Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Review: So close to perfection

The day everyone has been waiting for has arrived, as the Galaxy S25 Ultra is here. Unlike it's foldable counterparts, this isn't just another attempt at re-wrapping the present just to gift it again for another year.

No, we have slimmer bezels, a redesigned chassis, an improved camera, and all of the AI you could want! Oh, what's that? The printer ink is running out again? That's okay, the Navy S25 Plus stole it all, no worries.

But seriously, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra looks to revolutionize the way we use our smartphones, in more ways than one. Can it manage to live up to those claims? Or is there something lurking in the shadows that keeps this phone from being the best? Let's find out in our Galaxy S25 Ultra review!

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Pricing and availability

Samsung surprised many when it revealed that it would not be increasing the price of its flagship smartphone. It's available with three different storage configurations, with the 256GB model starting at $1,299. Plus, you won't have to fork up more dough for more RAM, as we have 12GB of memory across the board.

If you opt for picking one of these up from your local carrier or big box store, you'll have four colors to choose from: Titanium Black, Gray, Silverblue, or Whitesilver. However, there are three more colors that are only available through Samsung's online storefront: Titanium Jadegreen, Jetblack, and Pinkgold.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Specs

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Design and display

Now that I've had a few weeks with the Galaxy S25 Ultra under my belt, my initial impressions still stand. I appreciate Samsung changing the design to bring it in line with the other phones in its flagship lineup. Now when you look across all of Samsung's latest phones, its flat edges as far as the eye can see, and that level of uniformity is welcome.

There is one kink in the armor, so to speak, that I've come to realize, however. And it's the same problem that Apple faces, as there's just nothing really special about Samsung phones anymore. I'm sure at some point I wrote that the curved edges need to be banished to the shadow realm, but I don't think that was the right take.

Don't get me wrong, the Galaxy S25 Ultra feels great to hold and use, but it's just too darn slippery. I actually think I would've preferred for Samsung to take the Apple approach from the iPhone 14 Pro Max with the polished frame. At least this would give me some type of grip without feeling the need to bury the phone in a case for the rest of its life.

It's the same problem that I've had with both the iPhone 15 Pro Max and now 16 Pro Max. The matte finish on the frame just doesn't lend itself well to being used case-less. Even if you opt for Samsung Care+, which claims "unlimited repairs," that's just another potential headache waiting to happen.

Unfortunately, the magnetic alignment protocol of Qi2 charging isn't built into the phone itself. This means that I can't just say "I'm good," and use a MagSafe PopSocket to keep my phone in my hand. So instead, you're left relying on either Samsung's own magnetic case, or one of the third-party case options out there.

A recurring theme that I've felt throughout my time with the Galaxy S25 Ultra is that I want a phone that's worthy of the "Ultra" title. There are just a few too many papercuts that keep that from becoming a reality, and it's already started to wear down my excitement.

The redesigned chassis, allowed Samsung to make the display 0.1-inches larger than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. So we have a 6.9-inch slab of AMOLED glass staring us in the face all day and night.

It's a chance for Samsung to flex its muscles and show that it makes the best displays in the world, and for someone like me, I'd have to agree. The screen looks absolutely stunning, and surprisingly, I didn't immediately switch the color profile to the "natural" tone, as I've rather enjoyed the pop and punch offered by the S25 Ultra's display.

However, there's an asterisk attached to this and virtually any device that uses a Samsung OLED panel; if you suffer from Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), stay away. While the likes of Honor and OnePlus are implementing features to help combat PWM, Samsung has done nothing of the sort.

I don't currently have the specific display measurements, but I do know that it won't take long to affect those who suffer from PWM. During our almost two-hour-long hands-on session, my colleague Nick Sutrich remarked that he wouldn't have been able to look at the screens for much longer, as that relatively short amount of time managed to take a toll.

Perhaps I wouldn't feel as strongly as I do if I didn't happen to work with someone who has to worry about PWM on phones. But I'm actually thankful for Nick, because, without him, I wouldn't have any idea that PWM is a "thing," let alone being taught about how it affects people.

It would be one thing if Samsung would peel back the veil a bit, providing an actual reason as to why it's not working to remedy these issues. That's not the case, and instead, the most popular Android phone maker in the world continues to cut out a portion of its potential client base for reasons we can't explain.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Performance

When life gives you lemons, you let Samsung partner up and slap a "for Galaxy" on the brand sticker. Well, that's what the situation used to be like, as there have been versions of Qualcomm's latest chips specifically made available for Samsung flagships over the past few years.

However, that's not exactly the case with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, as Samsung explained that it worked with Qualcomm to develop a custom version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite. As you probably could have guessed, much of the reasoning can be attributed to improving the on-device AI capabilities. The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy aims to remove the reliance on the cloud for AI processing while offering some sort of peace of mind that your AI creations aren't directly being used to train Bixby or Gemini.

So what does the "most powerful" Android phone to date feel like in day-to-day usage? Just like every other flagship Galaxy phone. That's not a tongue-in-cheek comment, nor is it meant to be taken as a negative.

For 99% of people who decide to upgrade to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, it will feel exactly the same as the Galaxy S24 Ultra. And if you're upgrading from an older Galaxy Ultra, or a flagship from another brand, the S25 Ultra will feel like you just finished doing a clean install of Windows on a brand-new SSD.

Outside of emulation, I have yet to experience any hiccups, slowdowns, or anything of the sort with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. However, when I performed our gauntlet of benchmarks, I did notice a few oddities.

Of the five phones that are included in the chart above, all of which are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the Galaxy S25 Ultra only came in first in one test. Just one. In every other benchmarking test, Samsung's latest and greatest is easily outperformed by one, or most, of the competition.

It's unlikely that you would notice much of a difference between the S25 Ultra and the RedMagic 10 Pro, but I can't help but wonder why the results played out this way. Perhaps there's some type of artificial bottleneck that Samsung and/or Qualcomm have implemented. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer, but I will be interested to see whether these numbers begin to shift once software updates are rolling out on a regular basis.

We're on the precipice of something great

Whenever I get my hands on a new device, one of the first things I do is load it up with all of the best emulators. Doing so gives me a pretty good idea of what performance could be like, especially since I love trying to see what devices are capable of running my favorite Switch games.

With all of the performance gains that have been described to us about the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and the 8 Elite for Galaxy, I couldn't wait to see what the S25 Ultra could do. However, this is where I hit a brick wall, one that I can't work my way around.

Between the Snapdragon 8 Elite being such a new chip, and Nintendo's never-ending warpath against Switch emulators, development has pretty much slowed to a crawl. Following the demise of both Yuzu and Ryujinx in 2024, there have been a few forks that are still kicking around, but none of them have been optimized for Qualcomm's latest chip.

Adding another layer of frustration is the lack of driver support, as some emulators allow you to install and use custom GPU drivers. The reason that this is important, from what I've been told, is that Qualcomm's native Adreno drivers just aren't very good. And with the 8 Elite being so new, driver development simply hasn't picked up much steam for the latest devices.

So while upgrading from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and its Adreno 740 GPU to the 8 Gen 3 with the Adreno 750 wasn't a massive leap, that's not the case with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Qualcomm's 2025 flagship chip introduces the Adreno 830 GPU, which makes use of a "newly sliced architecture."

This is how Qualcomm claims the 8 Elite is able to provide a 40% boost in performance and efficiency. Unfortunately, a new architecture means that third-party driver development has to basically start from scratch.

That was a long-winded way of saying: good luck trying to get anywhere with higher-end emulation for the foreseeable future. But at the same time, once all of the puzzle pieces fall into place, the 8 Elite will be unstoppable.

Battery life and charging

One rather surprising area of improvement has come in the form of battery life. No, Samsung isn't using a bigger battery, and we're still stuck in 2019 with 45W wired charging speeds. But over the past few weeks, I've come to realize that I don't have any anxiety about the Galaxy S25 Ultra running out of juice before I'm ready to go to bed.

Mind you, I don't keep the most regular hours, waking up between 7 AM and 9 AM, and not going to bed until after 2 AM. Not once did I find myself needing to pop the phone on the charger just to give me a few extra minutes of doom-scrolling social media.

This is what I would expect from a flagship phone, especially one that's touted as being 40% more power efficient than its predecessor. However, that's the same song and dance that we've been sold by many Android phone makers in recent years, so it's kind of turned into an "OEM who cried wolf" situation.

The "best" battery day I've had resulted in the S25 Ultra lasting from around 6 AM until it gave up the ghost around 8 AM the next morning. According to the Battery activity page, I had about six hours of screen on time, which was comprised of some YouTube, Pokemon TCGP, Discord, social media scrolling, and a few other random apps.

Even on the day that I finish off this review, the S25 Ultra manages to hold up like a champ. My day started around 9:30 AM when my wife kicked me out of bed. After getting ready for the day and checking in with my compadres, I needed to go take some more camera samples.

While making stops at a few different places, the entire time I was taking pictures, the S25 Ultra was unlocked with the Camera app open. Not once did I even feel the phone get warm, but that's probably thanks to the 30-degree weather and not so much the phone needing to work overtime to keep things cool.

Here I sit, at a little past 11:30 PM, and the S25 Ultra is at 26%. I also know that even if I don't go to bed until 2 or 3 AM, I won't need to plug it in until then. Which is just a peace of mind that I quite enjoy.

All of that being said, I think it's an absolute disappointment that no improvements were made to the charging speeds on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Sure, if you use Samsung's special case, you "unlock" the ability to use the Qi2.1 protocol, but there's no actual benefit to that besides adding a magnet.

Which, by the way, I can already do with plenty of third-party cases. And, I'm not limited to just a clear case design either. Worst case scenario, I snag a dbrand skin and a MagSafe ring adapter, and call it a day.

If it weren't for phones like the OnePlus 13 with its 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, then we probably wouldn't be so annoyed. On top of that, Samsung making the S25 Ultra Q2.1 compliant, while limiting charging speeds, and requiring the use of a first-party case, just feels like a slap in the face.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Cameras

Is it just me, or is it kind of ironic that when Apple makes certain changes, Samsung tends to follow suit? For instance, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is now 6.9 inches, up from the 6.7-inch 15 Pro Max. No? What about the move from a 12MP ultrawide to a 48MP ultrawide? Sound familiar?

Anyways, the only camera upgrade that Samsung introduced with the Galaxy S25 Ultra over its predecessor is a new 50MP ultrawide lens. Last year's model offered a 12MP sensor, which performed well enough but definitely fell flat in certain situations.

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As is the case with the 200MP main lens and the 50MP telephoto sensor, you're not actually taking a 50MP ultrawide photograph. Instead, we end up right back at the 12MP "sweet spot" thanks to pixel binning. This allows for more light and detail to be captured, which can come in quite handy considering that the ultrawide camera doubles as your macro lens.

That being said, I've never really had a problem with the pictures that I've taken from the best Samsung phones over the years. My problems have stemmed from the slight delay between tapping the "Capture" button and the picture actually being taken.

However, I think Samsung might have solved the problem once and for all. Maybe. There are two pictures that I've included that make me feel like this $1,300 phone is actually a potato. No, like really. I don't know what happened, but neither picture should've turned out this way.

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Other than those two anomalies, I'm almost tempted to leave my trusty Canon 70D behind and just start using the S25 Ultra for all of my photography needs moving forward. There's plenty of versatility just in the sheer number of cameras, plus, things like Expert RAW and Camera Assistant give me even more flexibility when snapping shots.

This isn't the end of the line for our Galaxy S25 Ultra camera coverage, as I'm also working on a rather in-depth camera comparison. You definitely won't want to miss it.

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Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Software and Galaxy AI

If you've used a Samsung phone in the past couple of years, you'll feel right at home with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Yes, there are a few dramatic changes, such as the addition of Now Brief, the more "bubbly" UI, and the redesigned Notification Shade/Quick Toggles drawer. But for the most part, One UI still feels the same as before.

I can't help but feel as though the reason why Samsung waited so long to release One UI 7 for the Galaxy S24 series was more to do with the AI integration than the actual UI changes. Then again, there's a reason why I'm writing about it, and not working on software for Samsung or another phone maker.

UI changes aside, mostly everything about Samsung's software on the Galaxy S25 Ultra works the same. There is one curious exception, as Samsung made the odd decision to basically hide lock screen notifications. If it weren't for some others in the industry, I don't know how long it would've taken me to find the fix, but I really wish Samsung would stop making changes to basic features for seemingly no reason.

At the very least, it could've let everyone in on the secret ahead of time. Or maybe, add a screen that shows up during the initial setup process that lets you decide how you want notifications to appear.

Now that I know what the problem was and have fixed it, my phone works just as I'd have expected it to out of the box. But here we are again, at another one of those "paper-cuts" that continue to add up and cause frustrations and irritations.

That being said, for as much as I prefer Google's aesthetics, One UI is just too good to pass up. There really aren't many compromises when it comes to what you can make the Galaxy S25 Ultra do. Sure, you can't have the phone do all of the AI tasks locally on-device, but that's only a handful.

At least with One UI, the aforementioned problem with lock screen notifications can be remedied. It was just a matter of finding the settings panel to make the needed changes. This isn't the case with every OEM out there, as some features will simply be removed or changed without any way of "going back."

Not to mention that Samsung continues to lead the charge when it comes to software updates. Since it's being released with One UI 7 based on Android 15, the S25 Ultra will be officially supported for seven years, until 2032.

The perfect AI for someone else

If you managed to sit through and read my long-winded hands-on impressions, I first want to thank you. Now, I want to apologize. I genuinely came away thinking that all of the new Galaxy AI and Gemini-infused features would change my life overnight. In practice, it's had very little actual impact.

While it's true that the Now Brief widget lives on my home screen, I have made checking it part of my daily routine. However, the "shimmer" is starting to wear off, as are the other features that Samsung announced.

The problem is that I just don't think this was designed for people like me in mind, at least not yet. Yes, my life is busy enough that it makes my head spin, but none of those problems can be solved by AI. Why? Because I work from home, and neither my one-year-old nor I ever actually leave the house.

Shortly after the S25 Ultra arrived, I've slowly been coming to this realization, and as a result, have been trying to manufacture ways that Galaxy AI and Gemini can "help." Maybe I'm just not thinking far enough outside of the box, but I can only go so far with trying to make things up.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that it's completely useless. I'm just saying that for someone like me, and where I'm at currently in life, there's just not much that AI can do to help.

What really drove this point home was Now Brief, with it showing the same few things every day: the weather, my sleep score, upcoming calendar events, and news from topics that I don't care about and can't change. Rinse and repeat for days and weeks, and I've learned that I'm either a background character in The Truman Show or Groundhog Day.

The biggest caveat (for me)

For as great as One UI 7 seems to be so far, there's one thing that stopped me from moving my main SIM card to the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It's definitely not the lack of features, because Samsung does an excellent job at packing its flagship phones to the brim. Instead, the experience fell flat for me whenever it came to trying to use more than one app at a time.

This is completely subjective, but for me, every time I found myself wanting or needing to multitask, I was immediately reminded of my endearment for foldable phones. Of course, as an iPhone owner, I'm aware of the limitations of iOS and that you can't even use split-screen apps if you want to.

But the idea of shrinking the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display into two almost 3.5-inch screens just feels archaic. Oh and if you need to actually type in either of those app windows, you're better off just grabbing your tablet or laptop. It's definitely possible to do everything I've described, but it will definitely test your patience.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: The Competition

Here's a shocking revelation that you weren't expecting — the iPhone 16 Pro Max is not the biggest competition to the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It's a competitor, for sure, but I'd argue that the OnePlus 13 actually takes home that crown. Why? Well, to borrow from our review, "The OnePlus 13 is the best Android phone ever made. It's the only phone I've ever given a perfect review score because there's no area where the phone falters or needs real improvement."

Another massive reason why the OnePlus 13 is worth consideration over the Galaxy S25 Ultra is the price. Even while "lacking" a fourth telephoto lens, the OnePlus 13 is just $899 in its base configuration with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. And if you want to get 512GB of storage, you also get 16GB of RAM, all for just another $100. I could really keep going, but just go check out Nick's review to see why.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is probably the phone that you'll see most compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and for good reason. Both phones sport 6.9-inch displays, powerful camera systems, and steep price tags. However, I'd go so far as to say that the S25 Ultra is the better choice if you want the best AI experience, as Apple has a lot of work to do.

What if you're looking for the ultimate mobile gaming experience? Then I'd point you in the direction of either the RedMagic 10 Pro or the ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro. Both phones have built-in active cooling systems, along with a few unique features that help separate them from every other slab of glass out there. Plus, they're both less expensive than the S25 Ultra when matching up storage configurations.

And if the OnePlus 13 or iPhone 16 Pro Max doesn't scratch the photography itch, there's always the Vivo X200 Pro. In his review, Harish Jonnalagadda, Senior Editor of Asia, says "... the X200 Pro has what is arguably one of the strongest camera packages, and the combination of the 50MP main lens and versatile zoom lens gives it a distinct advantage."

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Should you buy it?

You should buy this if...

• You want one of the best Android phones of 2025.
• You're already entrenched in Samsung's ecosystem.
• You want to see what Galaxy AI and Gemini can do for you.
• You want an extremely versatile camera system.

You shouldn't buy this if...

• You're on a budget.
• You suffer from PWM.

After realizing my excitement about the Galaxy S25 Ultra, I fully expected to finally move my personal SIM card over. Yet here I stand, some three weeks or so later, and that hasn't happened.

On paper, the S25 Ultra is everything one could want. It has the latest Galaxy AI features that are supercharged by Google Gemini. Now Brief is the perfect idea if you don't have much time but want to quickly catch up on what's happening throughout the day. And I think my prayers about the camera's shutter lag have finally been answered.

If I lived in a vacuum or didn't care about foldable phones, there's a very good chance that the S25 Ultra would be my daily driver. In a sense, it will continue to be, but it just won't be where my main SIM card resides. Instead, it will be my main Android phone for the time being, at least until the next foldable phone gets announced, at which point I'll have another decision on my hands.

To answer the question posed, I probably wouldn't upgrade if I already had the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Sure, the improved ultrawide sensor is a nice touch, and the AI features could pay off, but there's just not enough yet that would sway me to do so. That being said, if you have the budget (or are due for an upgrade), and are using a phone from before 2024, then the S25 Ultra is absolutely worth it. Just make sure you do your due diligence and look around at the competition before making the final decision.