- Samsung sets the unpacking date
- It will be on January 22 and in San Jose
- The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is expected to be the star of the show
Samsung has officially announced the dates for its Winter Unpacked event. It will see the unveiling of what we assume is the Samsung Galaxy S25 line on January 22 in San Jose, California.
The company sent out invitations on January 6. Yep, that’s at the start of CES 2025 in Las Vegas, and you can thank us later for noticing it in the middle of all this.
Last year, the company previewed its latest hardware in Las Vegas during private meetings with journalists at CES 2024. While Samsung will again have a major presence this year at what is arguably the world’s biggest tech event, it’s unlikely we’ll see a will see a big event. hardware preview in Sin City.
Along with a new Galaxy S series, Samsung promises a “more natural and intuitive Galaxy AI” that will “change the way Galaxy users interact with the world.” We were generally impressed with Galaxy AI when we tried it last summer with the all-new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, so that’s a high bar indeed.
While Ny Breaking will be on site on January 22, you can watch the entire event on one of Samsung’s various live streams at the Samsung Newsroom, Samsung.com and the Samsung Newsroom. YouTube channel at 1:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM PT.
New Galaxy phones
Beyond these scant details about the new products, we have some educated guesses about the new flagship Android handsets and what, if any, other hardware might be shown.
Firstly, we expect this to be the launchpad for Samsung’s brightest mobile star: the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.
According to recent rumors, we can expect a new, rounder design, a larger screen and a new Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. Perhaps it will get the newly launched Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite, which sounds like a very powerful piece of silicon. At last year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, mobile editor Phil Berne had a chance to test early systems equipped with the new mobile CPU. “The results completely blew me away,” Berne wrote.
The bigger story here may be the AI upgrades, some of which we saw at Samsung’s Summer Unpacked event where it rolled out its new foldable lineup, including the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. And for things like generating of AI graphics support, the Galaxy S25 Ultra might have more RAM than ever,
This is all conjecture, of course, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra we finally see might look and work differently than we expect.
We expect at least two other new Galaxy devices, namely the Galaxy S25 and the Galaxy S25 Plus. Whatever specs they have will likely be a subset of the new Galaxy S25 Ultra.
An important difference could be the lack of a high-end or more powerful zoom camera. If the S25 Ultra has a 5X zoom lens with 50 MP, the S25 and S25 Plus may have a 3X zoom lens with 12 MP. If the S25 Ultra gets a better ultrawide (with a higher pixel count), there’s no guarantee the entire line will follow suit.
Surprise package
We could also see one or two surprises from Samsung. For example, I wonder if we’ll get a chance to experience Project Moohan, the new Android XR-based mixed reality headset that Samsung, Google and Qualcomm introduced last month.
It’s still just a development kit, but we can’t wait to put it on and see if the experience is as close to wearing an Apple Vision Pro as we suspect. Granted, Samsung and its partner Google have said they plan to make it a Gemini AI experience. That alone could set it apart from Apple’s expensive mixed reality headset.
Considering we’ve just seen the updates and releases of the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, Buds 3 Pros and Galaxy Ring respectively, it’s unlikely there will be any news on these fronts.
Whatever Samsung reveals, Ny Breaking will be on site to give you a first look at all the new gear.