I was wrong about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

OPINION: Samsung revealed its flagship Galaxy S25 range earlier this week, headed up by the new Galaxy S25 Ultra, possibly one of the most anticipated phones of 2025. However, I wasn’t alone when I felt a little disappointed upon actually seeing phone for the first time. 

Sure, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra looks like the rest of the Galaxy S25 range for the first time in quite a few years, but in doing so, I thought it had lost its personality. 

Those sharp edges and curves were quintessentially Galaxy Ultra, with a distinct look compared to most other flagships that helped to give it its own identity. 

Even though it’s a look that’s been adopted by the likes of the iPhone 16 Pro Max, OnePlus 13, Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and more, it still meant that you could usually pick the Galaxy S24 Ultra out of a crowd. The S25 Ultra? I’m not so sure. 

I was also a little bit disappointed with the minimal hardware changes on offer aside from the refreshed look; yes, it sports the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy and a new 50MP ultrawide camera, but in most other regards, it’s essentially identical to last year’s Galaxy S24 Ultra. 

It has almost identical screen specs, the other three rear lenses remain entirely unchanged, it sports the same 5000mAh battery and 45W charging in a year where we’re seeing faster charging and 6000mAh+ cells in smartphones and, despite new features like Now Brief and Now Bar, the AI experience seems pretty similar to what we saw with the Galaxy S24 range. 

“What’s Samsung doing?” I thought – but it turns out that Samsung knows exactly what it’s doing. 

Yes, on paper, it’s basically identical to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, but there’s a surprising difference in the experience on offer that I wasn’t really expecting ahead of spending some time with the 2025 flagship after its launch on Wednesday evening. 

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is surprisingly charming

In the space of just a few days, the Galaxy S25 Ultra has solidified itself as one of my favourite smartphones. Let me explain. 

Let’s first address the elephant in the room – the design. I stand by my initial opinion that the Galaxy S25 Ultra looks more generic this year, sporting a similar design to practically every other flagship smartphone on the market, but I can’t deny that the experience of actually holding and using the phone is much nicer this year. 

Gone are those pointed corners that dug into the palm of my hand, and even though the curved edges were a nice touch, I get far better grip when holding onto a flat-sided phone – especially one with such a large screen. It’s almost like there’s a reason that most other flagship phones utilise a similar design.

It’s also noticeably lighter than last year’s model and big-screen competitors like Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro Max, measuring in at 218g. Combined, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is undoubtedly a nicer phone to wield in everyday use, and that was pretty much immediately noticeable upon getting the phone out of its (fully recyclable) box. 

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has a £259 discount already

The Galaxy Ultra has a pre-order offer of 512GB for the cost of 256GB from Samsung, and with a free set of Buds3 using the code S25LIVE.

Software plays a big role

The OneUI 7 update is more noticeable than I previously expected too. Yes, we get new software every year, but the core UI/UX tends to remain the same, with just a few new features added for good measure. 

Not this year though; OneUI 7 has undergone massive OS changes with new icons, a new split notification centre, new animations, redesigned widgets and new graphics that make even mundane tasks like checking notifications and toggling controls in the quick controls menu feel new and exciting for the first time in quite a few years.

Then there’s Galaxy AI; while the overall experience isn’t that dissimilar to what you’d get from the Galaxy S24 Ultra, OneUI 7 has AI baked directly into the OS, and that allows the S25 Ultra’s AI to perform multi-app tasks like getting football fixtures from Google and automatically adding them to your calendar. 

It also allows for the new Now Brief functionality, giving you an overview of information from various first- and third-party apps in one handy screen in the mornings and evenings – though my experience of this thus far has essentially been a combination of weather and calendar events. 

Of course, OneUI 7 isn’t exclusive to the Galaxy S25 Ultra – it’ll also be coming to the S24 Ultra and S23 Ultra, and it’s entirely possible that the new Galaxy AI features will also come in tow – but it certainly adds to the phone’s ‘new’ feel for now. 

There’s a noticeable difference in performance too

The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy is unsurprisingly faster than last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but there’s an uncharacteristically big difference in performance, with the newer chipset offering a 45% boost in overall performance while also being far more power efficient. It’s largely down to the 8 Elite’s architecture, which is based on Qualcomm’s desktop-level Snapdragon X Elite. 

Early benchmark testing shows a difference of over 2600 points in the CPU-focused Geekbench 6 multi-core test and a 15fps uptick in GFXBench’s top-end Aztec Ruins (High) test compared to last year’s S24 Ultra, while boosted NPU performance allows previously cloud-based AI features like Generative Edit to happen on-device. 

You might also be surprised to learn that, despite offering the same 45W charging as the S24 Ultra, I’ve seen much faster real-world charge times in the past couple of days. I timed my charge time, and it reached 70% in 30 minutes with a full charge in 62 minutes, while the S24 Ultra achieved 57% and 71 minutes, respectively. 

So yes, I’m happy to admit that I was wrong about the Galaxy S25 Ultra; it’s a wholly more refined smartphone than its specs suggest. 

Is there enough here to justify an upgrade from the Galaxy S24 Ultra? I’m still on the fence about that, but if you’re moving from the two-year-old Galaxy S23 Ultra, or something even further back, I’m confident you’ll find a lot to enjoy about the Galaxy S25 Ultra. 

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