Samsung brings purpose-driven AI to its S25 series smartphones.
(upbeat music) Well, Samsung just launched their Galaxy S25 line, using their powerful Galaxy AI tool proving that smartphones are actually getting smarter. Today we're gonna find out how these phones are hoping to make our lives easier. Alright, Blake, thanks so much for being on the show. We're excited to have you. I know you're just fresh off the heels of the Unpacked event, which of course was just massive.
It was so cool to see. I'm sure it's gotta feel a little bit like putting on, you know, the biggest game of the year. But before we get into all the cool releases, specifically the new Galaxy S25 line, I wanna just get an introduction from you and what you do. Thanks, Bradley.
My name is Blake Gaiser, I am the director of smartphone product management for Samsung Electronics America. Basically what that means is that, you know, I own everything about a phone from, you know, about two years before launch all the way through the launch of a phone, how we bring it to market, you know, all the features that we bring to market, how we talk about them, how we educate our customers how to utilize them, really just get a play with phones all day. It's not a bad gig. Do you sleep? I mean, that type of responsibility, like I would be worried there's someone like going through your trash outside, like you got two years ahead, the future, you're trying to predict the future, which is impossible in this quick-moving tech world in a highly competitive smartphone environment. How, how do you do it? You know, it's fun.
But yeah, we're looking towards the future all the time. So, you know, we play a lot with security and we have a nice cool clean room, as we call it, where we can go in and see some of those future devices and make sure no one else gets their eyes on those and, you know, just have a lot of fun trying to predict what the future has to hold. Well, I'm excited to talk to you because the S25 line brings a whole lot of really cool, basically brains to the table, and we'll get into the specs and the stats and all that. But just from your standpoint, I mean, this has been your baby now for a couple of years, is what you're talking about, like 24 months? How do you predict two years in the future? You know, our podcast is all about stories, people love the stories behind the products they love, so how does somebody do that? You know, it's all about listening to our customer and we do that in a myriad of different ways from, you know, talking with the media, talking with those tech bloggers out there to, you know, talking directly with our customers, both current and those that are looking to be customers.
And really what that comes to is, you know, we're looking consistently of how we can exemplify the passion points of our phones and minimize the pain points that you might have working with your device. You just bring those ideas to the table, build a use case out of 'em and come up with something cool. Was there ever like a big pivot point, you know, if you look at your drawings basically, and kind of your wishlist from two years ago to where we are today with this device, was there anything that like, you know, "We wanted to make it a triangle and it just wouldn't work."
You know, like anything like that that really changed significantly? Or is it pretty much what you foresaw? No, it's definitely a moving target and it's something that, you know, oftentimes you don't know what you don't know. And so as you're kind of learning about, you know, different possibilities, things that might be able to happen, you know, you get a couple of those aha moments where it's like, "Well, if the device can do this, then maybe it can also do this." And we pull those together and, you know, getting to see it come to life is actually really awesome. I love that.
What are you really most proud of, I guess, with these devices? It could be something that's very obvious or not. This is a purpose-driven AI phone. You know, we launched the first mobile AI platform with the S24, which we're really excited about.
We brought a lot of features to that phone utilizing AI. But the S25 really from the ground up was purpose-built with AI in mind. That starts with, you know, this processor that we have in there with our partnership with Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
It's a three nanometer processor, crazy fast processor. And then, you know, we have so many different AI things that we built into it, which really comes down to taking clicks away from the customer. And what I mean from that is like, you don't realize something is annoying until it's not there anymore.
Totally, I get that. So you don't have to go into multiple different apps to do various things, and if you could just speak to your device like a friend would and have, you know, or a personal assistant, and have it do it for you, we're working really hard on just pulling those clicks away from people. So it just does things that they want it to do. I love that, and I actually had a chance to experience the Ultra, so there's the S25, S25 Plus and the Ultra.
Of course the Ultra is the uber, it's the top of the charts. And I had a chance to hold it. And the two things that stood out to me, one was how lightweight, I could not, like the way it looks, it looks hefty, it's got like a beautiful screen, it's large, it's all the way to the edges.
The design is square and blocky, which I personally love. And when I picked it up, it was like. (imitating whooshing) You know, I hadn't even worked out that day and it was still so light, it was so easy.
And I was like, this is really surprising. And then what you mentioned earlier too is how quick, you know, and it wasn't necessarily, I didn't really have a chance to have it do a bunch of tasks, but literally just swiping the screen and like swipe up, swipe down, swipe. It was like almost anticipating, it was so fast. And again, to your point, you don't know it's annoying until it's not. I got back to my other devices and I was like, "What's the deal here?" I mean, we're talking like 0.01 second lag, if anything, right? But it just was so noticeably fast.
I was so impressed with that. And then of course, the app integration and when I had a chance to play with it too, the audio, the fact you can shoot a video and then basically like pull out the sound or pull out the talking or enhance the talking, enhance the music, pull out background noise. I was like, "What? This is an entire studio." It takes me when I edit videos, multiple clicks as it were to get that done. And so I was so amazed by that. And I imagine that has to do with what you guys have been able to do by building around the AI, then you can basically put all these pieces together.
So it's, you know, basically like spaghetti, it's all kind of connected in there and it's not like, well this one thing has to now talk to this second thing. It's kind of, we're all kind of talking. Yeah, and there's so many different things that we could talk about, you know, in that regard. The audio eraser that you pointed out is just awesome. You know, it recognizes up up to six different types of sound from voices, music, nature and excess sound and others.
And you can custom EQ while you're watching that video. So you're at a concert and you want less of, you know, the crowd noise and more of the music. You know, you can really kinda make it how you want it to sound and share it with our customers or your friends. Amazing, amazing, I love that.
Well, let's talk about the three different phones. What do you see people mostly going for? Is the Plus the middle because that's the one people mostly get, or is the Ultra really popular and that's why, I would assume that's more in the pro video, pro audio, or at least more like the, you know, the content creator side, but where do you see these phones fitting in? You know, the Ultras are most popular and that's just because you can just do everything with it. It has the highest camera array on the background, so you got a 200-megapixel-wide lens. Yeah. Which blows my mind. When I saw that, I was like, "Surely that's a misprint."
200 megapixels. That's like, when you look at, you know, a more traditional camera, DSLR, or anything like that, you gotta get really high end to be able to get to that level, and you need lots of storage obviously as well, and the fact that the phone could take a 200-megapixel image and then also have enough brain power to sort through it and know what to do with it. I mean, when I shoot raw on a camera, my camera's like, you can't even view it back, bro.
You gotta stick this in a computer, right? I'm not even gonna show you what I just made. So I just think that's so fascinating. You know, it's crazy and, you know, tied into what we call our pro visual engine, that's the brains behind the camera, which is, you know, part CPU, part GPU, and part NPU. So we're talking all aspects from AI, you know, to your traditional CPU. It's able to analyze and correct, utilizing AI every individual pixel of that 200 megapixels.
So you can do up to 8K video with that 200 megapixel lens, which is just crazy. That's wild. You know, fantastically enough, we have TVs in 8K as well. So, you know, personally for me, I actually will videotape my son's soccer game in its entirety on my phone. And then, you know, my son and I afterwards will pull that up and throw it on our Samsung TV and, you know, watch it, you know, 75 inches. Crazy. And, hey,
this was awesome, you know, let's work on this. And you know, really kind of like taking it from outdoors to putting it on there. You know, the Samsung frame that we have. Oh, man, yeah. It's just a gallery of photos that we've taken with that Iltra camera. I love that. And you know,
year over year we continue to make enhancements in that. So, you know, we have that 200-megapixel-wide lens, which is like your standard lens that you're using. We have a 50-megapixel-telephoto lens, 5 x, so you can get high resolution with those zoomed images. And then for S25 Ultra, we introduced the 50-megapixel ultra wide, which helps you do those 0.6 x really bring in more of the world.
But it also helps you, it's the same lens that we use for our macro. So if you wanna get that really tight closeup shot of a flower or whatever it is that you're looking at, you can see every little detail in there. And utilizing that pro visual engine, regardless of what you're doing, it recognizes what we have, what we call a cognitive aware engine, and it's recognizing what you're taking a photo of and adjusting the settings for you, so you don't have to be that professional. Now, we do have expert raw and pro video and all these things. For those expert photographers and videographers, we introduced log video for, you know, that expert. videographer there. I saw that, that's huge.
And a digital aperture for your photography. So you can change, you know, what you want to have a bouquet effect to, you know, what you want sharp and clean. And it's just able to, you know, do so much for you without you having to go in and change all these settings. It's really click and shoot. And I want to find out a little bit about and that is a great segue into how do you see these phones making people's lives easier? The thing that's awesome about Samsung is we have really deep, great relationships with Qualcomm who makes their chip set with Google as well, you know, being on the Android platform. And so, you know, to date, people are starting to get used to these AI agents out there, which do a fantastic job of finding you information, you know, so, you know, find the next football game in my town, you know, and let me know when that is, who they're playing against, where it's playing at.
And that's something that, you know, many of those AI agents out there can do for you. What they can't do is then integrate that into your phone as you talked about. So, you know, having everything built within the Android framework from the ground up, now you can take all that information and have it do things for you without you having to then open up your calendar, type in that game, go find the map, put it into your calendar, take that, share it into a text message, and then add a message and send that to your friend.
Now you can just use one language prompt and get that done for you. So you can go find that game, put it in my calendar, text it to my friend, and it will do all of that at once, multiple different things. It understands what it is you're looking for. And what's really cool about it, it's built into Google's full suite of apps from, you know, Gmail Maps and so forth, but it's also built into Samsung applications as well. So, you know, "Hey, give me the pros and cons of this video on YouTube, summarize it for me and put it into my notes." That's one that. That right,
I heard about that and I thought that was magnificent. I mean, no one would wanna do that with our podcasts because they wanna hear every word. But for other videos that need that summation, you know, like you're, you're trying to watch a cooking video or how to, I do repairs on my cars, I'm gonna swap the headlights, but I don't wanna watch an 18-minute video. Good on you for making a long video.
But that's great. What a great application for making life easier. Well, I mean, we've all been in that conversation where you're talking about something and it, you know, prompts you, reminds you about a picture you took way back when, you know, doing that same thing, you know, I'll find myself, I actually checked this morning, I have 15,771 photos in my phone and I'm not really all of that different than, you know, an average Ultra customer there. And so you could find yourself, you're like, "Yes, you know, I gotta show you this picture if you just wait for five to seven minutes when I find it." "Have a seat." You know, exactly. Grab some coffee, come on back. Remember where we're at.
Yeah. You know, but you know, you can literally click on that and say, "Find wine bottles that I took in France last year." And so it's able to search the metadata on those. Okay, this is the location, France, this is the time from last year. And then it's able to understand the context of the photo. So, you know, there pulled up, "Oh, this is the wine bottle we had in France that I want to go, you know, get my hands on."
You know, and then things like circle to search. Another thing that when we brought it out with the S24 family, when I would talk to people, I was like, "When you search for things, isn't that, you know, kind of a pain?" And nobody said yes, 'cause they're just so used to it. But you have that weird thing you're watching and Instagram and they have, you know, this crazy orange coat or something. You go into Google and you're like, orange coat with. That's all you could do. All of these things.
And you don't find it, you know, literally just circling that image and it goes out, "Oh, here's that coat for you." I actually did that with my daughter when she was looking for different dresses for a photo shoot that she was doing. And she was like, "I love this, but I can't find it anywhere." I was like, "Well, just circle it." And there it was, popped up in two seconds. I mean, making your daughter happy, that alone is a great software feature that's worth buying the phone right there.
100%, anyone who has daughters out there, this one will help you out for sure. And you also probably have realized that it's not just a black dress with the frills. It's like, no, "I'm talking this one. I want you to like go through and get that person's dress." So it's great, you just circle it.
"That cut is different. That's not the right dress." I'm like, sorry. Exactly. My bad, missed that. I love it. Well, you brought something else up that I think Samsung is so uniquely poised to do, which is the integration between phones, AI, and appliances.
I mean, Samsung makes so many different appliances. I have a lot of them in my own house. And I had seen in a video the idea of you could tell your TV to turn off when you go to sleep based on the wearable that you have that measures your heart rate. And then is like, "Okay, Bradley's asleep." Tells the phone, and then the phone tells the TV.
I just think that's amazing. I love that next level of, again, making your life easier with technology. So talk a little bit about how you guys are so uniquely poised to do that. Well, I love that you brought that particular one up. Over 12 months ago, the team and I brought that specific use case to Samsung.
So cool. Light and sound give you terrible sleep. So, you know, we have this beautiful ecosystem, we have, you know, the Galaxy Watch, we have the Galaxy Ring.
And so we brought forth of, "Hey, these devices know when you fall asleep, so why don't we have that connected to your TV to, you know, countdown from 10, 'Hey, it looks like you're asleep.' Turn the volume down and turn your TV off for you." That's so cool. You know, this device, what's really great about it is the more you use it, the more it learns about you. And then it provides you with information and actions before you ever go looking for 'em.
Oh, wow. So you fall asleep and you're turning your thermostat up to 72 because that's what you feel like it needs to fall asleep to. But it's recognizing, "Hey, when it's 68 degrees, you're sleeping better.
So let's turn this into a routine for you. We're gonna have the TV turn off when you fall asleep. We're gonna have the thermostat turn down to 68 degrees. And then when you wake up, you know, we'll put it back up to 72 degrees." And this device will recognize things that you're doing over and over again, and it'll pop up and say, "Let's just do this for you.
When you get into your car, you turn your Bluetooth on. When you get out of your car, you turn your Bluetooth off. Let's make that a routine for you.
When you leave your house, you're turning your lights off. Let's just do it, so you don't actually have to go around and use your smart switches." Click, click, click, click. Just turn all your lights off when when you're out of the house.
All of those different things, you know, it just goes back to taking those clicks out of the customer's hands. Even if it's a light switch click, (chuckling) all the clicks. All the clicks. Anything that's a click is hitting outta there.
Absolutely. I love it. Well, I wanna wrap up here, but obviously you know what's next, right? This is the ever pressing question. I know, you know, because you're working two years out, so you're working on devices that are even next level.
But what are you able to share with us that's exciting news coming down the pike for Samsung? Well, I would love to share with you and the audience. It's just us. The things that are going on. Just don't worry about it. But you know what, what I'll tell you is that we're going to continue to evolve AI, both how it's working for you on your device, the cool things that it can do for you, enhance those passion points for our customers, continue to remove those pain points and just provide a product like nobody but Samsung can produce. I love it. Blake, thank you so much for being here.
I know you're a super busy guy. Have a great day. You too. Well, thank you so much for watching and, or listening. Make sure you subscribe and let us know in the comments what products you'd like to see next. (upbeat music)
2025-02-12 08:32
