Every year, phone companies have a difficult question to answer: how do you iterate upon your flagship product? For the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, it seems that the answer is…you don’t.
It seems that every new year, the latest version of the company’s flagship smartphone line is just a slightly bumped-up iteration of its predecessor. And for 2025, this is especially true—there’s really not very much new with the S25 Ultra. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the previous Ultra phones were very competent devices. But the problem lies in what Samsung has decided to put their efforts into.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is focused very much on Galaxy AI and how it can simplify your lifestyle with it at the centre of your smartphone. The bad news is, it isn’t very good.
Design and Build
You’re not going to find anything very different on the S25 Ultra from last year’s phone. Design-wise, the device’s edges are more rounded off, so users get a more comfortable grip. It’s a slight tweak, but it does help with comfort and is a good change, especially if you plan on using the phone for the long term.
You’ll also appreciate the smaller bezels on the screen, which not only make the phone look nicer but also add an extra 0.1-inch to the display size – now 6.9 inches. The change is not going to light up your world, but if you are a fan of big screens like I am, knowing that I am getting even more screen real estate is nice.
Something which may make a more meaningful difference is the new Gorilla Armor 2 glass on the front. Samsung says that it’ll be able to survive drops onto concrete better, and though I didn’t test this aspect out, it does come out unscathed against scratches when I’ve bundled it with keys and coins in my pocket.
And that robustness extends to the entire phone. Though the S25 Ultra has been made slightly thinner than its predecessor, it remains sturdy, and the glass back gives a premium feel. The buttons are clicky and responsive, plus the haptics on the phone are once again excellent. Quality is definitely not an issue you’ll find with the build.
However, there is one thing that has been taken away, I’m afraid. The S Pen is back, but it no longer has Bluetooth connectivity and removes the wave gesture functionality. Admittedly, this isn’t something I use, but in principle, excluding a feature and not having some sort of replacement function is just bad PR.
In terms of aesthetics, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has four base colour options available – Titanium Silverblue, Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, and Titanium Whitesilver. Of the four, the best-looking one personally is the Silverblue variant, which has this subtle metallic blue tint when light shines onto it. But if you prefer something that is a little more vibrant, the Samsung Online Store has exclusive colours in Titanium Jade and Titanium PinkGold that might suit your fancy.
Performance
Hardware-wise, despite not seeing a change for the display, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra still has one of the best screens on the market.
The 1440p display resolution, combined with the AMOLED panel, once again makes it an incredible device to view things on – vivid colours truly sparkle on the display, especially when you have the screen on high brightness. And with the 120Hz refresh rate, everything looks silky smooth.
While the display hasn’t changed, the processor has. The phone uses a special version of the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, tuned specifically for Samsung’s Galaxy phones. As expected of Qualcomm’s most powerful available chip, nothing troubles it. Using the phone has been smooth-sailing, even when dogged down with multiple apps running. The same goes for gaming, the chip handles more intensive games like Genshin Impact without so much as a stutter.
So the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra works very well if you use it as a regular phone, but phones aren’t just regular anymore, aren’t they? Companies are now pushing AI, and our devices are becoming more of a portable assistant that can help with tasks, with Galaxy AI being the one to start the trend.
Galaxy AI is back again on the S25 Ultra, this time with a new assistant at the heart of everything – Gemini. For those out of the loop, Gemini is Google’s new AI assistant, with the original Google Assistant likely to be phased out. But although Gemini is the newer and shinier kid on the block, my experience with it has been rather mixed.
Samsung made it a big selling point about how, with the help of Gemini, you can now do tasks across multiple apps—essentially cutting down the number of steps you would usually take to do the same thing. At the moment, this feature mostly only works with Samsung’s native apps and Google’s app slate, like Gmail and Google Calendar.
It got off to a rocky start when I was testing this functionality. I asked Gemini to place a Premier League match onto my calendar, but it simply could not do it. Even after enabling access to both the Samsung and Google Calendar apps, Gemini was unable to follow my instructions. Then, one day, it suddenly worked! How curious. Now, it functions as intended.
But there are other Galaxy AI features that haven’t had that same success. Video summaries are another one of the new tools that the S25 Ultra can do, creating a nice, concise summary of a YouTube video if you don’t have time to watch all the way through. The trouble is, it does not even work. I’ve been asking it to summarise all kinds of videos, and each time, Gemini just throws up its hands and shrugs its shoulders. There is slightly better success if I ask it in a different way like ‘Tell me what this video is about’, but even then, it gets things wrong—spitting out information about a completely different video or channel.
Overall, my time with Galaxy AI has largely been a mixed bag. There are some very useful tricks that it has, the new Circle to Search being one that works so well. Now, it does audio search, and it has been extremely accurate, even recognising songs through my horrible humming.
Audio Eraser has also been decent. While it isn’t perfect at detecting some noise types, it does a commendable job at lowering the noise even to an imperceptible level. Even for a video shot at a crowded and noisy hawker centre environment, Audio Eraser was able to isolate my friend’s voice and make it seem as though he was the only one speaking.
Then there’s Gemini itself, which I feel is just a worse version of Google Assistant in terms of usability. For whatever reason, it just does not register what I say properly about 40% of the time, even thinking I’ve spoken a completely different language. So, I have to resort to an (admittedly poor) valley girl accent for it to understand—I’ve never had this much of an issue with Google Assistant.
Another problem I have is succinctness. While I appreciate that Gemini presents more detailed information, sometimes I just want a quick answer. Simple questions like currency conversion or asking when the next episode of a show is turn to long overexplanations. Google Assistant has given more direct answers in my experience.
Meanwhile, there is also the mediocre. Now Brief is another big new feature touted on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, delivering summaries of what your day will look like. Personally, it’s not that useful to me. Yes, seeing what the weather is going to be like or what events are coming up is nice, but it isn’t a feature that adds a tremendous amount of value to my daily routine.
Camera
Like much of the phone, the cameras on the S25 Ultra are mostly unchanged, though it does feature a new 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. There is much more sharpness on ultrawide shots, both in daytime and for low-light environments. Particularly for the latter, I’m seeing less noise in photos.
But in general, photography on the S25 Ultra remains plenty good. You’re still going to get the iconic contrast-y Samsung look, where vibrant colours pop out so much that it makes it seem as though you are taking a picture on a different planet when doing landscape shots.
And I certainly appreciate how flexible the cameras are for any situation. If you need to take a faraway shot, the zoom works very well—it still amazes me how the 100x zoom can process letters that far away and make them look good. Macro shots are not a problem as well, you can go super close to a subject and it’ll take a detailed image of it.
Yes, not a lot has changed with the S25 Ultra cameras, but you don’t have to worry about it lagging behind the pack.
Battery
With smartphones now able to fit capacities upwards of 6,000 mAh, it is unfortunate that Samsung has not upgraded the included 5,000mAh battery for a second year in a row. But I was still able to get more than decent battery life out of the phone.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is more power efficient than the previous chip, so you’ll be able to eke out more use out of it. Out of a mixed use of web-browsing, YouTube, and camera photography, I was still able to retain around 40% left in the tank at the end of the day.
I’ve also noticed that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra does seem to charge a little bit faster than before, though you’ll be saving minutes, not hours.
Verdict
Samsung’s big bet on AI for this year’s iteration of the Galaxy phones is a miss from me. Galaxy AI has frustrated me more than it has been useful. This feels very much like first-year woes—tout how much of a game-changer Galaxy AI will be for how you use your phone, but the execution isn’t quite there yet.
I still contend that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is an excellent device. The combination of the incredible display, superb cameras, and powerful processor makes it one of the best phones you can get. But the gap between other phone manufacturers is shortening. If Samsung still goes with the status quo for their next Galaxy phone, they may get left in the dust.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is available for purchase online from the Samsung Online Store as well as Samsung’s official Shopee and Lazada stores.
Photos by Russell Loh of the DANAMIC Team.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
Pros
- Well-built phone that is more ergonomic
- The latest, most powerful processor
- Screen and cameras are still very good
Cons
- Gemini has been frustrating
- Lack of improvement from previous edition
