More Evidence Suggests Now Brief Shouldn’t Be a Galaxy S25 Exclusive

The Now Brief is a headlining feature for the Galaxy S25 series. It accumulates various data across a user’s Galaxy ecosystem into one central hub. But there’s one sad thing, which is that it remains an exclusive feature for the Galaxy S25 series (including the S25 Edge). But is that necessary? Here’s why it shouldn’t.

Now Brief can indeed work on older hardware

Back in March, we started to see a workaround to actually get the Now Brief running on older devices. Well, as old as the Galaxy S21 series. This involved sideloading a specific version of Personal Data Intelligence. The app handles the Now Brief’s functionality. It also involved using an activity launcher to open it. Far from ideal, but it was solid proof that this feature is more than capable of running on a wider range of devices.

Well now, it’s much simpler than that. With Personal Data Intelligence v7.0.06.0, the Now Brief has been forced on for all devices it’s installed on. It worked on my S24 Ultra, and even older models. However, it’s a hit or miss depending on the firmware version it’s installed on. According to others, there were crashes on the S24+ and Z Fold 6.

Now Brief on S24 Ultra, on One UI 7!

Install the Advanced Data Intelligence in the quoted tweet and see if it works on any other models. https://t.co/jNL1jaGXgX pic.twitter.com/kTbHRapz9w

— That Josh Guy (@thatjoshguy69) June 6, 2025

Why is Now Brief an S25 exclusive?

This particular feature was left absent for the rest of Samsung’s lineup with the rollout of One UI 7. Last year’s foldables and slabs were missing out. Sally Hyesoon Jeong, EVP at Samsung’s mobile experience division, stated, in an interview back in February, the following:

“AI features that utilize on-device processing, such as a personal data engine, require advanced chipsets and hardware like those in the Galaxy S25 Series with Snapdragon 8 Elite”

We can take a couple different approaches to that quote. Are older processors really not capable of handling the amount of data needed for a data accumulator like Now Brief? Or was it intentionally held back? Perhaps, an arbitrary limitation?

The good news is that Samsung might start opening up the Now Brief to devices beyond the Galaxy S25 series with One UI 8. An internal build for the Z Fold 6 was discovered back in April, and that had the Now Brief ready to go. To be fair, it’s still speculative at this point. We shall find out more next month, once the stable build starts rolling out.