Denoted as the SM-938U, the Galaxy S25 Ultra for US carriers is unique in that it support Verizon's mmWave 5G frequencies, but doesn't come with two SIM card slots as the global S25 Ultra versions.
It is also certain to get the newest Snapdragon 8 Elite (Gen 4) flagship chipset of Qualcomm, as nothing else will fly when it comes to 5G modem patents in the US. Thus, it will be fairly easy to directly compare its performance against the predecessor that we benchmarked earlier in the year.
A lot of way, in fact, as the S24 Ultra scores are 30% lower than the S25 processing power performance. This is most certainly thanks to the power of the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, or Snapdragon Elite platform that Qualcomm announced on October 24 during its usual annual bash in Hawaii.
Thus, we can expect a lot of performance gains and smooth One UI 7 visuals from the S25 Ultra compared to its predecessor, but the chief advantage of the increased processing speeds will be AI features that are bound to run unimpeded on the handset.
Carrying the model number SM-S938U, that particular Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra isn't even firing up its 4.32 GHz prime core cylinder, but is rather content with the equally jaw-dropping 3.53 GHz of the midrange efficiency cores.
Qualcomm says that the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset comes with a first-in-mobile Oryon CPU that is 45% faster yet with 44% less power draw, all the while it features the phone and tablet industry’s largest shared data cache. That is not all, though, as the Adreno graphics subsystem got a new sliced architecture with 40% faster performance and better efficiency.
If those results hold water in the end, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will be fast, much faster than even the iPhone 16 Pro Max whose Apple A18 Pro chipset broke the 4 GHz barrier for the first time on an iPhone, and yet is clocked lower than the Snapdragon for Galaxy on the S25 Ultra.
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Samsung needs all the speed it can get for its AI features, but Qualcomm has also been excellent with the power envelope of its late Snapdragon 8-series chipsets, keeping a lid on their battery consumption while churning out record scores, too. System-wide, the power savings should be about 27%, tips Qualcomm, while the benchmark here suggests that we can expect a similar boost in performance in real-life benchmarking.
For comparison, the Geekbench 6 single-core score on the iPhone 16 Pro Max returns 3331 points in our testing, which beats the leaked S25 Ultra single-core number, but only by a tad, while Samsung's upcoming flagship destroys the iPhone in the multicore score.
There are still a few months left for Samsung to hone its 2025 Snapdragon for Galaxy order with Qualcomm, though, so the ever powerful iPhone Pro line may have finally met its performance match with Qualcomm's latest chipset. The fly in all that performance ointment is that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform is simply too expensive for Samsung to use in anything else than a flagship like the S25 Ultra.
While it is trying its luck with its homebrew Exynos 2500, the performance is not nearly on par with Qualcomm's finest, and it will have to reportedly shell out north of $200 just for the Galaxy S25 Ultra's Snapdragon processor and 5G modem alone, making this the most expensive component in its upcoming flagship.
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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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