Galaxy S25 Series unveiled – South African price and availability

Last night, Samsung lifted the curtain on its latest flagship smartphone lineup – the Galaxy S25 series. While #Galaxyunpacked may have been trending , the Wits Anglo American Digital Dome in Johannesburg where Samsung hosted its South African event was #packed to capacity. (Side note: Hosting a “Galaxy” launch at a planetarium? Genius.) But the real story here is about Samsung sending a clear message, they’re going all in on AI.

Now, the S25 series isn’t exactly a paradigm shift. It’s built on Google’s Gemini, which, is already on most Android phones. But Samsung’s One UI 7 is where the magic might happen. Samsung is promising a more intuitive AI experience, the kind that understands what you want, I mean really understand, with multi-model AI agents designed to understand and respond to natural language in away that is intuitive and personalised. As someone juggling both a Pixel and an iPhone, I’m interested  to see  how GalaxyAI stacks up in real world terms.

As we’ve come to expect, the S25 series packs some serious hardware, getting  a performance bump, courtesy of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. While last year’s S24 series is no slouch, Samsung has emphasised  that these chips are more than just off-the-shelf components, being specifically tailored to the S25 series with optimisations that go beyond the standard version. The focus here is on enabling a richer on-device AI experience. 

Additionally, on the camera and battery front the S25 Ultra boasts a massive 200MP primary, while the S25 and S25+ pack a respectable 50MP shooter. The S25 Ultra also houses a hefty 5,000mAh battery, and even the S25+ gets a 4,900mAh power pack.

One oddity: While a new “Slim” model has joined the global family, South Africans seem to have just the regular, Plus, and Ultra variants for now.

Pricing and Availability

The Galaxy S25 series will be available for pre-order starting January 23rd with first sales going live on February 7th Feb.

If you are unsure of whether it’s worth an upgrade, look out for our in-depth review coming soon!