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Intro
The Galaxy S25 Plus is now official, having been announced alongside the rest of the Galaxy S25 series on January 22. Unlike the top-tier Galaxy S25 Ultra, which has scored a new design and a larger screen, the Galaxy S25 Plus is mostly identical to its predecessor, only scoring a few improvements here and there.
Is that bad, though? Not at all! The Galaxy S24 Plus from early 2024 was already pretty much a perfect mid-sized flagship phone, so little was needed in terms of improvements.
Incremental updates aren’t always a bad thing—sometimes, they’re precisely what a flagship series needs to stay consistent and reliable, and that's what Samsung is doing with the Galaxy S25 Plus. Samsung has been perfecting the "Galaxy S Plus" formula for the past few years, and the latest chapter in the story, the Galaxy S25 Plus, seems like the most polished one yet.
We get a superfast new chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, lots of cool new AI features, improved videography, as well as a more efficient display and a more compact design. All in all, a pretty decent set of refinements.
Here's how the Galaxy S25 Plus fares against its predecessor, according to all the rumors that have slipped through the grapevine.
Pre-order the Galaxy S25 Plus for up to $800+ off
$299
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$999
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$700 off (70%)
The exciting Galaxy S25 Plus has finally been revealed. Pre-orders are now open, and you can pre-order a unit for up to $700 off at the Samsung Store with eligible trade-ins. There's an additional $100 Samsung Credit available.
The "vanilla" Galaxy S25 is here! Now's the time to pre-order one with exclusive discounts of up to $500. To get the discount, you must trade in an eligible device. There's an additional $100 Samsung Credit available, which includes your $50 Reservation Gift!
Amazon has re-released its Galaxy S24+ sale, bringing one of the best Samsung phones under $800 for yet another time. This is the 128GB model in Amber Yellow, but the model in Marble Gray enjoys the same price cut. This sale will only last for a limited time.
Thinner and more compact, but with the familiar Galaxy DNA
Can you spot the changes? Not from this angle! (Image by PhoneArena)
The Galaxy S25 Plus employs the same general design as the Galaxy S24 Plus, with little to nothing being changed from an aesthetic perspective. If you look at both phones from three feet away, you will surely have a pretty hard time discerning which one's which.
The Armor Aluminum frame, completely flat and encased between the front and back Gorilla Glass Victus 2 plates, is here again, but what's changed here is the overall size of the phone. The Galaxy S25 Plus is slightly shorter, narrower, and significantly thinner, as well as a couple of grams lighter than the Galaxy S24 Plus without sacrificing anything in terms of ergonomics or hardware specs.
Both the Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S24 Plus will come with IP68 water and dust resistance. There are no extra customizable buttons on either phone.
While the Galaxy S25 Ultra has scored thinner bezels all around, which has allowed Samsung to enlarge the screen from 6.8 to 6.9 inches, no such thing has taken place on the Galaxy S25 Plus––it has the same 6.7-inch screen at the front, and that's perfectly fine.
In fact, the screen on the Galaxy S25 Plus is mostly identical to the Galaxy S24 Plus in terms of specs. Both have 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screens with HDR support, QHD+ resolution, and super-smooth 1-120Hz refresh rate. The peak brightness is 2600 nits, and neither has the anti-reflective coating that the Galaxy S24 Ultra/Galaxy S25 Ultra have.
Little to no changes on the front as well (Image by PhoneArena)
Still, there are some neat changes on the newer phone. Samsung says it uses a new mobile Digital Natural Image engine built into the phone's chipset, which will reportedly allow for big energy savings. Great to hear!
Another feature borrowed straight from Samsung's TV division is the ProScaler, which will intelligently upscale the content you watch on your phone. This will minimize artifacts when watching, say, a blurry low-bitrate YouTube video and will provide a more pleasing viewing experience by eliminating up to 40% of the artifacts.
The Galaxy S25 Plus comes in Navy, Silver Shadow, Icy Blue and Mint, while Pink Gold, Mint, Coral Red, and Blue Black will be sold exclusively on Samsung.com. The Galaxy S24 Plus, on the other hand, was available in Marble Gray, Onyx Black, Cobalt Violet, and Amber Yellow, while Jade Green, Sapphire Blue, Sandstone Orange are Samsung.com exclusives.
Biometrics-wise, both the Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S24 Plus come with an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner built right into the display, though facial unlock is also available for your convenience.
Performance and Software
The best Android chipset around
Just as expected, a custom, top-of-the-line Qualcomm chipset has been reined in to bolster the performance for the whole Galaxy S25 series. That's the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, a tuned-up and slightly overclocked version of the regular chip.
Interestingly, this year Samsung's isn't relying on its own Exynos chips, and there's a perfectly good reason for that: a ton of proprietary Samsung tech has been integrated straight inside the bespoke Qualcomm chip. And that's perfectly fine: by using the same chip in all regions, Samsung ensures uniform performance and a feature set common for all its Galaxy S25 phones.
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Samsung claims a 37% increase in CPU and 30% GPU performance compared to the Galaxy S24 Plus, while the NPU responsible for on-device AI-processing has scored a massive 40% increase in potential performance.
All of that power usually leads to, well, lots of generated heat that could potentially lead to thermal throttling, which is undesirable. The size of the vapor chamber on the Galaxy S25 Plus has been increased to help dissipate all the heat away in comparison with the Galaxy S24 Plus, which is promising to hear.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S24 Plus comes with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, which is by no means a slouch in early 2025, but will most certainly get beaten by its 3nm successor. That's just the law of the digital jungle. We're talking about synthetic benchmarks here, while in real-life use you might not spot a major difference between the two chips.
Both the Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S24 Plus come with 12GB of RAM, while the on-board storage is either 256GB or 512GB.
One feature in which we expect major improvements is Galaxy AI. Samsung has been at the forefront of delivering sensible AI feature to a vast majority of its high-end phones, and Galaxy AI is out there, working both on-device and with cloud-processing. We are pretty sure that Samsung will expand the capabilities of Galaxy AI with the Galaxy 25 series.
Software & AI
One UI 7 is coming preinstalled on the Galaxy S25 series, but the Galaxy S24 Plus is getting it soon as well. One UI 7 comes with lots of visual and functional changes; we've already previewed the One UI 7 beta here. While the latter did not come with any new AI features, the Galaxy S25 Plus does.
The coolest feature is called Cross App Action, and it lets the Gemini AI on your device access multiple apps and do things across them with just one simple request. For instance, you may request your Galaxy to verify the schedule of your preferred sports team and add each entry separately to your calendar so that you never miss a match.
Sounds relatively familiar to what Apple's revamped Siri might be able to do soon as part of the Apple Intelligence suite. The Galaxy S25 Plus' Cross App Actions feature reportedly has access to all the apps you have installed on your phone and is capable of tinkering with the settings of each so that you always achieve the desired effect.
Another novel software addition is the Now Brief, which summarizes different aspects of your day-to-day activities depending on the time of day and presents you with a neat summary.
Circle to Search and Now Bar (Image by Samsung and Google)
There's also the so-called Now Bar, which appears at the bottom of the lock screen and could display live activities, charging information, now playing and other mini widgets, similarly to the iPhone's Dynamic Island widgets.
Of course, Google's Gemini is fully on board (you get six months of free Gemini Advanced), and so is an enhanced Circle to Search functionality. It now comes with what is known as Action Chips, which are basically intelligent shortcuts to relevant features when you circle-to-search something. If you circle-to-search a phone number, Action Chips will let you make a phone call quickly; if you circle-to-search an address, you will be able to quickly use Google Maps to get there, and so on.
We don't know if these features will come to the Galaxy S24 Plus, but they will most likely do.
In terms of software support, the Galaxy S25 Plus will get supported for seven years––until 2032. That same policy applies to the Galaxy S24 Plus, which will get support until 2031.
Camera
Nothing on the hardware side, but potentially significant changes in software
The majority of improvements are on the software side (Image by PhoneArena)
With the Galaxy S25 Plus, we get the same triple camera setup as the one gracing ye oldeGalaxy S24 Plus. Brace yourselves, as the familiar and surprisingly agile combo of a 50MP main camera, 12MP ultrawide, and 10MP 3X telephoto is making a comeback. No major changes on the hardware front!
However, Samsung has done what it does best: changed up the "backend" of the camera, the image-processing algorithms and software. The Galaxy S25 Plus scores a new ProVisual Engine that's integrated into the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and delivers updated image-processing algorithms, which promise photos with less noise and motion blur, as well as better details. That's what we like to hear.
Other additions to the camera include a new virtual aperture feature for the Expert RAW shooting mode, varying between F1.4 to F14, enabling you to customize the background blur and sharpness. Generative edits and the object eraser have also been improved, and will no longer generate any undesirable artifacts.
Video has also got some crucial updates. Instead of 8-bit HDR video, we get 10-bit HDR video capture on the Galaxy S25 Plus, as well as Galaxy Log video capture for a flexible color-grading post-processing experience.
On-device AI has also been reined in for the new Audio Eraser feature, which lets you intelligently adjust the volumes of six different audio categories in your videos. The sounds you actually want can be mixed and isolated while minimizing unwanted noise and other sounds.
We will definitely run the new phone through the paces of our new Camera Test, where it will clash it its most prominent rivals.
Battery Life and Charging
No changes between the two devices, but the newer one might be longer-lasting (Image by PhoneArena)
No changes on the battery front: both phones come with 4,900mAh batteries. Still, we expect better battery life on the Galaxy S25 Plus due to the more efficient display and chipset, which is the second-best option for improved battery life after a pure battery capacity increase.
In terms of charging, the Galaxy S25 Plus isn't scoring a wired or wireless speed increase. This is why the 45W wired and 15W wireless are common on both the Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S24 Plus. That's as fast as the Galaxy S25 Ultra and better than the Galaxy S25, so little to no complaints here.
Which one should you get, and should you consider upgrading? (Image by PhoneArena)
Despite the lack of revolutionary changes to the mix, the Galaxy S25 Plus refines the essentials of its lineup, delivering premium design, strong performance, and robust software support. Priced at $999 (256GB) and $1,119 (512GB), it offers excellent value as a reliable flagship alternative to competitors like the iPhone 16 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro.
Is it a better phone than the Galaxy S24 Plus? Although our review of the new device is still pending, it's pretty safe to assume that if you're in the market for a Galaxy phone in 2025, you should skip the Galaxy S24 Plus and go for the S25 Plus instead.
But should Galaxy S24 Plus rush to upgrade to the Galaxy S25 Plus? Well, probably not, as the Galaxy S24 Plus is still a mighty fine and capable device, boasting 95% of the same features and functionalities as the newer device.
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Peter, an experienced tech enthusiast at PhoneArena, is captivated by all things mobile. His impartial reviews and proficiency in Android systems offer readers valuable insights. Off-duty, he delves into the latest cryptocurrency trends and enjoys sci-fi and video games.
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