It has been five days since I started using the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and when I began I was very excited to see what the new Now Bar and Now Brief added to the Galaxy AI experience. While both features work, what happened when I started using them was a surprise, as it made me face an uncomfortable truth about my life.
I wondered, is my life just too empty to get much from the latest Galaxy AI features, and if so, am I the only one?
What does Now Brief show?
For AI on a smartphone to raise such an existential question in my mind, the Now Brief feature must be astonishing, right? When I talked to Samsung about Galaxy AI and the Now Brief, I heard a lot about how it could help organize your life, keep you informed about changes that may affect schedules, and be a “personal assistant” living inside your phone. It sounded useful, interactive, informed, and intelligent. I was also told it wouldn’t take long getting to know you either, as it would immediately lean on data already stored inside apps and accounts on the phone.
Disappointingly, given its build-up, the Now Brief on my Galaxy S25 Ultra started out as a glorified weather app, collating some weather alerts and an hour-by-hour prediction of rainfall. The data is presented attractively and if you’re really interested in what the weather’s going to be, it’s somewhat helpful, but you’d get richer information by tapping the weather widget instead of the Now Brief widget. Undeterred, I made sure the Now Brief was getting all the right information and continued to keep watch over it, waiting for my life to change.
It’s important to dig into these settings and possibly adjust your app usage. For example, Now Brief seems to require you to use Samsung’s own calendar app, otherwise appointments don’t show up. After granting the app access, it neatly showed a collated list of things I had going on for the day. It doesn’t seem to pay attention to what I watch or listen to, or incoming messages. I’m wearing the Galaxy Watch Ultra while reviewing the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and Now Brief shows my sleep data and Energy Score, which it takes from Samsung Health. In all, it’s a simple, easy-to-understand page of information found elsewhere on your phone. But has it changed anything about the way I use my smartphone? No, and I began to worry I was the problem.
Ordinary days
The Now Brief hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know, it hadn’t reorganized my day, and the Now Bar on the lock screen hadn’t ensured I got to a meeting on time. The reason is not because it can’t, or that it failed at some point — it’s because my work and personal life are fairly straightforward. I don’t have so much going on I can’t cope, and what I do have isn’t so monumentally complicated that I need AI to make it more organized. Sure, I’d like more time to myself, but getting it isn’t a case of shuffling cards on my calendar, or reminding me of a task I’d forgotten.
The things I have going on in my personal life simply don’t need a calendar reminder. I don’t have any travel currently booked, I work from home so traffic doesn’t matter to me, and I don’t care about sports so any recent scores are irrelevant. Based on what the Galaxy Watch Ultra’s telling me, I sleep well and I should have enough energy for the day ahead. Galaxy AI has a really easy time managing my life because my incredibly ordinary days are nothing compared to what it can do for those who are far busier than I am, so far as I’ve been told.
As I discovered the Now Brief wasn’t going to immediately impact my life, I did get a bit worried. Perhaps I don’t do enough? Maybe my days are too ordinary, and I’m not as social, motivated, or productive as I should be. Others out there are clearly operating on a different level, as Samsung must be catering to the majority with Galaxy AI and the Now Brief, right? It’s made to organize the busy lives of the masses, therefore I must be the outlier.
I worried that the hectic world was powering ahead around me, AI at the helm to help the overstretched cope, while I’m languishing at the back of the pack with a calendar so easy to organize I could leave its management to my kitten. Good news for me — my situation isn’t quite so dire.
It’s not me
After hearing the way Samsung promoted the Now Brief as a new way to get things done, and then finding it to be underwhelming in reality, I felt that maybe I could be less occupied than everyone else. However, the uncomfortable truth I faced at that moment isn’t that Galaxy AI exposed my fairly set routine or a lackadaisical approach to life. It’s that I may have fallen into the trap of linking productivity and “busyness” with happiness and self-worth. Like most, my days are suitably filled with things to do, but in my case, it’s not with things that Galaxy AI — or in fact, any AI — can help me better manage.
This is not a new phenomenon. A quick search online reveals articles about why we should not equate productivity and activity with self-worth, ranging from a podcast titled “You are not your to-do list,” to a feature called “How to be useless,” which uses Daoist teachings to illustrate why we shouldn’t constantly push to produce. It all reminded me that at its heart, mobile AI is obsessed with productivity, and now with Samsung’s Now Brief feature, it’s judging our own productivity (or lack thereof) on the home screen of our new phone.
This is a bit of a problem because I doubt I’m the only one with a life that doesn’t take much external management. If you aren’t constantly juggling ten tasks at once, regularly triple-book appointments, or are forgetful of the time in general, then the Now Brief probably won’t be transformative. If I wasn’t wearing a Galaxy Watch Ultra, it would also be even less informative, so do consider how deep you are into Samsung’s ecosystem before buying a phone with the latest Galaxy AI feature. I was hopeful I’d use Now Brief often — and therefore a mobile AI first for me — but once I’m past my review stage with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, I don’t know if I’d bother to check its morning, midday, and evening updates. I can almost guarantee nothing much will have changed between them.
What about the rest of the phone?
Outside of the Now Brief, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is shaping up to be a serious powerhouse. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy ensures the software instantly reacts to whatever you’re doing, the screen’s improved anti-reflective coating is fantastic and instantly noticeable, and the battery life is excellent. I’m about to charge it for only the third time since starting out with it, and that’s a superb performance.
The camera already impresses, especially when I use the varied zoom modes and the new wide-angle camera, plus I like the really intuitive and useful editing features. But I’m still not convinced about the shape of the phone. I’m getting used to the sharper edges, which is good, but the body is far more slippery than I expected. I’ve already accidentally dropped it once, inadvertently testing out the new toughened glass, which suffered no ill effects.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra’s Now Brief AI feature does what Samsung said it would, but like so much AI, it’s not something I expect to use every day despite its promise. While I may not immediately see its benefits, others may find it far more useful. But those who do may also find it prompts them to take a closer look (and subsequently reassess) how they feel about their daily, weekly, and monthly activities, just as it did for me.
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