The number reflects the year, so the start of 2025 sees the introduction of Samsung’s latest flagship family of devices – the Galaxy S25, with the base Galaxy S25, larger Galaxy S25+ and the ultimate Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. We have had a couple of days with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra since the Samsung Unpacked event on 22 January in San Jose, USA, and the Korean chaebol has outdone itself once again with improved features and upgrades.
Naturally, the answer is always if you should make the switch and upgrade your hardware, and the reality is that few phones offer that life-changing technology our minds seem to crave. In essence, the Samsung S25 fits the criteria of providing small incremental upgrades from last year’s models, but there are a few noteworthy ones on the Galaxy S25 Ultra that would make you jump from last year’s models, or from other Android makers.
Slimmer and Lighter
As with every new phone iteration, phone manufacturers constantly strive to make their devices thinner and lighter, and this year, Samsung has repeated it marginally in the size and slimness department. But while most users will have trouble noticing the difference visually, the weight difference on the Galaxy S25 Ultra is pretty noticeable when held in our hands.

To put it into perspective for you, the Galaxy S25 Ultra measures 162.8mm (H) x 77.6mm (W) x 8.2mm compared to 162.3mm (H) x 79mm (W) x 8.6mm (D) for the S24 Ultra. That’s 0.4mm thinner, so don’t expect to see the difference when comparing them side-by-side. As for its weight, the S25 Ultra is at 218g, down from 232g of the S24 Ultra. Although 14g lighter seems very meager, it does feel lighter in your hand, perhaps aided by the now flat sides of the phone and rounded corners.
Powered by the Snapdragon Elite 8 Mobile Platform
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is now powered by the speedy new Snapdragon 8 Elite, which according to Samsung, delivers a performance boost of 40% in NPU, 37% in CPU and 30% in GPU compared to the previous generation. There should also be some energy savings which would mean a longer battery life on the 5,000 mAh battery (which is the same size as the S24 Ultra). As it is too early to tell now, we will need more time to test this aspect out, and will be covered in our review in the coming days.
We did however, manage to run a comprehensive gaming test on the device with Zenless Zone Zero, Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, and PUBG Mobile, and the device aced it in every way. All four titles played smoothly on the device with little to no frame rate drops, which is an impressive feat in itself, as Zenless Zone Zero and Wuthering Waves are notorious for their hardware-intensive nature. In particular, its thermal management capabilities proved to be the standout here, surpassing expectations with a standard comparable to that of its gaming-focused counterparts. Check out the video above for yourself.
Upgraded 50MP Ultra-Wide Camera

The Ultra-Wide camera sensor for the Samsung S25 Ultra is now bumped up to 50MP (megapixels), from the S24 Ultra’s 12MP. Though it can be hard to discern the improvements with everyday photography, it’s actually much more noticeable in the macro photography department. We can now place the camera lens really close to the subject, up to a mere 2cm away, and it is still able to focus and capture the crisp, detailed textures of surfaces. Have a look at some samples of photos we took in San Francisco and see it for yourselves. Thanks to the 50MP sensor, it is able to attain up to four times more detail than before.










Now Bar & Now Brief
Samsung has introduced their own iteration of iPhone’s Dynamic Island, and it’s called the “Now Bar”. Think of it as a bigger bar, and instead of being located at the top of the phone screen, it is right at the bottom, and it can be toggled between several active apps by simply swiping the bar up or down. Tapping on the Now Bar will expand it slightly, so you are able to control say the timer, voice recording, or run. From what we have tested, it seems to support mostly Samsung’s own native apps, such as Clock, Interpreter, Samsung Health, Voice Recorder, Samsung Notes and Emergency sharing, along with Google’s Sports updates and Maps. From what we understand, other third-party app support such as Spotify will be added in the near future. It’s definitely a nifty little addition to have on the phone’s lock screen, but we’ll just have to see how it can expand its app support in the coming months, before it can truly be useful.

“Now Brief” on the other hand, is like getting a personalised briefing throughout the day that keeps you organised, informed and ahead of schedule all day long. It provides an overview of your health and energy level in the mornings, and continues to keep you informed in the afternoon and evening each day. It even detects when you are travelling and suggests day trips via Google Gemini. It appears as a notification on the “Now Bar” and simply tapping on it while on your lock screen will expand it to show you photos taken for the day, upcoming events on your calendar, the weather, and even the latest YouTube Shorts.
AI-powered Audio Eraser for Video
The Audio Eraser is a new AI tool that simplifies the removal of unwanted noise in videos by isolating sounds such as voices, music, wind, nature, crowd and background noises. Best of all, this actually not only works on videos recorded on the Samsung S25 Ultra, but on practically any video. This means your friends can even send you videos they have shot on their own phones, to have you clean up the audio for them. From what we have tested so far, the tool has done an admirable job of identifying and separating out the different kinds of sounds, so we can finetune each sound element from -100 to 100 easily via its intuitive interface.
See it for yourself in action below:
Seamless AI Action Across Apps With Google Gemini
Thanks to the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s deeper integration of Google’s Gemini AI into the operation system, and working hand-in-hand with Samsung’s own Bixby, users are able to complet complex tasks across different apps with just a simple voice query, without having the need to switch between apps.
As you might already know, long pressing on the power button calls up the Gemini query box, which you can choose to either type or speak your query. You can ask Gemini for the latest sports events on a specific date and have it added to your calendar, or ask for a list of kid-friendly restaurant recommendations in a particular area and have it texted directly to a friend. This is where you can see how it utilises Gemini to run the query, find the answers and hands it over to Bixby to execute it on Samsung’s calendar and texting apps. This integration is however, limited to Samsungs own native apps for now. So it remains to be seen if it can eventually be implemented across other popular third-party apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram.
Samsung’s “AI Select” tool has also been significantly improved this time round, and it is able to detect what is highlighted on the phone screen, and will suggest next steps accordingly. For example, if you highlight a bunch of text on website, the tool will offer you the option to summarise it for you, or when you highlight a YouTube video, it can create a GIF from it directly. One very handy feature which we managed to test was to AI Select a photo of a concert ticket and it will automatically detect and offer the option to add it to the calendar, which it managed to capture all the necessary information such as date, time, location, and seat number for the concert. As handy as all these AI features may seem, it may take some time for users to get used to.
Check out our TikTok video above to get a better idea of how some of the features work.