Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Review: First Look

Last year’s Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra was widely regarded as one of 2024’s best Android phones. So how do you follow up a phone that already seems to do it all?

We now have the answer, and it’s the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Samsung just revealed the S25 Ultra at its latest Galaxy Unpacked event on January 22, 2025, and we got some early hands-on time with it ahead of its release. Here are our first impressions.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Specs

Samsung’s Ultra phones have always been the go-to choice in Samsung’s lineup if you want the best specs possible, and that hasn’t changed with the S25 Ultra. Those impressive specs do come at a cost, though, and that’s where Navi’s Phone Deal Finder can help.

One of the biggest changes this year is the new Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which replaces the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 found in the S24 Ultra. Samsung is promising big performance gains this year, including 37% faster CPU performance and 30% faster GPU performance.

While we didn’t get a chance to fully put the phone through its paces in our hands-on session, the S25 Ultra felt incredibly fast and responsive when navigating home screens, opening apps, and digging through various settings menus. We expect each year’s Ultra phone to be one of the fastest on the market, and it doesn’t look like the S25 Ultra will be an exception to that rule.

The display specs are virtually identical to that of the S24 Ultra, meaning you have a 6.9-inch AMOLED screen with a Quad HD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. Those similarities aren’t bad at all, though, as the S25 Ultra’s screen looked incredible to my eyes. It’s bright, vibrant, and likely one of the best screens you’ll find on a phone this year.

There are a couple of subtle upgrades that you won't immediately see, but are appreciated nonetheless. The display bezels are 15% smaller compared to the S24 Ultra, and the glass covering the screen is Corning Gorilla Glass Armor 2. It does a great job of minimizing reflections on the screen, and this year, it’s 19% more resistant to fractures compared to the S24 Ultra. More durable phones are always a good thing—as are slimmer bezels—so these are good changes to see.

What about other specs? The 5,000mAh battery capacity is the same as last year, though Samsung tells us it’s seeing “pretty substantial” battery life improvements over the Galaxy S24 Ultra. There’s also a new vapor chamber that’s 40% larger than the one in the S24 Ultra, which should translate to smoother and cooler performance during intense gaming sessions or other intensive use.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Cameras

The Galaxy S25 Ultra’s camera system isn’t all that different from the Galaxy S24 Ultra, save for one big upgrade:a new 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. 

The new camera is a significant improvement over the 12MP ultrawide camera found on the S24 Ultra. In addition to better overall image quality for wide-angle shots, the improved sensor also translates to 4x better detail in macro images. The 12MP ultrawide camera on the S24 Ultra was fine, if a bit underwhelming, so it’s great to see Samsung give it a proper upgrade this year.

The other cameras, meanwhile, are exactly the same year-over-year. That means the Galaxy S25 Ultra has a 200MP main camera, a 50MP 5x zoom telephoto camera, and a 10MP 3x zoom telephoto camera. It’s a little disappointing that these other sensors are exactly the same as the ones in the S24 Ultra, but considering how capable that phone’s camera system already was, this is far from the end of the world.

Additionally, nighttime photography has been improved so that photos have less noise and more detail. There’s also a new Galaxy Log option for video recording, which is great news if you want to manually edit your video footage to get it to look exactly how you want it.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: AI Features

It wouldn’t be a new Samsung phone in 2025 if there weren’t new AI features, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra has them in spades. The two AI features I’m most excited about are Now Brief and the Now Bar. Now Brief uses AI to summarize all sorts of information for you at the start and end of your day, giving you a glanceable summary of important info you need.

Your Now Brief in the morning, for example, can show upcoming calendar appointments, traffic conditions, stock prices, the weather, etc. Your Now Brief in the evening may show any alarms you have for the next morning and photos you took throughout the day. Now Brief can also show important health metrics if you wear a Samsung Galaxy Watch or Galaxy Ring. I’m all for AI features that can make my life easier, and if Now Brief works as well as Samsung claims, it sure looks like it will.

The Now Bar, meanwhile, is a lot like Live Activities on Apple’s iPhones. It’s essentially a lock screen widget that lives at the bottom of the display and can surface all sorts of important information — such as quick access to your Now Brief, sports scores, Google Maps turn-by-turn directions, and more. Now Brief and Now Bar are both part of Samsung’s One UI 7 update, meaning older Galaxy phones that eventually get the new software will also get these things.

What other new AI features are there? A new feature called AI Select sounds like it could be helpful. When you take out the S25 Ultra’s S Pen stylus and choose AI Select, it looks at what’s on your screen and makes suggestions for things to do. For example, if you open AI Select while watching a video, it’ll suggest turning it into a GIF to share with friends. If you use it while viewing a long article or webpage, it’ll give you an option for an AI summary of what you're reading.

Finally, Samsung is putting a big emphasis on AI Agents. When you press and hold the side button on the phone, you access whatever AI Agent you’re using. By default, it’s Google Gemini, though you can change it to Samsung Bixby if you’d like. Samsung says these AI Agents are better at performing multiple actions across apps, and the examples it gave do sound promising.

Samsung says you can use one of these AI Agents to take a picture of the inside of your fridge and ask for recipes you can make based on the ingredients it sees. You could also ask it to look up YouTube videos about a certain topic and have it write a summary for you in your notes app. They’re all really impressive examples, and I’m really curious to see how they work in the real world.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Price and Release Date

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is available for preorder now, with regular sales beginning on February 7. You can buy the phone on Samsung’s website, at Amazon and Best Buy, and at all of the carriers included in our Cell Phone Plan Finder — such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and more.

The Galaxy 25 Ultra starts at $1,300 for the base model with 256GB of storage, with additional storage capacities of 512GB and 1TB available as well.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: The Bottom Line

If the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra seems like a slightly better version of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, that’s because it is. Samsung didn’t make any big, sweeping changes this year. Instead, it took the foundation it had with the S24 Ultra, upgraded a few specs, added some new AI features, and called it a day.

Does that make the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra a little boring? Sure. But simultaneously, it should also be one of the most complete and capable smartphones on the market in 2025. The Galaxy S25 Ultra isn’t for people who already have the S24 Ultra. It’s for people who are still holding onto their aging Galaxy S20 Ultra. Or maybe an old iPhone. You may not be all that impressed if you bought a new phone within the last year, but if you’re overdue for an upgrade, there’s a lot to like with this one.