It’s hard to believe that it’s that time of the year again, the first of the top-tier phone releases has arrived in the Samsung Galaxy S25 range headlined by the flagship Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. It’s been a few big years for the Ultra range with many regarding it as the best smartphone in the Android line-up, and whilst the S25 Ultra isn’t a massive jump forward, there’s a bunch of improvements across the board.
When it comes to physical changes, they’re subtle but they actually do come together to make quite a difference. The S25 Ultra has rounded edges which make holding the phone a lot nicer of an experience, it’s thinner at 8.2 mm (vs 8.6mm), is 1.4mm less wide and lighter at 218 grams (versus 233 grams). These don’t sound like a lot on paper, but absolutely do make a noticeable difference in the hands, especially if you’re somebody like me that has their phone out most of the time. The design of the S25 Ultra is still super high-end. It’s one of the nicest pieces of tech on the market, and as a flagship, Samsung has once again hit it out of the park with this design.
I also wanted to call out the new official Crocs case which is one of my favourite things about the new phones. I’ve got the same Crocs in that same bone colour (which I’ve learned to love) and I already had a bunch of Jibbitz for my favourite characters which easily went straight into the Crocs case. It’s bulky, and quite frankly a bit ridiculous but it’s so much fun. There’s a strap that you can customise and either take off or put in multiple positions using a screwdriver and I’d have to think that it does a good amount to protect your phone with its bulkiness.
@shannongrixti The Crocs Samsung Galaxy S25 case is super cute and customisable #Samsung #GalaxyS25Ultra #SamsungGalaxyS25Ultra #S25Ultra #CrocsCase #GalaxyCrocsCase #Phone #Android
Whilst I haven’t performed any drop tests, the S25 Ultra has second generation glass and the durability of the titanium has also been improved which should hopefully mean that over time, the S25 Ultra will be able to withstand drops and general wear and tear a lot better than those that came before it.
I’ve never been a massive user of the S Pen but I did really appreciate the air gestures, but apparently they are no longer there as the S Pen lacks Bluetooth connectivity, so whilst you’re able to still scribble notes complete with pressure sensing capabilities. It’s not something that I think a lot of people will be upset about, but it is an odd way to step backwards.
The display on the S25 Ultra is still fantastic. It’s a tad larger at 6.9-inches, and still retains that 120hz Dynamic AMOLED display with a peak brightness of 2,600 nits. It’s fantastic for watching videos, playing games, looking at photos and absolutely anything else that you might be using your phone for, and remains one of the best displays in a mobile phone. The bezel has also been reduced meaning you’re getting a much better display to phone ratio.
As far as the processor goes, it has an improved Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite which is a 3NM chip. It makes everything run a little faster, playing games such as Call of Duty: Mobile are a genuine joy, and it feels like we’re really hitting the limit of what’s possible in mobile phone processing, in the best possible way. You can expect slightly better battery life because of the new processor, but nothing to write home about.
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The camera experience on the S25 Ultra still remains the ultimate experience in a Samsung phone. You’ve still got your 200 MP main camera, a 10 MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom, a 50 MP periscope camera with a 5x optical zoom and a brand new 50 MP ultrawide camera (previously 12 MP) which is a massive improvement over last year’s sensor. When the S24 Ultra was so damn good, it’s hard to blow it out of the park with improvements, so it’s a mild improvement here, but that’s on something that was already fantastic.
Really though, the new features this year come in the way of software both through Android 15 and Samsung’s One UI 7, which Samsung will continue to update for seven years for security updates and seven generations of OS updates, which is a huge commitment for an Android phone.
The whole goal here for Samsung has clearly been making the AI process more intuitive and it shows. Most of the features you’ll be familiar with if you’ve paid attention to other phones last year. This includes the ability to easily search your gallery, or easily be presented with AI options among apps that are really great at recognising what you want to do.
There’s big improvement to the lock screen as well including a Now bar that will bring updates such as your favourite sporting team, or timely reminders that are contextually relevant or the ability to control your music directly from your lock screen as well. There’s also the Now Brief which will give you contextually relevant overviews of your life both in the morning and evening, so obviously in the morning it’ll present things like how well you slept and the weather whilst in the evening, you’ll be able to look at reminders for the next day.
For those that want to edit their images, Generative Edit is a big improvement here too. You can use generative AI to edit your photos to remove things, with AI doing a really great job of figuring out what to replace, and you also get familiar Android features such as Audio Eraser to clean up your videos, with AI obviously playing a pretty big part in cleaning up photos generally as well.
Again, nothing feels hugely revolutionary on what has been there in previous years, but I do think the entire experience is a lot more simple for those that aren’t reading about tech every day, and it actually provides more useful features rather than just slapping AI on the box for the sake of it, so it’s a positive.
All-in-all, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra isn’t a revolutionary improvement, but it does enough to keep it in the top spot for Android devices. It was always going to be hard for Samsung to come out and do something radically different this year, and it doesn’t need to at this point given how well-realised its suite of devices are.
