The MacRumors Show: Samsung's 2025 Challenge to Apple

The MacRumors Show is back for 2025! On this week's episode, we look at how Samsung's latest announcements challenge Apple.


Samsung this week announced the Galaxy S25, the Galaxy S25+, and the top-of-the-line Galaxy S25 Ultra. The new devices will directly compete with Apple's iPhone 16 and upcoming iPhone 17 lineup.

Similar to the ‌iPhone 16‌, AI is a major focus for the S25 lineup, with Samsung touting a new "Personal Data Engine" with a Dynamic Island-like "Now Bar" with a "Now Brief" that guides users through their day, Circle to Search, generative photo editing, context-aware searches with suggested actions, improved natural language understanding, third-party integrations via Gemini, Portrait Studio, and more.

Samsung also previewed the all-new "Galaxy S25 Edge," a super-thin variant of the S25 set to launch in the first half of 2025. It appears to be positioned as a direct rival to Apple's upcoming "iPhone 17 Air," which is expected to be the thinnest iPhone ever at just 6mm and a radical departure from previous devices with a 6.6-inch display with ProMotion, a single speaker, a single rear camera, and Apple's custom 5G modem.

Finally, Samsung unveiled its upcoming "Project Moohan" AR/VR headset, which it has designed in collaboration with Google. It is intended to compete with Apple's Vision Pro and bears a striking similarity to it in terms of design.

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If you haven't already listened to the previous episode of The MacRumors Show, catch up for our discussion about all of Apple's expected hardware announcements for 2025.

Subscribe to ‌The MacRumors Show‌ for new episodes every week, where we discuss some of the topical news breaking here on MacRumors, often joined by interesting guests such as Kevin Nether, Jon Prosser, Luke Miani, Matthew Cassinelli, Brian Tong, Quinn Nelson, Jared Nelson, Eli Hodapp, Mike Bell, Sara Dietschy, iJustine, Jon Rettinger, Andru Edwards, Arnold Kim, Ben Sullins, Marcus Kane, Christopher Lawley, Frank McShan, David Lewis, Tyler Stalman, Sam Kohl, John Gruber, Federico Viticci, Thomas Frank, Jonathan Morrison, Ross Young, Ian Zelbo, and Rene Ritchie.

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Top Rated Comments

8667132 Avatar
10 weeks ago

Samsung has all the AI Apple promises for this year and next year now. It’s working in all languages. The galaxy is also 40% faster in AI as Apple’s iPhone 16 pro. I really think it’s peak iPhone from now because Apple is stuck on a braindead Siri. Don’t see Siri improving soon and definitely not in different languages. I think Apple is about two years behind and the gap is widening.
Honestly, it feels like Apples software department needs gutting from the top down.

I get that it's never a good thing to pander to shareholder demands and rush software. Rushing software just doesn't work. Everything feels like its built on sand now, with completely unnecessary features that no one wants being given preference over fixing and finishing useful things from the last few years that were 'rushed' out and seem incomplete.

There are so many bugs and quirks that have existed in MacOS and iOS for years now and will probably never ever get resolved because the focus is put onto updates that don't real create any value to the operating system but create $$$ through buzz words on the stock market.

And let's not forget that software has had 'AI' for years. It was just called 'features' before, but that didn't create market hysteria.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cocky jeremy Avatar
10 weeks ago

Samsung has all the AI Apple promises for this year and next year now. It’s working in all languages. The galaxy is also 40% faster in AI as Apple’s iPhone 16 pro. I really think it’s peak iPhone from now because Apple is stuck on a braindead Siri. Don’t see Siri improving soon and definitely not in different languages. I think Apple is about two years behind and the gap is widening.
Luckily, most people don't care and will never use any of the AI features anyway.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
harmonthe3rd Avatar
10 weeks ago

Luckily, most people don't care and will never use any of the AI features anyway.
I beg to differ. Most people didn't care about a camera on their phone, nor did Kodak care about cell phones with cameras. Things change as people evolve how they use their devices. Google had the Nexus with NFC chip for payments back in 2010. People didn't care. Apple released Apple Pay in 2014, some people cared, most didn't. Now in 2025 people complain if a retailer doesn't take Apple Pay. Can't discount what features people want or don't want at any given time.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
HJM.NL Avatar
10 weeks ago
Samsung has all the AI Apple promises for this year and next year now. It’s working in all languages. The galaxy is also 40% faster in AI as Apple’s iPhone 16 pro. I really think it’s peak iPhone from now because Apple is stuck on a braindead Siri. Don’t see Siri improving soon and definitely not in different languages. I think Apple is about two years behind and the gap is widening.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Joshuaorange Avatar
10 weeks ago
At this point, they’re so similar they may as well merge, name the new company Sample and sell 347 VR headsets a year.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
citysnaps Avatar
10 weeks ago

10 years ago, which was almost the iPhone 8 which had the nueral processor. Some type of ml and ai has been in phones for many years in albeit small quantities.
Spot-on. Going back years I could do a Finder search through my thousands of photos for people, cars, dogs, buildings, red, etc , etc. and it would almost instantly find all of them.

This was before AI was in the public consciousness.

Cracks me up that many people really believe Apple is doomed. Again.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)