people and sounds you don’t like with a quick finger scrub. I used it to kill the screeching sound of transit in my videos.
Make GIFs with AI Select
You will need a lot of reinforcements to help you get through the horror of reading the headlines daily. That’s where AI Select will come in handy the most. Samsung tried to pass off AI Select as a brand-new feature with the Galaxy S25. It’s a longtime Samsung feature called Smart Select, which has been rebranded for today’s AI-focused marketing.
AI Select will freeze your screen and let you select a portion of the content to interact with. You’ll see options to crop an image and mess around with it in AI. But the part you can have the most fun with is what used to be the best part of Smart Select: the ability to quickly make a GIF from a YouTube video. That’s all you need to make memes of the worst people.
Add stuff to your calendar
I’m sharing this because it’s probably the best use of the S Pen on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, though it also works with the other Galaxy S25 phones. Use AI select to freeze the screen and then highlight dates to add to your calendar. You can also invoke Google’s Gemini by long-pressing the power button and asking it to save the details on the screen, like the screenshot shown here. The Galaxy S25 will add the dates to your calendar.
This is a small example of what Samsung is working on with the cross-app compatibility of its AI infusion. Hopefully, future iterations of this will be a little more robust. For now, at least there’s a way to add dates to a calendar without too much tapping.
See Galaxy S25 Ultra at Samsung.com
See Galaxy S25 Series at Samsung.com