If you’re looking at the Galaxy S25 Ultra or S25+ and assuming Samsung finally fixed everything, you might want to slow down.
On paper, this is Samsung in peak flagship mode: titanium frame, Gorilla Armor 2, Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, and “strong” sales bragging in the earnings call. In practice, the design upgrade is legit, the cameras are familiar, and some of the decisions—like nerfing the S Pen—feel like quiet downgrades wrapped in nice press language.
Design: Samsung Finally Admits Your Palms Matter
Samsung basically admits the S24 Ultra was a hand torture device without saying it outright. The Galaxy S25 Ultra now matches the S25 and S25+ with a flat frame and rounded corners, and that alone makes it a much more human phone to hold.
Despite moving to a slightly larger 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen, the S25 Ultra is actually less wide than the S24 Ultra, a bit thinner, and 14 grams lighter. That’s a meaningful change in day-to-day use, especially for people who one-hand their phone a lot or spend hours doomscrolling.
The bezels are “among the thinnest” the reviewers have seen, and the front panel uses Gorilla Armor 2, which Samsung is marketing as “the industry’s first anti-reflective glass ceramic.” It’s rated to survive drops onto concrete from up to 2.2 meters, and paired with second-gen DX anti-reflective treatment that genuinely cuts down reflections compared with typical display glass.
On the back, Samsung quietly sticks with Gorilla Glass Victus 2, and the frame is still titanium—now grade 5—with the same shimmery finish. IP68 remains the standard “bog standard” protection, with no move toward the deeper water resistance Apple offers or the IP69 rating OnePlus has hit. For a premium flagship in 2025, Samsung is coasting here.
Build Quality: Premium Materials, Conservative Durability
The hardware story is pretty straightforward: this is one of the most premium-feeling Android phones around. The flat titanium frame improves grip over the old curved metal designs, and with the rounded corners and lighter weight, handling is simply better. That’s a real upgrade, not just a cosmetic tweak.
The in-display ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is familiar and still fast and reliable, though it can be fussy with some glass screen protectors. Stereo audio comes from the usual earpiece-plus-bottom-speaker combo, with the earpiece nearly invisible in the top bezel cutout.
Color options are very Samsung: Titanium Black, Titanium Gray, Titanium White Silver, and Titanium Silver Blue at most retailers, with Samsung Store-exclusive Titanium Jet Black, Titanium Jade Green, and Titanium Pink Gold for people who like hunting specific SKUs.
From a structural and materials standpoint, there’s nothing to complain about. The disappointment isn’t the build; it’s the lack of ambition on durability ratings and the fact that Samsung is making big marketing noise about AI and XR instead of pushing ingress protection forward.
S Pen Downgrade: The Quiet Regression No One Asked For
Here’s the part power users are going to hate: the S Pen in the S25 Ultra loses Bluetooth.
Same slot in the bottom-left corner, same thin, lightweight stylus with a single button and clicky top—except now there’s no capacitor inside, which means you lose Bluetooth features like using it as a remote camera shutter or for air gestures. For anyone who actually used the S Pen as a remote, that’s a straight downgrade.
There’s no stated technical reason here—no space issue, no battery claim—so the obvious answer is cost cutting. Samsung will probably argue that only a small portion of users cared about those features. But this is the Ultra line, which is supposed to cater to that exact niche.
If you’re coming from an older Ultra and you’ve built habits around S Pen remote functions, you’re going to feel this immediately.
Camera Strategy: S25+ Recycles, Ultra Refines
On the S25 and S25+, Samsung basically mailed the camera hardware in from last year. The rear setup is carried over from the S24/S24+, which means the overall experience is reliable, but not exactly pushing flagship boundaries anymore.
The main camera on the S25+ captures 12MP binned shots with wide dynamic range and punchy but controlled colors. Daylight images are clean but not especially sharp, and indoor shots soften further. Two to three years ago this would have been top-tier; in 2025, it’s solid but not class-leading on detail.
There’s a 50MP mode that gives you flatter, softer results with less aggressive processing—sometimes pulling more detail out of certain textures, but exposing how dependent Samsung’s pipeline is on sharpening and microcontrast.
The 2x digital crop from the main sensor is described as “lossless-like” and more than decent, while the dedicated 3x telephoto produces 12MP upscaled shots with consistent color, contrast, and white balance matching the main camera. Detail is “solid,” but again not standout.
Portrait mode offers 1x, 2x, and 3x toggles with decent subject separation and bokeh, but faces look softer than in regular photos—especially on the 3x lens, where detail can drop hard.
The ultrawide on the S25+ is where the disappointment hits. It still lacks autofocus—Samsung continues to reserve AF ultrawide for the Ultra line—and detail isn’t great. Colors and dynamic range are well matched to the main camera, which helps, but for this price bracket, no AF on the ultrawide is just lazy.
On the flip side, the 12MP selfie camera with autofocus remains a highlight. It’s been reused for multiple generations, but exposure, skin tones, colors, and dynamic range are all strong.
Low Light & Video: Mature Processing, Familiar Limits
Low-light performance on the S25+ is described as “mature” rather than flashy. Automatic night processing is conservative: good highlight control, darker shadows, and visible noise. If you want cleaner shots, you’re pushed toward the dedicated Night mode, which aggressively boosts sharpness, colors, and microcontrast.
The main camera benefits most from Night mode, and the same story repeats at 2x. The 3x telephoto actually performs better than you might expect in low light, with plenty of detail and good colors, especially when Night mode is enabled. The ultrawide is “good for this sort of camera,” but still not sharp, with manual night mode sometimes trading detail for heavier processing.
Video is where Samsung holds its usual flagship line. All four cameras on the S25+ can shoot up to 4K60, with the main sensor doing 8K30 and 24fps options in Pro Video. There’s no 4K120 like on the S25 Ultra, which draws another line between the Ultra and the rest.
Samsung defaults to HEVC (h.265) with a quality vs size toggle, or you can switch to h.264. Stabilization is available in all modes and can be disabled if you prefer a wider FOV and external stabilization.
The main camera’s 4K footage is detailed with wide dynamic range and pleasing colors. 2x digital zoom in video looks impressively clean, the 3x telephoto holds up nicely, and the ultrawide is “very good” in 4K for its class, again with color matching across lenses.
Low-light video is decent but no longer leader-of-the-pack. Main camera clips hold plenty of detail with good colors and controlled noise, though highlights can blow out. The 3x telephoto remains surprisingly usable at night, while the ultrawide gets soft with crushed shadows and clipped highlights.
On the software side, Samsung adds 10-bit HDR video (up from 8-bit) and a new Galaxy Log mode for users who want to color grade their footage. AI makes an appearance via an audio eraser in the Gallery, letting you selectively adjust volumes of speech, music, wind, nature, crowds, and general noise after the fact.
Performance & Strategy: Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and XR Teasers
Under the hood, the S25 Ultra gets the expected next-gen Qualcomm chip: Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. A Geekbench listing for the SM-S938U (the US variant) shows a 2+6 CPU cluster with two cores at 4.2GHz and six at up to 2.9GHz running Android 15 with 12GB of RAM.
Those scores come in about 30% higher in both single-core and multi-core compared to the Snapdragon-powered S24 Ultra. The architecture matches what’s been seen in earlier 8 Gen 4 tests, but this time on a shipping-bound device.
Samsung’s quarterly earnings call leans on “strong sales” of the Galaxy S25 series as a key reason for record KRW 79.14 trillion revenue in Q1 2025. The MX Business posted double-digit profitability thanks to those sales, a heavily marketed “Galaxy AI” experience, and lower component costs.
Samsung also used that call to tease a Galaxy S25 Edge launch in Q2, AI expansion into the Galaxy A series under the “Awesome Intelligence” branding, and “differentiated AI” for upcoming foldables. On top of that, the company is promising “enhanced AI and health capabilities” in new ecosystem devices—almost certainly new Galaxy Watches—and “new product segments” as part of its XR push in the second half of the year.
The problem is that while the sales numbers look good and the future roadmap is all AI, XR, and health buzzwords, decisions like reusing S24-class camera hardware in the S25+ and downgrading the S Pen on the Ultra send a different message to enthusiasts.
Verdict: Premium Polish, Missed Chances
The Galaxy S25 Ultra and S25+ are classic 2025 Samsung flagships: premium hardware, refined design, excellent displays, strong performance, and camera systems that are good enough for most people but increasingly uninspiring for those tracking the competition.
The S25 Ultra’s design overhaul is a clear win—better ergonomics, lighter weight, and improved anti-reflective glass are real quality-of-life upgrades. Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 benchmarks indicate a substantial CPU jump, and build quality is about as high-end as it gets on Android.
On the flip side, the S25+ recycling last year’s camera hardware (with the same non-AF ultrawide) and the S Pen losing Bluetooth on the Ultra feel like quiet regressions masked by AI marketing and earnings bragging.
If you’re on an older Galaxy, these will still feel like big upgrades. But if you expected Samsung to push harder on cameras, durability ratings, and pro features while it celebrates record revenue, the S25 series looks more like careful iteration than a true leap.
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