Comment: Samsung’s Now Brief is bland and boring – it’s the oatmeal of AI features

Andrew Romero | Feb 26 2025 - 11:24 am PT

The Galaxy S25 series has been a surprisingly exciting addition to Samsung’s similar yet barely different lineup of phones, and Now Brief is a big part of that. The function acts as a way for you to catch up on the day, with pertinent information summarized in one place. There’s just one problem — it’s incredibly bland.

There’s a difference between bland and useless. Plain oatmeal can lack taste, but it still offers itself as a fuel source. Now Brief fills the same mold.

Samsung’s Now Brief fills the same mold. It does… stuff.

It offers itself as a useful pegboard of information at a tap’s reach, but it only showcases basic bits of data. Data that comes from Samsung’s proprietary apps, like Weather, Calendar, and News, clumped into an AI summary of sorts.

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It isn’t obvious, but the Now Brief actually has access to a ton of data on your Galaxy phone in One UI 7. That includes health and wellness data, travel and traffic info via Google Maps, memorable moments in your photos from the Gallery app, and even smart home suggestions. Those functions are a recipe for a well-rounded brief of information.

When we first pictured what now Brief could be capable of, it included data from those apps. I imagined waking up and hitting the Now Brief button to be greeted with suggestions like which lights to turn on, what my commute would be like, and photo highlights.

Instead, I get a calendar reminder, a weather forecast, and news that doesn’t pertain.

The third-party foundation is there; it just needs some attention

If you open up the Now Brief settings on any Samsung device running One UI 7 and look into what content is actually offered, the list is substantial. Some of the options were mentioned above, but there are others. Seemingly, those options lay the groundwork for third-party apps to be a part of what now Brief has to offer, because they currently make no sense.

For instance, there is a section toggle for “communication.” Tapping on it offers no information and there are no options to go with it. It exists purely as a placeholder, as far as I can imagine. In the future, we’re hoping to see apps added to these categories in the same way Google Maps is listed under “Traffic.”

Google apps do not count as third-party support for Now Brief. Google is so heavily involved in working with Samsung on One UI features that it would be weird for Google apps to be left out of Now Brief entirely. Still, there is plenty of room for more apps to get involved.

There are a few hypotheticals that I think would fit really well. For one, scheduled Uber rides could find a spot in the travel section, and Oura data could fit itself into the health and wellness category. Google Photos can similarly show up in the moments or gallery stories slot, which I’d prefer over Samsung Gallery photos. Finally, any Matter-compatible smart home ecosystem should be able to offer controls in Now Brief.

Now, this isn’t to say that I want to be doom-scrolling my morning briefing like it’s a new social platform that’s even more targeted, but I want pertinent information that spans every app I use on a daily or even weekly basis.

Now Brief already gives users the option to choose which apps show up in the now Brief, as little as there are. There need to be more options. Surely, Samsung is planning on bringing in more options as One UI 7 progresses, though one would hope that wouldn’t take until One UI 8 to manifest.