Samsung is betting big on AI through 2024, and it is not surprising to hear that serious upgrades could be coming in the near future. According to a new leak, one such upgrade could see Samsung's Galaxy S25 rely less on the cloud and do more AI processing locally on the device.

This nugget of information comes from AssembleDebug on X, during a dive into Samsung's app code. Judging from the snippet they posted, it seems that the S25 series may start processing more things locally, FEATURE_GEN_EDIT_ON_DEVICE”

There are many advantages to doing this kind of processing locally, rather than on a cloud server. The most obvious is privacy, which is very important when editing private photos. Since the photos do not need to be transferred to a cloud server for processing, the files cannot be intercepted by malicious vendors along the way or secretly stored on Samsung's servers.

Theoretically, processing should also be faster since everything stays on the phone. Transferring files to and from the cloud server would not take long, but it would not be instantaneous. This assumes that there is no backlog that the server needs to clear, in which case the waiting time will only be longer. On-device processing means that no active Internet connection is required to use AI functions. Thus, if you lose your data connection or get stuck on a plane without Wi-Fi, you will not be cut off from the AI.

That said, doing everything on-device means more strain on the phone, and excessive editing may drain the battery slightly faster than cloud processing. But the tradeoff is probably worth it.

The code posted by AssembleDebug also seems to support the rumor that the Galaxy S25 will only run on the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. The leaker claims that when on-device AI is mentioned, there is no sign of Exynos or MediaTek hardware. Instead, we only see “sm8750,” the model number of Snapdragon's latest flagship SoC. This confirms earlier rumors that all Galaxy S25 phones will run on Snapdragon chips.

It is unclear if other Galaxy AI features will move to on-device processing. However, if this leak turns out to be accurate, the possibility that more AI functions will move to that route cannot be ruled out; it is worth noting that both Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini offer a variety of on-device functions, including generative AI. It is worth noting that both Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini offer various on-device capabilities, including generative AI. However, only Apple offers generative AI-based image editing on-device.

At the very least, this is a good start. But we will have to wait and see what Samsung has to say when it announces the Galaxy S25 in the New Year. [Rumor has it that the next Galaxy Unpacked will be held on January 22, so until then we can keep an eye on the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra hub for the best news and rumors.