5 useful features I feel Galaxy AI is desperately missing

Samsung has pushed the Galaxy S25 as a "true AI companion," highlighting this generation's generative AI capabilities as its flagship feature. This isn't just talk; the Galaxy S25 is packed with brand-new Galaxy AI features . Many of these features will arrive on earlier Galaxy phones, but the more time we spend with Galaxy AI, the more we think that Samsung has missed the mark when it comes to providing AI features we actually want.

Despite the impressive quantity of Galaxy AI features, their quality leaves much to be desired. As we noted in our Galaxy S25 Ultra review , many of the phone's biggest AI features don't work as intended, delivering misleading information without providing a source. But even if Samsung manages to smooth over Galaxy AI's rough edges, it's still short some key features that would turn it into a feature set we recommend. If Samsung wants to take the lead in the mobile assistant AI race, these are the features it needs to add to Galaxy AI.

A quick note on Galaxy AI and Gemini

Galaxy AI is a collection of AI tools on Samsung Galaxy devices powered by Google's Gemini Pro and Imagen 2 AI models and Samsung's own Gauss generative AI model. Directly comparing Galaxy AI to Gemini is impossible, as most Galaxy AI features are essentially Gemini features with a Galaxy coat of paint.

Therefore, while Galaxy AI is essentially a collection of Gemini features, we will discuss which features should be included under the Galaxy AI umbrella, not which features Gemini should power.

Samsung versions of Hold For Me, Direct My Call, and Call Screen

It's time that the most useful Pixel features should come to Galaxy phones

Hold For Me, Direct My Call, and Call Screen are Pixel-exclusive features that make interacting with automated phone lines and spam calls less frustrating. Hold For Me sends you a notification when a person joins the line, while Direct My Call transcribes automated phone menus into buttons on your screen. Call Screen answers spammers and unknown callers on your behalf and asks them why they are calling you.

None of these features are perfect right now. You need to keep one eye on your phone to effectively use Hold for Me, and Direct My Call struggles with complex phone menus. It also doesn't work for phone menus that require you to speak the prompt. Call Screen works well, but the suggested replies are generic. However, Google is reportedly working on a way to use AI to generate contextual replies .

Not only could Samsung vastly improve the Galaxy user experience with its own version of Hold For Me and Direct My Call, but it could utilize the latest AI advancements to fix the biggest problems with Direct My Call. For example, if a phone menu asks you to speak a prompt, Galaxy AI could speak the answer instead. Call Screen exists through Bixby , but it could use an upgrade with AI like Google's version.

However, the adoption of these features as they currently exist on Pixel phones would go a long way toward improving our perception of Galaxy AI.

Improved customization options for AI recommendations

Generic filters aren't enough

One of One UI 7's biggest features is Now Brief. This AI tool generates a daily briefing that can include things like playlist recommendations, weather reports, news stories, and upcoming events. Unfortunately, you cannot customize it beyond generic toggles like "News" and "Routines."

This is a problem across Galaxy AI in general. The technology simply isn't smart enough to reliably recommend useful information, so we need to be able to tweak it to only show useful information. For example, rather than an on-off toggle for News, we should be able to filter it to only show sports-related content. That way, Galaxy AI can provide more relevant information without wasting our time.

Now Brief is the most obvious area where we could see this change, but in general, we need more personalization options to make Galaxy AI work for us.

Live transcripts during recording

Samsung's Voice Recorder app falls short

Samsung upgraded its Voice Recorder app in 2024 with AI-powered tricks that can transcribe and summarise your recordings. However, while it's more impressive than Google's Pixel-exclusive Recorder app in generating summaries, it struggles with key features.

Samsung's voice recorder app misses the mark in two key areas. Firstly, it can only generate transcriptions after the recording, and that requires an active internet connection. This issue is exacerbated by its long processing time; it takes about a minute per 10 minutes of speech for the app to turn the recording into text. Secondly, its transcriptions are frustratingly inaccurate; you cannot rely on Voice Recorder to read up on a recording that isn't crystal clear with minimal complex words.

While Samsung effectively uses AI to generate bullet-pointed summaries of recordings, it desperately needs an upgrade for transcriptions. By utilizing onboard AI to transcribe recordings live, we could finally rely on Samsung's voice recording app. The Galaxy S25 has the capability to process AI tasks offline, so why can't we have an upgrade to this key app?

AI-powered notification filters

Samsung could integrate this Apple Intelligence feature in a powerful way

One of the most useful elements of OneUI 7 is its notification filter. You can toggle this feature to group old notifications, notifications of an app running in the background, and minimized notifications in a collapsible menu in your notification shade. It's a useful tool, but Samsung could have upgraded this feature with AI by taking a leaf out of Apple's book.

One of Apple Intelligence's unique features is Notification Summaries. It's meant to group multiple notifications from an app into a single notification with an AI-generated summary of their contents. While Apple continues to struggle to make this feature work effectively, the theory is sound.

Samsung could upgrade Galaxy AI with a summary of every filtered notification. Currently, the notification filter only shows how many notifications are filtered, with their relevant icons stacked. It wouldn't even need to try as hard as Apple Intelligence. We need to know what apps it has filtered and if any old or minimized notifications contain time-sensitive information.

Background noise filters in videos

This feature should be on every phone in 2025

Most of Google's Pixel-exclusive AI-powered video and photo editing features aren't very useful in our day-to-day lives. However, Audio Magic Eraser is a genuinely useful tool that removes or reduces the volume of background noise in your videos.

Galaxy AI could sorely use a feature like this, as currently, Galaxy phones are losing out to Google in every aspect of smartphone photography. Bringing useful features like Audio Magic Eraser into Galaxy AI would be a genuine upgrade to Galaxy phones.

There are useful Galaxy AI features

While Samsung has pushed frustratingly irrelevant AI features like Now Brief instead of useful tools like Audio Magic Eraser and AI-powered proofreading, Galaxy AI has some features we recommend exploring. Samsung might have fumbled the launch of these features on the Galaxy S25, but we think these new Galaxy AI features have a lot of potential.