Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review – a new pinnacle for smartphones

The new Samsung S25 Ultra is the culmination of years of state of the art hardware and software development and the power of those features have now been remarkably enhanced with AI.

It’s a complete package that will suit every type of user whether they are a mobile professional, an avid photographer, content creator or just your average user who wants to get the most out of their device.

There are hardware improvements and an all new One UI 7 platform along with the next-gen Galaxy AI that is now supplemented with Google’s Gemini AI.

The strength of AI is that it can see, hear, learn, translate, summarise, edit and so much more and the S25 Ultra is your personal key to that door that lets you step into a much larger world.

DESIGN

The Samsung S25 Ultra has had a design upgrade and has slightly more rounded corners and it has lost the curved edges.

The device now has flat titanium edges and, with those more rounded corners, now resembles the S25 and S25+ so it looks like they belong to the same family.

With these changes the S25 Ultra feels lighter and smaller in your hands. According to the actual specs, it is thinner and narrower.

The left edge of the S25 Ultra is completely clean while the right edge has the volume keys and power/lock keys.

On the bottom edge is the USB-C charging port and the SIM card tray. There is no expandable memory.

And it still includes the S Pen which is the last remnant of the large Note smartphones from which the Ultra models have evolved.

The 6.9 inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2x display is an absolute stunner with its 120Hz refresh rate.

We noticed narrower bezels around the screen to give it a truly edge-to-edge look.

PROCESSOR

The Samsung S25 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform for Galaxy chipset which means on-device processing for Galaxy AI along with improved camera quality and control and the next-gen ProVisual Engine.

Performance-wise, the S25 Ultra works like lightning. You can instantly move from app to app and navigate the system with absolutely no lag whatsoever.

It unlocks instantly and can open the camera app in the blink of an eye so you don’t miss that shot.

Gamers will also be pleased with the performance any inclusion of the Vulkan Engine which offers improved ray tracing for a more realistic experience.

ONE UI 7

The brand new platform of the Samsung S25 Ultra is one of the most visible differences.

This sits on top of Android 15 and has a redesigned pull down menu.

Another new feature on the lock screen is the Now Bar and Now Brief which can offer suggestions based on what you’re doing, display all your active apps and provide a summary of your day.

Users will notice new menu bar designs and a whole new way of accessing your notifications.

On your home screen if you sweep down from the top left you will see all your active notifications while sweeping down from the top right corner of the display will pull down your settings shortcuts.

CAMERA

As you would expect the camera on the Samsung S25 Ultra is an absolute stunner.

What we loved was the amazing zoom capabilities and the quality you can still achieve even when zoomed in quite far.

The quality of the images are amazing with natural colours and excellent results even in low light.

It’s easy to take a great shot in bright sunlight but when there isn’t much light – that’s the real test and the S25 Ultra’s passed with flying colours.

It has a new 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera which can also be used as a macro camera.

It also has a 200-megapixel wide angle lens, a 50-megapixel telephoto and 10-megapixel telephoto.

The smartphone offers a lot of pro-level features and provides a DSLR-like experience with Virtual Aperture – now a part of the Expert RAW mode.

The S25 Ultra can also shoot 10-bit HDR video in 8K at 30fps, 4K at 30 or 60fps, FHD 30 and 60fps and HD at 30fps.

The jump from 8-bit to 10-bit is a big one and now offers four times richer colour expression.

One brilliant feature is Audio Eraser which lets you dive in and edit the different audio tracks it has identified like voices, music, nature, wind, crowd and noise so you can turn them up or down or silence them completely.

This is a game changer for anyone who likes shooting a lot of videos with their smartphone.

GALAXY AI and GEMINI AI

The Samsung S25 Ultra has Galaxy AI on board and Gemini AI is also at your fingertips.

Samsung Galaxy AI was already impressive and this latest version takes it to the next level to help you with your creativity, efficiency and convenience.

Galaxy AI still does a great job doing things like rewriting or summarising text while creating illustrations from your photos in Portrait Studio

The device has new multimodal AI capabilities which allows you to talk to the S25 Ultra like it’s a person when you need to set a reminder, find directions, interpret text or do all of that at once.

Gemini AI also comes into play and integrates seamlessly across the Samsung, Google and third party apps.

You can easily and quickly look for a calendar entry, find an important email or do a combination of both without having to manually open any apps.

The side power button acts as a shortcut for Gemini AI so you can start asking your question instantly – and you get a reply read out to you just as quickly.

But the really impressive part is that Gemini AI will know what you’re doing.

For example, you can ask a question about the video you’re watching and receive more information as well as other related recommendations.

You can even ask questions about what you see whether it’s through your camera or a picture in your gallery and you’re able to talk back and forth to discuss what you see as well as ask for more information and other recommendations.

Circle To Search has also been vastly improved and can now recognise things like phone numbers, emails and URLs on the screen so you can call, email or visit those sites with one touch.

Users can now also easily locate images in their gallery by asking for specific details about what is in the photo and where it was taken.

For example, you might ask for all the images taken in South Korea, photos taken when you’re wearing a red hat or wearing a blue shirt.

The generative AI side is also strong with the ability to edit the images and select objects for removal in seconds.

WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE

It would have been great to have expandable memory with a micro SD card slot but Samsung has gone down the same path as Apple and offer their devices in different memory capacity variants.

While we love the S-Pen for writing on the Samsung S25 Ultra’s display, we were disappointed to learn that it had lost some functionality including Bluetooth connectivity.

Without Bluetooth it can no longer perform Air Actions – our favourite was the remote camera shutter trigger. But you can still take a selfie using a hand gesture.

Samsung says Air Actions was something used by less than one per cent of all users – but that included us.

COLOURS AND PRICING

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is available in Titanium Silverblue, Titanium Black, Titanium Whitesilver and Titanium Gray.

The Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ is available in Navy, Silver Shadow, Icyblue and Mint.

The Galaxy S25 is priced at $1,399 (256GB) and $1,599 (512GB). The S25+ will be $1,699 (256GB) and $1,899 (512GB) and the S25 Ultra will be $2,149 (256GB), $2,349 (512GB) and $2,749 (1TB).

Samsung has done a great job bringing these prices in slightly under last year’s prices.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Series officially goes on sale on February 14 but we understand stock has already arrived in stores and is being delivered to customers who pre-ordered the devices.

VERDICT

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has set a new pinnacle for smartphones. It elegantly combines stunning design, cutting edge hardware, an incredible camera system and brilliant software with the very latest AI capabilities that’s like having a real personal assistant at your beck and call.