Since the launch of the Galaxy S24 series last year, Samsung has integrated AI into its software a lot—both through Google’s suite of AI features and through Samsung’s own. Google made an appearance on Samsung’s latest Unpacked event to show off some improvements to both Gemini and Circle to Search, and not everything is Samsung-only.
At Samsung’s Unpacked event, where the company showed off the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra, Google also showed off some improvements to Circle to Search and Gemini. One of the most notable ones is a big change to Gemini Live, now incorporating images, files, and YouTube videos into the conversation. You can now actually use more than just your words in a spoken conversation with Gemini, and it should otherwise function like the text chat version. Gemini Live with multimedia support will initially be available on Samsung Galaxy S24 and S25, as well as Google’s own Pixel 9 devices, with broader Android availability planned for the coming weeks.
Google is also deepening Gemini’s integration with apps. It already works with apps like YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, and Spotify. Now, it will also integrate with Samsung apps like Calendar, Notes, Reminder, and Clock on the Galaxy S25. These, of course, are Samsung-only apps, so sadly, you can only take advantage of these integrations on Samsung phones. Additionally, you can now instruct Gemini to utilize multiple extensions in a single prompt, streamlining complex tasks like finding recipes and saving them to a note-taking app. This multi-extension capability is available across all Gemini platforms: web, Android, and iOS.
On the Galaxy S25, Gemini can now be launched with a long-press of the side button, so you can quickly fire up your AI assistant on the go. Furthermore, “Deep Research,” which has been available on the desktop version of Gemini Advanced for a while now, will begin rolling out in the mobile app. Aside from the Samsung-specific integrations and the shortcut, all of these changes will be available eventually for most Android users, so that’s pretty good.
In a separate announcement, Google also highlighted updates to its “Circle to Search” feature, introduced last year. Circle to Search now provides AI-powered overviews for a wider range of visual search results, offering you contextual information and links to learn more about circled objects. The feature is also enhanced to recognize and take action on numbers, email addresses, and URLs, allowing users to interact with them with a single tap.
All of these changes will be rolling out over the next few months, first to Samsung and Pixel users, and we’ll likely learn about availability for other phones down the road.
Source: Google
