by Samsung’s first unboxing of the year is perhaps its most important event yet. It set the tone for much of the smartphone market in the first half of 2025, introducing Samsung’s flagship for the year, the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Tagged the Galaxy S25 and S25+, which is probably the highest praise we could give them. Oh, and Samsung teased a Galaxy S25 lead and while it’s around four edges, it has little to do with its legendary namesakes.
So without further ado, here is our hot take on the series.
One UI 7 is great, AI finally looks attractive
The first half hour of Samsung’s 1 hour and 10 minute January 2025 unpacked presentation was about one UI and AI, so we’ll start there.
For the first time, Samsung delayed its only UI update from late fall to mid-winter. Seeing the end result makes that delay feel worth it. Samsung’s new take on the user interface feels fresh and, crucially, faster. And it brings unprecedented features like a vertical app drawer – imagine all the possibilities!
Jokes aside, the new Gemini-powered AI Smarts feel worthwhile – not just gimmicks. Circle to Search can now recognize phone numbers, emails and URLs for quick actions. Multimodal AI agents interpret text, speech, images and even videos for natural interactions – you can ask Gemini to find a specific photo in the gallery, for example. Search is content-aware and suggests your next step – sharing a GIF or saving an event.
Natural language input allows you to control certain phone functions. For example, you can do a voice search in your gallery and ask the AI assistant to fetch photos from your trip to a certain place. You can even ask it to enlarge the font if it’s too small!
We like the new design of the Galaxy S25 Ultra
The Galaxy S Ultra entered its rectangular phase in early 2022 with the Galaxy S22 Ultra. It was distinctive and unique and it particularly lent itself to a pen-equipped phone.
But the new rounded shape looks smarter and more importantly, it brings a big improvement in handling. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a large phone and this makes it comfortable to hold.
Impressively, Samsung made the display 0.1-inch larger, the phone 0.4mm thinner and 14g lighter, without compromising durability or the size of internals like the battery!
The best display glass gets even better
The Galaxy S24 Ultra remained the only phone with an anti-glare display on the market, despite rumors that other manufacturers would come up with the same technology. The less-reflective display proved great for outdoor visibility, as our summer battery test proved.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra could easily have been in that lead, but it brings a further improved panel – the Gorilla Armor 2 retains its anti-glare bestowal, but is brighter and more durable.
The new 50MP Ultrawide sounds good on paper, but early samples are unconvincing
Samsung only upgraded the ultrawide angle camera on the Galaxy S25 Ultra – the other 12 cameras across the ultra, plus and vanilla remained unchanged. Gone is the 12MP sensor with f/2.2 optics, comes a new 50MP imager with a brighter f/1.9 lens. The focal length remains at 120°.
The higher megapixel camera opens 8K videos and on paper should produce ultrawides with more detail, while the improved aperture should deliver nicer shots in low light.
However, we don’t see it in our first samples. We have two camera comparisons between the Galaxy S24 Ultra and S25 Ultra (part 1, part 2) and we can’t easily say that the new camera is better. The older one seems to produce sharper photos with more detail.
That’s a theme throughout – the main 200MP camera benefits from the newer (and probably faster) ISP of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Chip and yet we see sharper and more detailed images from the older phone.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is the worst ultra in the world for photography
Compare the Samsung Ultra to the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, Vivo’s X100 Ultra, Huawei’s Pura 70 Ultra, or Oppo Find X7 Ultra and it will come last in overall imaging performance. It’s not a good look for the company that invented the segment.
S Pen Downgrade, Really???
Samsung deliberately removed Bluetooth connectivity from the S pen in the Galaxy S25 Ultra. There’s also no accelerometer, which means no air actions. The S pen used to be the best remote shutter in the world and now it’s just a stylus. Very strange.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform for Galaxy only
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is an important step further from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The “for Galaxy” indicates slightly higher clock speeds on the main 2x Oryon V2 Phoenix L cores, the GPU and the NPU. The “original” SD 8 elite runs them at 4.32 GHz, while the Galaxy-exclusive CPU runs at 4.47 GHz.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
Fans around the world will be happy to know that every Galaxy S25 unit around the world uses this chipset.
The Galaxy S25 and S25+ are boring
Apart from the new chipset, the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ are unchanged from their predecessors. They have the same displays, the same batteries, the same charging speeds and the same cameras.
They didn’t get the anti-glare display, the new ultrawide camera or even an autofocusing ultrawide. But hey, the Galaxy S25 now comes with the same 12GB of RAM as the plus and ultra.
No global variant with 16 GB RAM
But seriously, only 12GB of RAM on the Galaxy S25 Ultra sounds insulting. The Pixel 9 Pro has 16 GB, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra tops it at 16 GB, while the OnePlus 13 even has up to 24 GB of RAM.
Samsung Galaxy S25
Yes, there is technically a 16GB Galaxy S24 Ultra, but you can’t buy one outside of Korea, China, and Taiwan. Again, it’s not a good look.
There is now a Galaxy S25 Edge
Samsung teased the Galaxy S25 Edge. Rumored to be the S25 Slim, the edge brings up a line of legendary handhelds by Samsung. The first was the Galaxy Note Edge which had a sloping right edge that opened up additional functionality such as the edge screen. Others, like the Galaxy S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, and Galaxy S7 Edge, had two sloping edges that felt as sharp as a knife at the time.
The new Galaxy S25 edge seems blunt in comparison. It looks more like a Galaxy Alpha.
Are there too many models now?
There may now be at least one Galaxy S25 model too many. If Samsung brings out a Galaxy S25 Fe later, it would make the series even harder to navigate. We may be ready for a world where the smallest galaxies or the middle ones are unnecessary.
