Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra — The Good, The Bad & The Ultra
Maybe five cameras isn’t enough for you. Maybe thin bezels aren’t your bread and butter. Maybe a truly all-day battery life doesn’t appeal to you. Or, maybe you’re not “Ultra” enough for Samsung. The newest flagship from the South Korean tech conglomerate pushes the pencil with its impressive specs, but not without a few cut —or rounded— corners.
Rating: 8.5/10
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Performance on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is buttery smooth and snappy thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and variable 120 hz refresh rate. The mobile gaming aficionado may come to appreciate the impressive cooling properties and Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset of the new device, but a mobile photographer could find their new muse in the 50 megapixel ultra-wide camera. Regardless of your hobby, maybe there’s a little Ultra in all of us.
The frontrunner clocks in at $1,300, but it doesn’t make you work to get the value out of your new device. Instead, features are delivered on a silver platter and in excess. While the 5,000 mAh battery remains unchanged from last year, a better cooling chamber and impressive performance means you’re using energy more efficiently and, most importantly, getting the most bang for your buck.
Now, I had been rocking the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL as my daily driver since launch, but the S25 Ultra caught my eye and my heart. Under 6.9 inches of Corning® Gorilla® Armor 2 glass was perhaps one of the most gorgeous displays I’ve had the pleasure of using. With the option to scale that display from HD+ (1,560 x 720) to FHD+ (2,340 x 1,080) and beyond to QHD+ (3,120 x 1,440), you can make the most important part of the device your own right out of the box.
While I’m technically coming from a slightly larger battery at the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL’s 5,060 mAh, you wouldn’t be able to tell. Power management has been incredible and allows me to finish a day with anywhere from 40 to 60 percent battery — I’ve even stopped charging my phone at night. While wireless charging is available, the lack of aligning magnets for MagSafe accessories was disappointing, especially when boasting Qi2 wireless charging capabilities. While minor, the fast charging and super fast charging labels gives the phone an additional hint of premium quality — as if the titanium frame wasn’t enough.
Samsung is finally breaking free of the poor video stereotype, too, as it ventures into improvements for videos specifically including an improved image processing algorithm, Audio Eraser, which does exactly what you would expect. While I enjoyed the 20x zoom that came with the Pixel, it’s a losing battle with the S25 Ultra’s 100x zoom. The transition between lenses leaves something to be desired, it’s by no means inoperable. If anything, taking photos and video on the Ultra is actually an enjoyable experience once you’ve adjusted to the user interface.
AI is one of the hottest features a phone can have nowadays, but unfortunately Samsung outsourced majority of it to Google’s Gemini, which is an incredibly capable service, but it would’ve been nice to see Galaxy AI integrated system-wide and not solely confined to the underwhelming Now Brief and photo processing.
Maybe I’m not seeing the same “Ultra” vision as Samsung, or maybe I simply need to adjust my expectations, but from a $1,300 phone I shouldn’t feel as though corners were cut in order to push out a new iteration of a device. Samsung’s impressive hardware has the makings of a great partner for software, I’m just holding out hope it’s a promise they deliver on.
