I wished to like Samsung Now Transient, however I can not

Joe Maring / Android Authority

As has been the case for the last few Samsung smartphone launches, the most interesting bits of the Galaxy S25 series have nothing to do with hardware. For Samsung, it’s all about software — specifically, AI software features. On the Galaxy S25, one of the biggest new features is Now Brief.

The idea behind Now Brief is strong. It’s supposed to be a one-stop shop on your phone that shows all sorts of relevant info for your day — such as upcoming calendar events, friends’ birthdays, missed calls, flight/event tickets, etc. Listening to Samsung talk about Now Brief in a Galaxy S25 briefing last month, it sounded like the Google Now replacement I’d waited years for.

Unfortunately, after using Now Brief on a Galaxy S25 for the last couple of weeks, it’s not that at all. There’s potential for Now Brief to be great, but at least in its current form, Samsung has a long way to go to get there.

What do you think about Now Brief?

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I’m using it and love it.

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I like it, but it could be better.

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It’s been disappointing.

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I haven’t used it yet.

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Now Brief makes a good first impression

Joe Maring / Android Authority

As I set up my Galaxy S25, Now Brief initially made a good first impression. You access Now Brief in a couple of ways — either through the dedicated Now Brief home screen widget or via the small lock screen icon that appears in the Now Bar at the start and end of your day.

The overall layout of Now Brief is pretty simple, with a vertical list of different cards Samsung thinks you might be interested in. However, the content of these cards changes throughout the day, as does the text at the top of the Now Brief. You also get a nice fade-in animation for the text and cards each time you open Now Brief. They’re small touches, but they make the whole experience feel polished and sleek.

Now Brief on the lock screenNow Brief home pageNow Brief content settings

Scroll to the bottom of your Now Brief and tap the settings icon, and you can enable/disable the different types of information you want displayed. At the time of publication, there are 13 categories to choose from, including Travel, Events and tasks, Communication, Traffic updates, News, etc.

So far, so good! Accessing Now Brief is easy, the presentation is nice, and there’s ample control over what you want displayed. If that’s all true, what’s the problem?

My single biggest issue with Now Brief

Joe Maring / Android Authority

The issue with Now Brief is this. For as well-styled and presented as it is, the simple truth is that it doesn’t do anything — at least nothing useful.

I look at my Galaxy S25’s Now Brief at least twice a day, once in the morning and as I’m getting ready for bed at night. And every time, the content of my Now Brief is virtually the same. I have a weather forecast at the top, a calendar event below that (if I have something coming up), and a random (usually political) news article at the bottom. And … that’s it.

Now Brief is nothing but a glorified weather and news app, and a bad one at that.

I expected Now Brief to be barebones right out of the box, but even as I’ve kept using my Galaxy S25 day after day, it hasn’t gotten any better. I want to see emails from my Gmail inbox I may have missed. Maybe online orders that are being delivered soon. An overview of sports scores for teams I’m interested in would be great. Sadly, Now Brief hasn’t shown me any of this.

My Now Brief has occasionally had extra cards beyond the news and weather, but nothing worthwhile. At one point, I started getting a card for a recommended morning routine to automatically open Google Keep around when I wake up. It was a fair suggestion, considering I regularly opened Google Keep each morning to make notes about my S25’s battery life, but it wasn’t something I needed or wanted a routine for.

Joe Maring / Android Authority

The terrible YouTube shorts card (and a helpful reminder of the Gilmore Girls photo I downloaded)

I also sometimes see a YouTube Shorts section appear, but it’s hilariously half-baked. I enabled it a few days into using the Galaxy S25, thinking it would show YouTube Shorts I might be interested in based on my viewing habits. But no. Instead, it’s just a shortcut to start watching YouTube Shorts with no personalization at all.

As for the cards I see most often — weather and current news — the implementation is objectively bad. You don’t go to the Samsung Weather app when you tap on the weather forecast. Instead, it simply opens weather.com in your web browser. And as much as I enjoy keeping up with the news, a single article isn’t particularly helpful. I would imagine Galaxy AI is powerful enough to show me a handful of news articles to cover the most significant events of a given day, but instead, it’s restrained to just one.

And that’s ultimately what my Now Brief is every day: a widget to the weather.com website and one whole news article. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s not the personalized daily overview I was hoping for from Now Brief.

I hope Samsung makes it better

Joe Maring / Android Authority

Although Now Brief isn’t the first Galaxy AI feature that hasn’t landed for me, it is the one that feels like it has the most wasted potential. As I said above, the pitch/concept for Now Brief is great. We use our phones for everything, and having a centralized place to catch up on the things that matter most is a fantastic idea. But that idea doesn’t matter if the execution isn’t there, and that’s where Now Brief falls apart.

There is the possibility that Now Brief will get better over time and capitalize on its currently wasted potential — whether that’s through increased third-party developer support, deeper Google account integration, or better Now Brief experiences from Samsung itself. Realistically, it needs all of the above.

But will those things happen? That’s the big question. I certainly hope they do, but given Samsung’s tendency to focus on regularly launching new features rather than spending heaps of time improving existing ones, I’m not holding my breath. As someone who was really hoping Now Brief would be great, that sucks.

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