Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review

The physical form on typical candy bar smartphones doesn’t have much room to improve; it’s already reached an optimum point in terms of size, thickness, weight, and screen real estate. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra understandably doesn’t change too much, although it does make small design tweaks that give it a look more similar to the rest of the S25 series. Fans of the Ultra lineup might be a bit disappointed with this, but it’s a good thing in my opinion. You do however get a titanium frame on the S25 Ultra, and the phone does feel solid and great to hold.

A noticeable difference is the rounded corners on the S25 Ultra, a big change from the block-like aesthetics of earlier Ultra devices. The phone is also a bit lighter and slimmer than its predecessor the S24 Ultra, despite having a slightly larger screen. The display remains flat, with Samsung staying away from the curved edges that have become a bit of a hot topic on flagships smartphones of late.

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The flat sides make the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra easy to grip, and the buttons are all on the right side of the device. The back is nicely flat, although the camera modules continue to stick out as always, which means that the device will rest on the camera rings directly if not in a protective case. As good as the S25 Ultra feels without one, you will probably want to get a good protective case for it.

 

 

 

 

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Samsung smartphones are usually offered in a variety of colours, and the S25 Ultra gets a total of seven colour options; four of these are available across all retail channels, while three are exclusive to purchases on the Samsung India website. The Titanium Blue of the review unit sent to me is nice and has a very classy matte finish, although I can’t help but wish I’d got the Titanium Jetblack one instead.

The signature element of the Samsung Galaxy Ultra smartphones is, of course, the S Pen stylus. Expectedly, the S25 Ultra does get this, and it does most of what you’d expect from a typical stylus, including letting you quickly sketch, take notes, and mark things like images and documents. It also allows for a lot more precision than your fingers can manage, so it definitely has some appeal in combination with the large display. 

However, the S Pen on the S25 Ultra is a step down in capabilities as compared to previous generations - it doesn’t have Bluetooth connectivity anymore, which knocks off a few features such as the remote shutter for the camera or letting you control presentations and slide decks. You do still get some nifty features like Air Command and Air View, but these rely on the pointer being close to the display of the S25 Ultra.

In terms of dust and water resistance, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra gets an IP68 rating. There’s no IP69 rating, but it’s worth pointing out that the IP69 certification follows a completely different set of tests and requirements than the IP68 certification; IP68 covers the important bits, including typical exposure to water including submersion. Still, IP69 does have some appeal - I mean, what if you spill hot coffee on your phone?

The Ultra remains the biggest device in the S25 series, getting a slight increase in screen size over the S24 Ultra. It’s now a 6.9-inch dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X display, with a refresh rate of 120Hz, support for HDR10+ format content, and a peak brightness of 2600 nits. With a resolution of 3120x1440 pixels, it’s also incredibly sharp, making this one of the best smartphone screens you can get right now.

That 2600 nits brightness level can’t be manually triggered, but can activate itself in specific situations where the brightness is set to auto and the phone is under particularly intense light. However, even with manual intervention it gets extremely bright, making it suitable for use in pretty much any real-world scenario. The auto-brightness mode works rather well, picking the right level based on ambient light conditions.

All of this is helped by the excellent anti-reflective coating on the Corning Gorilla Armor 2 glass. You will still see a bit of reflection (especially under bright overhead lights or direct sunlight) but it considerably tones it down to make viewing the screen a lot easier in bright places. In classic Samsung fashion, the display is flat, which will appeal to many who have a problem with accidental touches on curved-edge displays.

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The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset powers the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, with Samsung working even more closely with Qualcomm in 2025 to deliver flagship performance on the smartphone. There’s a standard 12GB of RAM on the S25 Ultra, while storage ranges from 256GB to 1TB in India, depending on the variant you pick. 

The review unit sent to me has 256GB of storage; typically enough for most people, although I can’t help but recommend at least 512GB of storage in 2025 for adequate future-proofing. In terms of connectivity, you get 5G connectivity on both nano-SIM slots, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 5.4, and there’s also eSIM support. 

On the software front, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra gets Android 15 out of the box, with Samsung’s OneUI 7 on top. Like any Android overlay, OneUI has its quirks, but it’s one that’s easy to get used to for someone jumping onto the Samsung lineup for the first time. It’s also fairly customisable, so you can get it set up to your liking with regards to gestures, swipes, how you view notifications, and the like.

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For example, the notification shade and quick settings menus are separate by default, but you can switch to a more Android-like combined view. You can also change the way the app drawer scrolls; Samsung’s multi-page drawer can be replaced with a single vertical-scrolling app drawer, which is much appreciated.

Version 7 itself comes with a few changes that might come in handy, including the Now Bar which provides relevant info at the bottom of the screen based on your interests. These can be sports scores, maps and health info, or anything currently useful to you - similar to how the iOS Dynamic Island works. It can also be visible on the lock screen, if you like.

With the Galaxy S25 series, Samsung has put a renewed focus on artificial intelligence, suggesting that it might become a lot more ‘in vogue’ among everyday smartphone users over the next few years. Galaxy AI on the Samsung Galaxy S25 series promises a lot, including quality-of-life improvements and the ability to use AI to improve everyday use cases for your smartphone. This includes generative editing of images and videos, scheduling and reminders, and things like translating on the fly or creating transcripts for calls and audio recordings.

Usefully, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has plenty of on-device power to handle the AI requirements thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. You can set it up to process AI tasks on-device, or work with the Internet for better results if you don’t mind the data-sharing needs that come with it. For online AI processing, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra works with Google Gemini.

 

 

 

 

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Many of these features are available through dedicated AI apps such as ChatGPT and Gemini, but the appeal here is in having it built into the phone’s software for easy access and use. Depending on your use cases, you might find things like live translation, transcription, writing assist, and browsing assist useful. I personally found the photo assist features to be most useful, particularly the generative edits and audio eraser functions which helped clean up images and videos.

The audio eraser was quite impressive, especially when taking outdoor video clips for reels; this managed to isolate voice recordings in the videos, while allowing me to mute background noise such as wind and traffic sounds. Another feature I found somewhat useful was the Now Brief which provides basic weather updates and reminders of events saved on my calendar. 

There’s a lot on offer and not all of it will be useful to everyone, but it’s a good start with AI. That said, you still can’t entirely rely on AI for accuracy, so you do need to double-check AI-generated text as well as any information that you might receive from the system. Even results to queries typed in or dictated to Gemini may not always deliver accurate responses, so delve into the world of AI on your smartphone with plenty of caution.

Samsung has typically been a segment leader when it comes to camera capabilities, and it’s achieved this without any of the big-name collaborations with photography specialist brands that many competitors in the Android space rely on. While some of the competition has done some impressive work to pick itself up, Samsung still largely delivers a reliable flagship photography experience with the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

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This is also where the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra stands out from the rest of the S25 series; you get a quad-camera setup with a 200MP primary camera, 10MP telephoto sensor that can do 3x optical zoom, 50MP periscope telephoto sensor capable of 5X optical zoom, and 50MP ultra-wide camera. 

The ultra-wide sensor getting a megapixel bump is the only change in the camera setup as compared to the S24 Ultra. Naturally, having four camera sensors for different purposes gives the S25 Ultra a lot of flexibility and specialised capability when it comes to different types of shots, making it rather versatile. Other tricks include the ability to shoot log video - useful for content creators who need to do professional colour grading.

Although the 200MP primary sensor can be used at full resolution for detailed (and massive) shots, setting the resolution down to a reasonable 12MP or 50MP lets you use some of the spare resolution for more detail.

 

 

 

 

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Additionally, the camera setup uses all of that detail and post-processing power to deliver up to 100X digital zoom. While optical zoom caps out at 5X ordinarily, you can go much further with pretty decent results. 100X zoom shots definitely look artificially cleaned up, but it’s a nice trick to capture detail in distant objects. 30X zoom looked surprisingly natural and fairly detailed, at least in good light, while zoom video is a game changer in how clean the footage turns out.

Everyday photography - whether in good light or low-light conditions - is pretty reliable on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Point and shoot delivers great results most of the time, with natural colour and subtle enhancements that actually make it look better without looking too overcooked. Video recording at up to 8K resolution is possible at 30fps, while you can get to 60fps with 4K - suitably helped along by the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor’s sheer power. All in all, it’s a solid camera system, that remains among the best in the smartphone space.

I’ve already praised the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra a few times in this review, given how important a role it plays in enabling many of the phone’s AI and camera capabilities. Understandably, that also extends to everyday performance, and you get the flagship user experience you expect.

While some competing smartphones get 16GB of RAM with higher variants, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra sticks to 12GB of RAM across variants available in India. This isn’t a problem at all - 12GB of RAM is enough to keep things running smoothly, including being able to run multiple apps simultaneously without forcing frequent reloads. Samsung’s OneUI is efficient in this regard as well.

ALSO SEE: Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra review

 

 

 

 

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The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra gets a 5000mAh battery, and battery life on the phone is pretty much what you’d expect from a flagship device in 2025. With light use, I would need to charge the phone once in about two-and-a-half days, and heavier use of the camera or gaming would still deliver a full day of use before needing a charge.

Wired charging at up to 45W is possible, which doesn’t sound like a lot compared to the 100W and above charging speeds touted by competing devices. However, it’s still plenty fast, and can top up the battery reasonably quickly; it took around 90 minutes to fully charge with a 45W charging adapter. As before, there’s no adapter in the box - just a charging cable, which you’ll need to plug into an adapter of your own. 

Wireless charging with the Qi standard is possible, while the phone is touted as ‘Qi2 ready’ - fancy terminology for saying that you need an aftermarket magnetic case to use the feature.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra may not be the massive upgrade and hype machine that many were expecting, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s still an entirely solid smartphone, delivering performance, camera capabilities, AI promise, and more as you’d expect. Physically, it’s a solid slab of premium that feels like it should for the price, and is backed up by the best display on a smartphone right now.

S24 Ultra owners may not necessarily want to upgrade given the lack of major differences, but first-time Galaxy S buyers or those upgrading from a two or three year old Galaxy S smartphone will find plenty to like here. A few odd quirks aside, this is a great phone to buy in 2025.