Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review: Leaner but less likable

Samsung's successor to the Galaxy Note is still the glitziest stylus-phone on the market (though you can now make the case that its predecessor might have an edge in features and functionality). Built around the nicest smartphone screen Samsung have ever shipped and powered by the a pumped-up version of the most powerful processor currently available for Android devices, the Galaxy S25 Ultra ticks all the boxes you'd expect from a new Samsung flagship. It's lighter and leaner but somehow still manages to pack in a more capable camera setup than last year's Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Samsung made its best smartphone even better in 2025 but you'd never know it based on the marketing. As with last year's Galaxy S24 Series, the only thing that the company seems to want to talk about is AI. Where last year's device dipped its toes into the space, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is drenched in it by comparison and it's not hard to make the case that Samsung is pushing these software features as one of (if not the) the biggest reasons to consider buying or upgrade to its latest and greatest.

Unfortunately, pledging your allegiance to a famously inconsistent set of predictive algorithms yields exactly the results you'd expect. After test-driving the Galaxy S25 Ultra and its arsenal of AI-powered features, I can't help but feel like the two halves of the story here are point in opposite directions. Maybe instead of going all-in on the ghost in the machine, it's time for Samsung to give up the gimmick entirely.

I don't know about you but the arrival of a new Galaxy flagship just doesn't hit like it used to. Iteration used to be part of the story. Nowadays, it's the whole damn thing. Even for someone who is something of an enthusiast for this stuff, it's hard not to feel like the Galaxy S25 Ultra and its flagships aren't just rapidly headed to a place where they're almost as mundane kitchen appliances like washing machines and microwaves, they're pretty much already there. Boring isn't necessarily bad but it does make it a whole harder to justify the steep asking price attached to the hardware here.

To cut to the quick, those expecting a major redesign or shift in design are going to be just as disappointed by this year's Galaxy devices as they were with last year's Galaxy S24. For as much as the tweaks it make are tangible this time around, Samsung have largely stuck to the formula. At a high level, this is a Galaxy S24 Ultra with a few handful of hardware tweaks.

The most significant subtractions see the Galaxy S25 Ultra looming large when it comes to form-factor. Courtesy of reduced bezels and sleeker curved edges, this is thinnest phablet to date and about 15g lighter than its 2024 counterpart. That figure might sound small but held alongside its predecessor, the difference in weighs works out to be one you can definitely feel.

Despite the thinner form-factor, the Galaxy S25 Ultra features an improved titanium design that offers improved drop protection and scratch resistance. The heavy-duty handset also comes with the usual IP68 rating for water and dust resistance and Gorilla Armor 2. That last one doesn't offer more protection than the Victus protection found on the Galaxy S25 but does promise to reduce reflections and increase the legibility of the screen involved. Speaking of the display, one of the unsung additions to the formula here is the introduction of the new ProScaler engine. First found in the Samsung's TVs, this feature can seamlessly upscale the resolution of content viewed using the device.

Although this automatic advantage comes with something of a cost to battery life, it is a neat inclusion that plays to Samsung's strengths and helps set the Galaxy S25 Ultra apart from other premium Android devices. That trade-off might not be for everyone though and even if it is something you're keen on, it's very easy to miss if you don't know to look for it.

That sentiment is largely emblematic of most of the changes that Samsung have made with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. What's more, it can sometimes cut both ways. As someone who cares about wireless charging and expects Samsung's latest high-end device to offer the best money can buy on that front, it's irksome that Qi2 support is still missing in action. Instead, the Galaxy S25 Ultra supports a halfway step of a standard called Qi2 Ready. Likewise, if you're someone who typically seeks out the Samsung's flagship because of its stylus support then the fact that this year's incarnation of the device is losing a bunch of functionality on that front isn't exactly something that'll have you cheering.

The improvements that Samsung has made to the camera on the Galaxy S25 Ultra is just as much of a mixed-bag as anything else. The most noteworthy change here is that the ultra-wide lens for the Galaxy S25 Ultra has been traded out for a new 50MP one. In combination with the new processor, this promises to translate into more detailed macro shots and better low-light performance. However, compared alongside images I've taken using the Galaxy S24 Ultra, it felt like I really had to squint to see much of a difference.

Compared to it's predecessor, the Galaxy S25 Ultra also boasts two new AI-powered camera features in the form of Audio Eraser and Best Face. These are neat inclusions but not all that different from the Magic Audio Eraser and Best Take features found on last year's Google Pixel 9 Pro XL.

All this is to say that I wasn't particularly blown away by the results that the quad-lens setup on the back of the Galaxy S25 Ultra delivered. The hardware here manages to fall into the uncomfortable middle ground where it's both overkill for most everyday users and well short of where its biggest competition sits. Even if the Galaxy S25 Ultra has a better camera than its siblings, it's rarely exceptional enough to feel like it balances out the steep asking price attached to it.

Under the hood, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is powered by a version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset that's been tuned to take full advantage of the larger vapor chamber inside the handset. According to Samsung, this silicon setup will offer a 40% improvement in NPU performance, a 37% improvement in CPU performance and a 30% improvement in GPU performance over what you could expect from the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Other key specs here include 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of memory so long as you're willing to pay the surcharge that comes with extra on-board storage.

Looking past those parts, the Galaxy S25 Ultra ships on the latest version of Android and Samsung's new One UI 7 interface. If you get in at launch, you're looking at looking at seven years of OS updates and seven years of security updates.

Where the Galaxy S24 arrived with a handful of AI applications and features, the Galaxy S25 and its siblings are going much further on that front. There are so many "exclusive" AI features and apps included here that it'll probably make you wonder whether Samsung are just shipping bloatware by another name at this point. A full list of the Galaxy S25 Ultra's AI features are as follows:

Most of these features were introduced with last year's hardware so in the interest of saving some time, let's focus on what's new.

To start with, there's a new AI Select feature that allows you to highlight something on your screen and get contextual suggested shortcuts to things you could do with. In practice, the actual utility of this is really limited.  Most of the time, I found it would just point me in the direction of Samsung's other AI apps regardless of the context. In my opinion, it would not be unfair to describe this as a crooked sibling to Circle to Search.

Another new AI feature introduced by the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is the ability to navigate a handful of Samsung apps using natural language. In theory, I love this. It's very much in line with the origins of Bixby as an accessibility tool rather than an Alexa competitor. However, in practice, it neither works as well or consistently you'd hope (or expect) it would. Despite my best efforts (and clear instructions) I could not get the Settings Search to handle even low stakes asks like changing the brightness. Similarly, navigating through your photos using your voice is more tedious than using text.

Then, there's Morning Brief. This feature promises to surface relevant information at a glance when your phone is locked and in more detail via a dedicated app. Unless the bulk of your digital footprint exists within the Samsung  ecosystem though, the amount of utility offered on either front is so small as to barely register. The vast majority of the time, it amounted to little more than a glorified weather app (and not even a particularly good one).

Of course, the above are the just the warm-up acts to the main event. The most ambitious part of Samsung's efforts to put a more powerful AI smartphone in the palm of your hand is the promise to offer support for multi-step and cross-app actions. Writ large, Samsung's pitch for stuffing an AI agent inside your smartphone isn't all that dissimilar to what the likes of the Rabbit R1 promised to offer.

Unfortunately, the limits of both functionality and accuracy I encountered during my time testing this feature left me with little confidence about the future that Samsung is selling here. At the time of writing, there are only a handful of apps that play nice with this feature. Unless you're willing to change your habits accordingly you're probably going to hit a lot of walls where Gemini just isn't able to do the things that you'd expect it would.

Even in situations where the action I attempted to rely on Gemini for sat entirely within the small garden of compatible apps, it struggled. One example being shopped around is that you could pull up Gemini and ask it to find a list of vegan restaurants and then text them to a friend. However, when I attempted to exactly do this with restaurants in my own local area it produced a bunch of unrelated restaurants from across the state. That's not only a fairly harmless example of Galaxy AI falling short of the mark. It's literally the one that Samsung want people to use. This is supposed to be the big breakthrough that Samsung and Google want people to upgrade to get access and it does not seem to work (or work well) most of the time.

Given the gravity of what tech companies like Samsung are promising when it comes to AI, it's not all that surprising that the reality falls short. All the same, after two years of this hype train running late, I'm short on patience.

Even if you're not quite there with me, it's worth remembering that many of these AI features will be coming to older Galaxy devices. Given that the Galaxy S24's AI features made their way to Google's Pixel hardware, it's probably a safe bet to assume that'll be the case here as well. What's more, just because these features are likely to turn up elsewhere sooner rather than later for free doesn't mean that a bill won't eventually come due. 

As previously reported, many of Samsung's Galaxy AI features come with the promise that they are only guaranteed to be free until the end of 2025. This deadline wasn't nearly so pressing last time around but it is simply not good enough that Samsung is not willing to extend or clarify what's happening to the features that those picking up its most expensive premium device are potentially buying it to get at the end of the year.

In the absence of that clarity, it's entirely possible that the Galaxy AI experience that buying a Galaxy S25 Ultra gets you at launch is one that you might have to pay multiple subscriptions (one to Samsung and possibly a second one to maintain access to Google's best version of Gemini) to keep. Even in a world where these features worked as advertised or provided much more than party tricks when they did, that would be a hard sell to most.

All this is a shame because, once you've run out of patience with Samsung's gamble on Galaxy AI, what you're left with is still a pretty solid smartphone. There's plenty to like about the fundamental experience that the hardware inside the Galaxy S25 Ultra offers. The everyday performance is incredibly snappy and games like Diablo Immortal, Star Wars Hunters and Zenless Zone Zero ran smoothly, though they didn't always play nice with the resolution ProScaler enabled. At 5000mAh, the battery inside the Galaxy S25 Ultra more-or-less delivered on my expectations of about a day and a half to two days of usage on a single charge.

As with its predecessors, the Galaxy S25 Ultra supports up to 45W fast-charging but you'll have to track down the hardware involved as the smartphone doesn't include a charger in the box anymore. There's an argument to be made for this from a sustainability perspective but it's just another example of what feels like a shortcut that Samsung is taking at the expense of its most enthusiastic customers.