Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review: one small step for AI... eh, no leaps

The Ultra models have traditionally featured a sharp rectangular design, inherited from the old Galaxy Note line. Their side frame was still rounded off, where your fingers naturally rest. However, the Galaxy S25 Ultra comes with fully flat sides all around. The corners of the phone are slightly arched, breaking that pointy rectangle look, but not by a lot. It still has that "all business" look from the front.

No question, it's still rated IP68 for water- and dust-resistance, and Galaxy S25 Ultra still includes the fan-favorite S Pen. It's also slightly thinner and lighter than the Galaxy S24 Ultra, with a 0.4 mm reduction in thickness and 14 grams shaved off its weight. Though, when holding both, the difference is miniscule if any.

There's no major change in the placement of power and volume buttons, speakers, S Pen slot, camera lenses, and selfie camera punch-hole. Though the main camera rings appear slightly lifted off the phone's body, but they create a nice little gap to collect all of your pocket lint. We now know that was an intentional design decision, and Samsung calls it "floating cameras". It's meant to signify how powerful the cameras are... somehow?

When it comes to colors, the top-tier Ultra phones feature "muted" titanium paintjobs. The Galaxy S25 Ultra's selection of shades is Black, Gray, Silver Blue, and White Silver, with exclusive colors on Samsung.com being Pinkgold, Jetblack, and Jadegreen. Our excitement over Jetblack was for naught. While the regular black comes with a matte silver-ish titanium frame, the Jetblack edition comes with black frame and black back... Not shiny or glossy, all matte. It's fine, they look mature and like they mean business, but if you are looking for a more "fun" phone, maybe look into the Galaxy S25 and S25+ for their colors.

Samsung's AMOLED panels have been at their peak for some time now, with the latest iteration branded as Dynamic AMOLED 2X. This highlights the adaptive refresh rate (1-120 Hz) and impressive peak brightness, now reaching 2,600 nits. The Galaxy S25 Ultra retains these features, with the only noticeable change being its size. Thanks to slightly thinner bezels, the screen diagonal has increased from 6.8 inches on the S24 Ultra to 6.9 inches. The difference is minimal and barely noticeable in everyday use.

Both models feature Gorilla Armor glass on the front. The S25 Ultra specs say Gorilla Armor 2, but there's no change in how it looks. The low reflectivity seems to be the same — light reflections are a bit more bluish, but the same in level of brightness as before. That's to say — very low, the visibility of these displays is awesome.

Display Measurements:

Essentially, the display remains the same outstanding panel, offering infinite contrast, sharp resolution, vivid colors, HDR support, and a variable refresh rate of up to 120 Hz. For fans of the Vivid color mode, there are now three stages of "vividness" to pick from. In case you are missing the hot AMOLED saturation from years back, you will be happy when dialing that up to 3.

Beneath the screen, there's the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, which Samsung has refined over several generations. It is exceptionally fast and accurate, requiring just a brief touch on the indicated area. Face unlock is also available, but since it relies solely on the selfie camera, it isn’t as secure or widely accepted for banking or payment apps.

For video, we have a strange turn in results. The clips from the Galaxy S25 Ultra come out more greenish, more vivid than from the S24 Ultra. Stabilization seems to be on par, and details look great on both, especially when zooming in. It's quite impressive how far these phones have come.

Qualcomm has officially unveiled its latest and fastest chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, now built on a 3 nm process for greater power and improved energy efficiency. This marks the second time Qualcomm has rebranded its flagship chips in recent years. Oh well, no confusion here!

Powering the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the Snapdragon 8 Elite comes with the "for Galaxy" branding, indicating a slight overclock compared to the standard version. According to Samsung and Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Elite boasts a 30% faster CPU, 37% faster GPU, and 40% faster NPU, compared to last year's S24 Ultra and its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (for Galaxy).

The Galaxy S25 Ultra also features a 40% larger vapor cooling chamber to maintain consistent performance from the Snapdragon 8 Elite. At least, that's what we hoped before launching the tests.

Performance Benchmarks:

And yes, the Galaxy S25 Ultra did get very respectable top scores on the benchmarks. But it's worth noting, it takes up to 2 cycles of the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme stress test for the processor to throttle down to 4,000 points. By cycle 7, it starts hovering around 3,000 points until the end of the test. This is very close to what an iPhone 16 Pro Max with an Apple A18 Pro would do. But a more optimized phone, like the gaming uber-machine Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, can stick to a score of 5,900 for the full test.

OK, fine, so it's not a king of the stress tests. How is the Galaxy S25 Ultra in real life? Very snappy! It opens apps fast, it scrolls fluidly, it's fun to use. No complaints from us.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra offers the same configurations as its predecessor: 12 GB of RAM paired with storage options of 256 GB, 512 GB, or 1 TB.

On the bright side, Samsung is currently offering early adopters incentives during the pre-order period, such as "free storage upgrades" and attractive trade-in deals to celebrate the launch of the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra ships with Android 15 and One UI 7. It introduces a redesigned user interface, new Live Notifications reminiscent of the iPhone's Dynamic Island widget, and some more new AI-powered features. These include AI Select, which acts like a supercharged version of Circle to Search, instantly recognizing everything on your screen, and a multi-modal brain, allowing users to link queries across multiple apps and sources, executing actions within other apps seamlessly.

Interestingly, these features are part of Google's Gemini AI framework, which means they'll also roll out to the Galaxy S24 series and other recent Android devices. Bixby is still there... hidden in the Settings. By default, when holding the phone's side button, you call up Gemini, but you can set that up to be Bixby instead.

You are also getting 6 months of Gemini Advanced for free with a Galaxy S25 Ultra, with 2 TB of cloud storage, too. Apparently, Samsung's and Google's partnership is deepening.

The S25 Ultra also upgrades its video editor with an Audio Eraser feature that cleans up vocal audio, much like the iPhone 16 Pro’s Audio Mix, which can make voices sound studio-quality. It's a bit less robust, it doesn't have multiple modes like the iPhone does. But you get to pick from different categories of sounds to "erase" — voice, random noise, or music that happened to be in the video. It does an OK job of it.

We do have to mention the S Pen here. Don't worry, it's as great as ever, but it has shed its Bluetooth functionality. This means, you can no longer use the S Pen as a remote shutter button, as a remote play key for your music, or to do that magic wand wavey thing in the air and navigate through the phone. If you've forgotten that those features are even there — don't worry, so have we. It makes sense why Samsung would remove them. They required the S Pen to have a battery and be charged, and nobody really used them that much.

With a 7-year software support commitment, the Galaxy S25 Ultra could remain relevant until 2032. That’s a long lifespan for a smartphone, making it a great option for those who prefer not to upgrade frequently.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra still sticks to that comfortable 5,000 mAh, instead of pushing the envelope like some manufacturers are trying to. 

So, any gains in endurance will all be up to the 3 nm Snapdragon 8 Elite's efficiency, and maybe some software optimizations. Well, how is it?

PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:

So, the battery life of the S25 Ultra is very much similar to the S24 Ultra, with about half an hour of endurance added. That's fine, but not a champion. We can still rely on it to last a day, for sure, and definitely a day and a half after the honeymoon period is over.

Charging capabilities remain the same, with the Galaxy S25 Ultra supporting up to 45 W wired charging. It also supports the new Qi2 wireless charging standard, potentially enabling 15 W wireless charging pucks. However, don’t expect compatibility with magnetic accessories. Magnets interfere with the S Pen's digitizer functionality, and Samsung has opted to avoid them altogether. You can still buy cases for the Galaxy S25 Ultra that have a magnetic ring in them — both official cases and 3rd party — and add that functionality.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra scored a small upgrade in the speakers department, too. It sounds slightly louder and slightly meatier than the S24 Ultra. Its bass response has shifted a bit, with a slight hump in the low, low mids instead of a deeper bottom end. It does still sound a bit honky in the mids, and it does still compress slightly when you pump up the volume. While the sound is quite good for what you would expect from a phone, it's still not quite Bluetooth speaker-like.

The haptics — no need to even go there. They've been excellent for some years now, and they still are. The clicks of the S25 Ultra are on point, quick, responsive, and satisfying.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a bit of a letdown. Yes, it's a great Android phone, it has all the bells and whistles, and it will probably be pretty popular throughout 2025. But, if you were looking for some meaningful upgrades over the S24 Ultra — you won't find them here. Even Samsung had trouble trying to stir up excitement for the S25 series, presenting AI features on-stage like they were the best thing since sliced bread... while they are mostly "Enhanced search".

That said, we live in a very different world now. You are probably not coming from an S24 Ultra. If this is a big leap of an upgrade for you, or your first premium smartphone, you will certainly be happy with it. There's a good reason why it doesn't bring a lot of improvements — Samsung has the formula down, and phones like Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy S23 Ultra were already excellent. No surprise, so is the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Looking for the golden nugget of a secret tip? Look for a discounted Galaxy S24 Ultra. You didn't hear it from us!