- What is it? Samsung new flagship phone
- When is it out? Pre-orders are live and the phone will go on sale February 7
- How much will it cost? It starts at $1,299 / £1,249 / AU$2,149
After months of rumors, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is official. It was revealed at the first Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event of 2025, on January 22, and brings in a small selection of upgrades and design tweaks to the already impressive Galaxy S24 Ultra.
For a blow-by-blow account of the showcase, check out our Samsung Galaxy Unpacked live blog. And for our early impression of the Ultra, read our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review.
To repurpose Intel’s tick-tock approach to chips, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is in the tick stage of the Galaxy family, meaning that it’s bringing iterative upgrades rather than bigger changes of its predecessor. However, there’s still a good amount to talk about here, not least of all the addition of a powerful new Snapdragon chipset tuned for the Galaxy S-series lineup, which should help the flagship phone chew through new AI-based tasks.
As such, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will probably be the phone to get if you’re after the latest in Galaxy AI features and a very powerful smartphone. Or if you’re looking to upgrade from a Galaxy S-series phone that’s getting a little long in the tooth.
So read on for what you need to know about the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: price and release date
- Pre-orders are live from January 22
- It will go on sale February 7
- Pricing is mostly in line with the Galaxy S24 Ultra
The Galaxy S25 Ultra will start at $1,299 / £1,249 / AU$2,149 for the 256GB model, rising to £1,349 / AU$2,349 for the 512GB version, and topping out at £1,549 / AU$2,749 for the 1TB mode; we’re still waiting on US pricing for the higher tier models.
For comparison, the Galaxy S24 Ultra launched at $1,299 / £1,249 / AU$2,199 for the 256GB model, $1,379 / £1,399 / AU$2,249 for the 512GB version, and $1,619 / £1,599 / AU$2,649. So the S25 Ultra is some £50 cheaper on the top end than its predecessor. But it’s far from cheap, being one of the most expensive Android phones.
Pre-orders for the Galaxy S25 Ultra and its stablemates are live now and the phones will go on sale on February 7.
Reserve the next Samsung Galaxy device today
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: design and display
- Very similar to Galaxy S24 Ultra
- More rounded corners
- Tougher glass and titanium
- New display upmixing feature
Glance quickly at the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the S24 Ultra, as the two phones are broadly the same. But the Galaxy S25 Ultra now has flatter sides but more rounded edges, which more conforms with the design of the Galaxy S25 as a series.
The phone measures 162.8 x 77.6 x 8.2mm and weighs 218g compared to the 162.3 x 79.0 x 8.6mm and 232g of the S24 Ultra. I’d say these measurement and weight differentials are negligible, and the S25 Ultra felt very similar to its predecessor in my hands, though I found the flatter edges made it easier to grip than the S24 Ultra.
Despite being a slightly smaller phone, the Galaxy S25 Ultra manages to squeeze in a 6.9-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, making it a smidge larger than the 6.8-inch display on the S24 Ultra. Otherwise, the screen has a 1Hz to 120Hz variable refresh rate and maximum of 2,600 nits of brightness, which is the same as before.
There’s a small ace up the S25 Ultra’s sleeve in that it supports a new ‘ProScaler’ feature that can upmix standard definition content to suit the high resolution of the QHD+ display. This could be a neat feature for people who like to watch old movies or have a clutch of standard definition video recordings.
Other small upgrades include an improved titanium chassis and Gorilla Armor 2 glass, the latter should make the S25 Ultra 29% less likely to fracture after a drop or nasty bump, apparently.
Color options come in Titanium Silver Blue, Titanium White Silver, Titanium Gray, and Titanium Black; all look nice enough but are perhaps a tad uninspired compared to the green and violet option of the S24 Ultra.
Overall, and from my experience, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is a rather lovely large phone. And I feel Samsung is taking the whole ‘if it isn't broken, don’t fix it’ approach here; it’s not exciting but it does make a lot of sense.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: cameras
- New 50MP ultra-wider camera
- Same main and telephoto cameras as before
- New 'pro' features and an Audio Eraser for video
On the cameras side, it’s mostly business as usual for the Galaxy S25 Ultra; there’s a 200-megapixel main camera, 50MP 5x telephoto camera, a 10MP 3x telephoto camera. But the ultra-wide camera gets a boost to 50MP, which should deliver crispier, more detailed expansive photos, and should also help with macro photography. The front-facing camera comes in at the expected 12MP.
The real changes will come from the new ProVisual Engine, which taps into the ‘spatio-temporal filter’ that’s exclusive to the new Snapdragon chip and can better observe still and moving objects in frame and works to reduce blur and enhance clarity in low-light situations.
There’s also support for 10-bit HDR photos for wider dynamic range, and more professional options to shoot photos and record video when using Pro modes and ExpertRAW. In the latter, there’s the option for a Virtual Aperture that lets you adjust the depth of field in a DSLR-like fashion, and for video there’s Galaxy Log, which offers more precise color grading.
Really, the bigger photography upgrades are more likely to come from the AI-powered image tools, because Samsung has used a new large language model to improve features such as Generative Edit, Portrait Studio, and boost overall image processing and performance; it’s my hope that this will solve the somewhat flat nature, with a lack of contrast between the shadows and light, of the photos the Galaxy S24 line – and indeed other flagship phones.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: specs and battery life
- New Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset
- Standard 12GB of RAM and 5,000mAh battery
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 162.8 x 77.6 x 8.2mm |
| Weight | 218g |
| OS | One UI 7, based on Android 15 |
| Display | 6.9-inch AMOLED, 120Hz |
| Chipset | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy |
| RAM | 12GB |
| Storage | 256GB / 512GB / 1TB |
| Battery | 5,000mAh |
| Rear cameras | 200MP main, 50MP ultra-wide, 10MP telephoto, 50MP telephoto |
| Front camera | 12MP |
| Charging | 45W wired, 15W wireless |
The real star of the specs show is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy.
Tuned for the Galaxy S25 series, this chipset offers a 40% uptick in neural processing power, which should be great for snappier Galaxy AI features, a 37% bump in CPU power and a 30% jump in GPU performance; ray tracing gets a 40% boost here too.
When combined with a 40% larger vapour chamber cooling system, the Galaxy S25 Ultra should be a powerhouse and able to sustain that performance for longer.
My hope is it runs games and other graphically demanding tasks with ease and opens up the opportunity for new console-quality or powers of console games for Android; this is an area the recent iPhones have the edge.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: features and AI
- AI is now baked into One UI and can work with third-party apps
- There's a new Now Brief AI-based activity summary feature
- Circle to Search and more have been improved
In terms of general features, not much has changed with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. There’s still an integrated S Pen, Bixby remains, as does DeX, and I’ve mentioned new features like the ProScaler.
But the real features of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and indeed the other S25 models, will be how Galaxy AI has been baked into One UI to have a more ‘human agent’ approach with natural language understanding at its core. That means AI features that can learn and react from what you do as a user, so information presented will be focused on what you want.
Furthermore, there’s what Samsung calls Cross Action Apps, meaning Galaxy AI capabilities can be used within third-party apps such as WhatsApp, while Bixby and Google Gemini have been enhanced to access all native Samsung and Google apps; you can get summaries of long YouTube videos, as one such example.
One key new AI feature is Now Brief, which acts as a widget that smartly pulls together summaries of what you’ve got on for the day, along with health-related information, weather, traffic for your commute route, reminders and so on, then as the day moves on it will give you a recap on your day’s activities and what you might have planned in the evening.
It also works with other Galaxy devices, such as pulling in information from the Galaxy Ring or Galaxy Watch. And if you have a Samsung smart TV, then the AI tech will be able to detect if you happen to fall asleep in front of the TV and then switch it off and pause what you were watching.
On top of this, there’s the Cooking Master, which uses AI to tell what’s in your smart fridge and serve up recipes. And keeping on the topic of food, the Restaurant Finder will smartly find you restaurants based on specific requirements, say pet-friendly places.
These features also work in tandem with the new Now Bar, which sits at the bottom of the screen and pulls in Now Brief data, but also can identify what songs might be playing and other situational information.
A lot of this AI functionality can now be triggered with a press and hold of the power button, which now triggers Google Gemini.
AI tools such as Circle to Search, sketch to image, searching for images in the Gallery app, along with call transcription and writing assisting features, have all had an upgrade. Plus there’s a new Audio Eraser tool that can smartly remove unwanted audio from videos; something we’ve seen in recent Google Pixel phones.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: outlook
Taken at face value, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is but a minor upgrade over the Galaxy S24 Ultra; that’s to be expected as Samsung has become increasingly iterative with phone upgrades, as have other big phone brands.
But the Galaxy S25 Ultra represents a real push for smartphones to deeply integrate AI across their operating systems and facilitate AI use in third-party apps. This is arguably in contrast to Apple, where Apple Intelligence rolled out slowly and in a somewhat fragmented fashion to the iPhone 16 range and other iPhones. In many ways the Galaxy S25 Ultra represents the biggest expression of an AI phone to date.
Of course, we’ll need to test the phone and see if its AI features stand up in daily use. But there’s some promise here, and I suspect we’re looking at not only a new contender for the best Samsung phones lists, but one for our pick of the overall best phone.
You might also like
- Check out our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 review
- And read our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus review
- Best Samsung phone: top Galaxy handsets ranked
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
