Looking to buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 but don’t have the money to pay for it all upfront? Samsung may eventually allow you to rent out the upcoming model and other Samsung Galaxy phones instead of purchasing them right off the bat.
Rumors of the smartphone subscription service came out of CES 2025, where Samsung CEO and Vice Chairman Han Jong-hee said that the company plans to introduce the subscription service at this year’s Galaxy Unpacked event in two weeks, according to a report by ETNews. Jong-hee said that the service, dubbed the “AI Subscription Club,” will launch in February, two months after it began offering it to customers in South Korea.
The “AI” part of the name is a mistranslation, but the name is likely not final. The smartphone subscription service will allow customers to pay a subscription fee for any phone they want and try it out before they decide to pay the full amount. It’s unclear how much the monthly fees will be or if there will be subscription tiers similar to those of streaming services like Netflix and Disney+. However, the subscription service will apply to tablets as well.
Samsung’s hardware subscription program bears some resemblance to the one Apple had been attempting to develop alongside the Apple Pay group since 2022, making plans to launch it by the end of that year. The project then got delayed because of software issues and regulatory concerns and was ultimately canceled at the end of last year. Six months earlier, in June 2024, the company announced Apple Pay Later would be shutting down after it integrated third-party loan services into iOS 18. Google tried to offer a subscription service for Pixel phones called Google Pixel Pass, which also offered access to YouTube Premium and Google Play Pass, but it ended in 2023.
