Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review: it's the smartest AI phone to own
Unlike its competition, Samsung's A.I. might stand for Actual Intelligence
🏆 Review score: 4.5 out of 5
🏅 Editor’s Choice Award
Pros
✅ 🧠 Samsung’s AI agents perform powerful cross-app commands
✅ 📐 Larger 6.9-inch screen, but same dimensions (less bezel)
✅👋 Your hands won’t hurt thanks to gently rounded corners
✅ 💰 No price increase despite rumors. Solid pre-order & trade-in deals
✅ 📸 50MP ultra-wide camera joins 200MP main & 50MP telephoto
✅ 📹 Video recording adds an effective background audio erase tool
✅ 🎛️ New Samsung Log mode allows pros to color-grade footage
✅ ⚙️ Uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chip tuned by Samsung
Cons
❌ 🤔 The design looks like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
❌ 🧲 No MagSafe capabilities, despite Qi2 wireless charging
❌ 🪄 Some AI tricks miss the mark vs the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL
❌ 🖋️ S Pen stylus loses Bluetooth LE for remote snapshots
One month with the Galaxy S25 Ultra
I’ve spent one month with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and it’s the first time I have cared about having AI built into my phone. It uses Bixby and Google Gemini to execute cross-app AI tasks among select Samsung, Google, and third-party apps.
Samsung has positioned the Galaxy S25 Ultra as the most well-rounded smartphone of 2025 – literally and artificially. Let me explain those two points first.
📐 Literally rounded. Its rounded corners mean it’s more comfortable to hold this large phone – the only sharp thing is the slightly larger, bezel-reduced 6.9-inch display. It looks and feels great.
🤖 Artificially refined (as in AI): Samsung delivers second-gen AI via AI agents that perform cross-app commands. This makes it the smartest smartphone phone around. It’s what Apple Intelligence wants to be.
Want more? Here are 25 things you need to know about the S25 Ultra
25 things to know about S25 Ultra
🧠 AI that goes beyond ChatGPT. Samsung’s “AI agents” offer something ChatGPT can’t do. It doesn’t just give you answers – it completes tasks. This was the idea behind the Rabbit R1, but in this case, Galaxy AI actually works among 20 apps.
🍎 A bite of the Apple Intelligence. Galaxy AI is what Apple’s AI wants to be. The Galaxy S25 series doesn’t just look up complex recommendations for “Burger restaurants that allow pets in San Jose,” but, in a single command, it can text the results to a friend in a neatly summarized list. The iPhone 16 series and iPhone 15 Pro series may be able to do multi-step commands later this year, but for now, Samsung is here first.
🗣️ 20 apps actually talk to each other. At launch, I found 20 apps on the Galaxy S25 Ultra that interact with each other via Gemini AI. You can look up flights, hotels, and restaurants, and have summaries or bookings sent to your notes, reminders, calendar, or messaging apps with one command.
🔮 More cross-app AI to come
🗳️ Suggestion box for Samsung. One thing I can’t do yet (but I feel like Samsung is on the road to doing so) is ask AI to “Send X friend the last photo I took.” Sometimes, I take a quick photo while walking the streets of NYC at night, and I want an easy way to send it to a friend while keeping pace. I don’t want to use the touchscreen to open the gallery, hit a share button, select a contact, and send the photo. Currently, asking any phone AI to “Text FRIEND the last photo I took” sets up a text that just says “the last photo I took.” AI needs to help in these little real-life scenarios. Samsung’s cross-app AI feels very close to this idea, but the Gallery app isn’t on the AI app list – yet.
👐 New ultra-wide camera. The new 50MP ultra-wide camera (up from 12MP) offers photos that are as sharp as they are all-encompassing from a 120º field of view and f/1.9 aperture. Hands down, the S25 Ultra has the best-looking ultra-wide camera on the smartphone in the US, beating Apple and Google’s flagships.
📸 The ‘same’ 200MP camera. It’s the same sensor as the S24 Ultra, but Samsung uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chip to power its next-gen Pro Visual Engine and enhanced Nightography. AI is tweaking photos and videos to offer brighter, less noisy, and more stabilized results. There are minimal improvements when compared to the photos in our Google Pixel 9 Pro XL review and iPhone 16 Pro review.
🔭 The best at telephoto. Samsung’s dual telephoto cameras outperform any US smartphone zoom, ranging from 0.6x ultra-wide to 100x Space Zoom. The 3x zoom uses a 10MP camera, and the 5x zoom switches to a 50MP camera. At 10x and 30x zooms, it still looks thanks to denoising effects. Apple’s iPhone focused on a 5x zoom.
🔍 Ready for your macro extreme close-up? Samsung’s 50MP macro shots offer 4x the detail of the S24 Ultra. Pictures of bees, flowers, and water droplets will look brighter and crisper on the S25 Ultra. There is a year-over-year difference here.
🎙️ 9. Audio erase with ease. Samsung’s new audio erase tool eliminates background noise from video, and it gets two things right: it’s effective, and it’s easy to use. The Galaxy S25 Ultra uses AI to isolate voices, music, wind, crowd noise, etc, and the results, at least in my two demos, worked well.
🎛️ Samsung Log for pros. Are you a video pro? You can record video in “Samsung Log” to color-grade footage in post. It’s Galaxy S25 Ultra’s answer to Apple’s ProRes video. Experts will love the use of zebra patterns to indicate exposure levels and apply LUTs to tweak colors. Samsung Log doesn’t require an external SSD (and there’s no microSD card slot here), so it’s not as demanding as Apple’s ProRes.
📹 Default 10-bit HDR recording. 10-bit HDR video capture debuted in the S24 Ultra, but the setting is now on by default in the S25 Ultra camera app. This means I see more dynamic range from the new phone compared to standard 8-bit SDR video.
📐 Larger 6.9-inch screen with less bezel. Before I say that the 6.9-inch Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra screen is a bit larger than the 6.8-inch S24 Ultra, let me note that the phone is roughly the same size at 162.3 x 79 x 8.6 mm. You’re getting a slightly bigger screen in the same footprint. Samsung achieved this by reducing the needless bezel (the black frame) around the screen.
👋 Rounded corners won’t hurt your hand. The S25 Ultra is a modern-day Samsung Galaxy Note thanks to its S Pen, but it drops the distinctive Note-like boxy frame in favor of rounded corners. It looks like a lot of other phones today, but power users (who this phone appeals to) will find that it hurts less to hold the S25 Ultra for long stretches.
💰 $100 more than the equivalent iPhone. Rumors that the S25 Ultra price would increase were unfounded: it costs $1,299, the same as last year’s S24 Ultra. That’s $100 more than Apple’s 6.9-inch iPhone 16 Pro Max, so you’ll have to love Samsung’s OneUI 7, extreme camera zoom and S Pen.
🖋️ The S Pen is a hidden gem. The S25 Ultra is the only smartphone with a stylus I can recommend. With the S Pen, I can jot down notes and create sketches. Basic. But it does so much more. My favorite hidden feature is recording audio (usually of someone talking) while scribbling down handwritten notes (not everything they say is essential). They sync up for playback, creating an interactive timeline (rather than hunting for a quote on an audio file timeline). Journalists and students will love this idea. There’s more to the S Pen than people realize.
🤷♂️ But no Bluetooth S Pen. Bluetooth Low Energy is gone, so it can’t perform “Air Actions” like remotely snapping photos and triggering videos. Samsung says only a small number of people use this feature. Still, here is the warning message if you forget to holster the S Pen in its little silo.
🎨 Exclusive S25 Ultra colors. Samsung has seven standout Galaxy S25 Ultra colors in a matte finish, but three of them are exclusive to the Samsung Store. That means you won’t find them at carriers, Best Buy and Amazon. Samsung is the only place to find the Jetblack color (my favorite), which goes beyond the typical Black color by having a black frame.
Titanium Silverblue
Titanium Whitesilver
Titanium Gray
Titanium Black
Titanium Pinkgold (Samsung Store exclusive)
Titanium Jetblack (Samsung Store exclusive)
Titanium Jadegreen (Samsung Store exclusive)
Like the titanium iPhone 16 Pro, Samsung doesn’t have vibrant colors for its most pro phone; instead, it relies on earth tones. That’s a shame because I really like the S25 and S25+ Samsung-exclusive Coralred and the Navy Blue colors.
🎮 Snapdragon Elite 8 for Snapdragon is game. The S25 series touts Qualcomm’s best chip tuned by Samsung, boasting year-over-year CPU performance by 37% and GPU performance by 30%. Importantly, for long gaming sessions, Samsung dramatically increased the vapor chamber size by 40% (by 15% on the S25+ and S25), and it’s basically a layer that runs across the whole phone. This keeps the phone cool and the chipset humming.
⚡ Qi2 charging is here… The Galaxy S25 Ultra is the first Samsung phone to break the 15W wireless charging barrier, with the Qi2 standard allowing for 25W wireless charging. This is in addition to Samsung’s 45W wired charging capabilities.
🧲 …but MagSafe is MIA. The Galaxy S25 Ultra, like the OnePlus 13, doesn’t get everything Qi2 offers, skipping the Magnetic Power Profile (MPP) inspired by Apple’s MagSafe. MagSafe makes it easy to line the back of the phone to a wireless charging pad and enables magnetic accessories to work with phones. Samsung, however, didn’t want to increase the thickness of the design, and it has left adding MagSafe to Samsung Galaxy S25 case manufacturers.
🔋 About that 5,000mAh battery. Samsung hasn’t changed the battery capacity of its flagship phone in five years, but it has increased battery life care to Qualcomm’s more efficient chip. A lot of people see the mAh spec and overlook the chipset. After a month of use, it’s still one of the longest-lasting phones I’ve tested recently, with only the OnePlus 13, OnePlus 13R and iPhone 15 Pro Max beating it.
💦 OnePlus 13 is more waterproof. Samsung is a water-resistant phone with the usual IP68 standard, but the OnePlus showed up everyone with IP69 in 2025. The OnePlus 13 can survive the extreme temperatures of dishwashers and washing machines. The S25 Ultra is waterproof enough for most wet scenarios – OnePlus 13 just goes a step (and misstep) further.
💬 If you want something truly different… “It looks the same,” is what most people will say upon seeing the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. The say the same thing about the iPhone every year. This is despite the fact that Samsung increased the screen size and rounded the design. So, if you’re complaining about sameness, opt for the Z Fold 6. It has a larger screen (the S series can’t get much bigger than 6.9 inches without folding over) and it’s a very different take on the smartphone.
⚙️ 25. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra specs
📆 Release date: February 7, 2025
💰 Price: $1,299 (check launch day deals)
📺 Screen size: 6.9-inch
🏃♂️ Refresh rate: 120Hz adaptive
💡 Brightness: 2,600 nits
📸 Main camera: 200MP
📸 Ultrawide camera: 50MP
📸 Telephoto cameras: 50MP (5x) / 10MP (3x)
🤳 Front camera: 12MP
⚙️ Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite
🐏 RAM: 12GB
🗄️ Storage: 256GB / 512GB / 1TB
🔈 Speakers: stereo (and no headphone jack)
🔋 Battery: 5,000mAh
🔌 Wired Charging: 45W (adapter not included)
⚡ Wireless Charging: 25W
📶 Connectivity: 5G sub6 and mmWave, WiFi 7
👇 Fingerprint sensor: Yes (under glass)
📐 Dimensions: 162.3 x 79 x 8.6 mm (6.39 x 3.11 x 0.34 in)
⚖️ Weight: 218g
🌈 Colors: Silverblue, Whitesilver, Gray, Black, and Samsung-exclusive colors Pinkgold, Titanium Jetblack, Titanium Jadegreen
🤖 OS: Android 15, OneUI 7
🪨 Durability: Titanium frame, Corning Gorilla Armor
💦 Waterproof: IP68
Note: The Shortcut is also putting the S25 and S25 Plus through their paces right now. Expect reviews to launch before we head to MWC 2025.
More Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra content
I’ve tested the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra for a month to write and update this review, but let me close with this: I’m glad I took extra time to go back and re-test Samsung’s AI features because, at first blush, this phone does look similar to the S24 Ultra aside from the rounded corners.
You’re going to hear a lot about that same-ness from Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra reviews. But the Galaxy AI does have features that consumers may actually care about, and that’s a step in the right direction for the buzz-worthy tech trend.
