Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review: Going beyond what Ultra truly means

An Ultra by any other name

Samsung’s premium Galaxy S devices exert an inexplicable allure to users and non-users. That reputation did not come by accident or sheer luck.

In recent years, Samsung’s top-end series has set the tone for its other flagship devices and SmartThings appliances. These mobiles influence the features seen in their phone competitors, usually by brands who try to outclass and outfunction them.

With that understanding, even if you don't use their phones, Galaxy S matters. That also means this year’s ultimate Samsung phone, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, has massive shoes to fill.

TL;DR version:

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is one of the best lessons in understanding the right balance of privilege and responsibility of commanding a premium price tag. It’s still a powerful phone, so you’ll enjoy having it.



Buy it at the Samsung Online Store and authorised retailers islandwide.

Since it’s expected to include the best of everything, we’ll spare you the detailed rundown (the specs table is still below for you to review).

Upgraders in the know typically look forward to its latest premium-grade processor (Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite), which has extra clockrate thanks to its “for Galaxy” variant. It has an upgraded 50MP ultrawide camera (up from 12MP), a new physical design with the latest operating system based on Android 15 (Samsung’s One UI 7), and even deeper AI integration thanks to an agentic version of Gemini, courtesy of its friendship with Google.

Other niceties include its new Corning Gorilla Glass Armor 2, a larger vapour chamber, and default 10-bit HDR recording for all the latest Galaxy S phones. However, these aren’t the main reasons people pay S$1,828 (256GB) for Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

A key concern is that Samsung nerfed the S Pen by removing Bluetooth-related functions. On paper, this seems problematic because it suggests “paying more for less.” This review determines whether removing Air Actions is as bad as it sounds.

So, given Samsung's many choices, does the Samsung Galaxy 25 Ultra still uphold its reputation as the premium flagship Android phone that all other handsets aspire to? Let’s find out.

Alluring, unlike any other Android

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is the most iPhone-looking Galaxy S yet, and it’s a good thing for its users. Samsung calls it “Essential Design”, using angular and flat sides with rounded corners and edges to soften their appearance. It’s less awkward-looking, even next to its predecessor (photos here). The sleeker build inspires confidence in its daily use, even if it looks more boring than before.

Other subtle changes are its thicker camera rings, adding a sense of weight and distinction to make them less likely to trigger trypophobia.

If we had to pick one thing to dislike, the frosted look on the rear would diminish its elegance. However, that can be fixed with a phone case or by getting the online-exclusive Titanium Jetblack colourway (ours is Titanium Silverblue).

While its handling and ergonomics are typical, it’s worth noting that flat sides can feel more challenging to wield in one hand since it makes the phone’s regular 77.6mm width feel wide in hand, even if this is the lightest Ultra edition phone in a long time. Besides how it feels in hand, let's put some context to its figures when compared to older models:-

The individual figures on their own don't really mean much, but they quickly add up to make a difference when you factor in that the new Galaxy S25 Ultra is the lightest, thinnest and occupies the least volume in many years.

We have no special notes for its 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X Display. It’s still super smooth with selective 120Hz refresh rates, and we didn’t struggle to use it in bright sunlight. The audio, too, sounds reasonably meaty and bright for stereo speakers.

One UI 7 is better than what Samsung tells you

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra operating system, One UI 7, is based on Android 15. Samsung’s focus on the UI centres on Now Brief, which gives a day’s snapshot in a single app view. It also has Now Bar, a hybrid version of Apple’s dynamic island (front camera) notifications and live notifications rolled into one item on the bottom of the Lock Screen.

We feel that One UI 7 is the best iteration of Samsung’s UI thus far, and Now Bar is an excellent addition to the device. Now Brief looks clever on paper, but it’s not impressive or as helpful as it claims to be.

First is One UI 7 itself. It’s much faster than it looks, and the OS has improved responsiveness and reaction time. The difference may not be as pronounced if you’re coming from a Galaxy S24 Ultra with One UI 6, but we felt it because of the sheer number of Android phones (and OS reskins) we typically try in any given year. 

It’s hard to explain its boosted responsiveness beyond its seamless navigation between menus, apps, widgets, and more. This is a huge reason to upgrade, but we understand it’s not sexy enough to be a big talking point in its marketing materials.

(Note: As it turns out, the quick navigation wasn’t just our imagination playing tricks).

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Next is Now Bar. We like how it’s the best of both worlds: Things running live, like timers and step tracking, appear as oblong cards on the lower end of the lock screen. Tapping once for their pop-out cards offers slightly more information. Tapping twice brings you directly to the app. It’s incredibly convenient, works in real-time, and is cleverly selective in showing what you care about. 

We can’t wait to see Samsung support more third-party apps with Now Bar, like ride-sharing and airline apps (it currently supports Samsung’s apps and is selectively available on third-party ones like Google Maps, Spotify, Naver, and more).

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We saved the worst for the last, Now Brief. On paper, Now Brief sounds like a self-important CEO’s wet dream — you get a glowing summary of all your data-driven insights for little things like the traffic today, your expected routine, and your physical and digital well-being, along with a cute little news tidbit that should be relevant to your professional or personal interests.

But after trying Now Brief, we can’t fathom how or why this is better than going into the apps directly or how it’s better than Now Bar for crucial real-time information. The most out-of-place portion of Now Brief is the news tidbit section since that's the only data point unrelated to your immediate needs or personal metrics.

That said, we liked the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's daily usage experience after removing Now Brief from taking up precious Home Screen real estate.

The rocky start of an agentic AI era

As with most AI tools, Samsung’s use of Gemini is still a work in progress. The tool’s newborn agentic powers make it unreliable as a daily companion. Our biggest issue is its spotty compatibility with the phone’s functionalities. That's even before factoring in its inaccuracy.

In our experience, we can verbally tell Gemini to set your phone to Do Not Disturb mode and disable it, but it’s not “smart” enough to program DND for a duration (e.g. one hour). We appreciate that it saves us the trouble of going through multiple menus, but it lacks the agentic finish that lets users set and forget.

The consistency is also relatively lacking. When you ask the phone to reboot, it summons the restart button. However, it cannot adjust display brightness, much less a specific nit level, or even summon the brightness bar. 

Yet, you can command Gemini to half/max/silence media volume while watching YouTube, and it even pulls up the volume bar for you. On the other hand, it flat-out refuses to help you adjust other volume settings (like notifications and calls). 

Also, Gemini’s implementation is stranger and messier than expected. You can’t search your Gallery app with Home Screen’s Gemini, but you can use the Gallery app’s Gemini-infused search bar (and it works amazingly). 

We’d like to see Gemini more holistically integrated on the phone.

It’s also incompatible with commonly used apps, such as instructing your AI agent to search for specific videos on TikTok. Instead, it defaults to showing you what it can find on YouTube. The results are also not correct.

Gemini (in its current form on Galaxy S25 Ultra) has proven itself only primarily compatible with Google apps and a seemingly random selection of Samsung settings and apps. There is much work in store for Samsung to integrate Gemini into the phone properly, even if we don’t look for accuracy, reliability, and usefulness.

Revisiting the S Pen

The hullabaloo about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra’s S Pen has reminded us that we should revisit it in our review, even though the stylus was not the core focus of the recent Galaxy S launches.

In short, Samsung removed Bluetooth Low Energy from the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s S Pen, removing many gestures and remote control features. The reason given to other publications was that less than 1% of S Pen users used Air Actions.

That rationale was jaw-droppingly stunning. Would you remove the toilet bowl in your apartment if you spent only 1% of your time there?

In addition to trying it out in our hands-on, we’ve also determined that the Galaxy S25 Ultra's stripped-down S Pen features are here to stay.

With the help of colleagues wielding older Galaxy S Ultra phones as their daily drivers, we’ve compared S Pen settings found on One UI 7 against One UI 6.1’s S Pen options. 

Several Bluetooth and battery-powered functions are missing in One UI 7. For example, Galaxy S25 Ultra’s S Pen button no longer unlocks the phone, nor can it act as a remote control for photo-taking.

Also, older S Pens with Bluetooth and batteries did not make our new Galaxy S25 Ultra more capable. We’ve tried, in vain, pairing the borrowed older S Pen to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and it still could not use the stylus as a remote camera shutter control in the Camera app.

Finally, if you check its official guide here, you will see that compatibility goes down to the device level. The Galaxy S25 Ultra and its S Pen are unsupported, so you cannot buy old styluses to make the new phone work like before.

With such critical features missing, does that mean Samsung has developed a killer stylus app that can only be achieved with Galaxy AI? 

The answer: Most Galaxy AI's existing and new features aren’t locked behind S Pen functionality. You can use Circle To Search and AI Select without needing one. Furthermore, Galaxy S25 Ultra’s revamped S Pen Shortcuts default menu has Drawing Assist, AI Select, Create Note, and Screen Write, none of which are new features (Drawing Assist is an updated Sketch To Image).

By combining Bluetooth removal and the lack of S Pen innovation, we’re forced to conclude that the S Pen for the Galaxy S25 Ultra is significantly less valuable than before. You can tap and draw, but so can most styluses. A replacement Galaxy S25 Ultra S Pen starts at S$78 a piece, the same price as the Bluetooth-capable one on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Ouch. Did Samsung forget to re-price the 'updated' S Pen and, as a result, adjust the pricing for the new phone? That's for you to chew on since Samsung isn't going to give a straight answer.

While we won’t refute Samsung’s findings where Air Actions saw little usage among its Ultra fans, it still doesn’t explain why Samsung made the S Pen less valuable (and charge the same for it). They could’ve replaced Air Actions with the Pro feature that uses SmartThings Find to help users pinpoint their misplaced stylus, and let users keep more popular features like its remote camera shutter functionality. Samsung drawing up blanks for new S Pen features is uncharacteristic for its Ultra model, which costs nearly S$2,000. In turn, it’s harder to value the Ultra more than its other two Galaxy S variants. 

Devaluing its S Pen also made the Galaxy S25 Ultra more vulnerable to its competition since nearly all major phone brands have high-end, high-quality Android handsets (with faster charging and higher ruggedness ratings), even if their software and security packages aren’t close to Samsung’s level.

Imaging performance 

Here’s a recap of the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s rear cameras before we talk about real-world experiences and how they matter to users.

• 200MP Main camera, 2x “optical quality” zoom, f/1.7 aperture, OIS
• 50MP Telephoto camera, 5x optical zoom, 10x “optical quality” zoom,  f/3.4 aperture, OIS
• 10MP Telephoto camera, 3x optical zoom, f/2.4 aperture, OIS
• 50MP Ultrawide camera, f/1.9 aperture

If you’re upgrading from Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, the real (and only) change is the ultrawide, which goes from 12MP to its new 50MP. By default, it’s also pixel-binned to shoot at 12MP, so it’s a sensible upgrade since pixel-binning helps improve light intake at the cost (or no cost) in the megapixel count.

The weird part? Ultrawide is one of the least used camera lenses owing to its fisheye distortion and how it can make people look fat. Conversely, Samsung's 10MP telephoto camera is ripe for upgrading, and it’s a popular zoom range for portrait shoots, too (3x). We’re not saying it’s terrible, but we’re not sure why they didn’t upgrade it along with the ultrawide, given how few changes they made to the hardware this time.

From our prior 2024 smartphone camera shootout, Samsung was the clear winner, outclassing everyone else in every tested category using the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s predecessor. Even before you look at the photos below, you’d already know you’re shooting with one of the best smartphone cameras money can buy. From a value perspective, this is undisputed. 

From the images above, morning shots that are 10x "optical quality" zoom and below are all ready for social media use. The ultrawide images are also on par with the main camera's colourisation, sharpness, and detail, so it's good to see great consistency across all rear cameras.

For your reference, the samples below showcase Galaxy S25 Ultra's cameras in other lighting conditions.

Benchmark Performance

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, like its Plus and base models, uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset. Funnily, both Qualcomm and Samsung made a big deal about this customised mobile platform during the Unpacked keynote, but they omitted that detail from the device's online spec sheet. 

This chipset is almost the same 2025 premium flagship processor found on the Honor Magic7 Pro. However, the Galaxy S25 series has higher-clocked prime cores (our Geekbench 6 snapshot says 4.47GHz, which is 0.15GHz faster than the standard version of Snapdragon 8 Elite). If we translate that to daily use, it should be better at demanding tasks like video editing and 120Hz gaming, but the performance doesn’t differ during low-power tasks since the six efficiency cores on the processor are unchanged.

We will compare Samsung’s strongest 2025 entrant against its best rivals, including the MediaTek-backed OPPO Find X8 Pro. We’re also throwing in an older phone or two to check for generational differences.

Putting it to the test

To find out how the competitors line up specs and price-wise, check them out in this link.

To find out more about the tests we conduct and what they relate to, we've jotted them down here.

Benchmark performance remarks

Naturally, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor would obliterate the competition. Worth noting is that the MediaTek-backed OPPO Find X8 Pro already offers generational leaps ahead of phones from 2024 or older, but the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and Honor Magic7 Pro push it even further with insane performance ratings.

The phone kept to 37°C even in the heat of intense benchmarking.

Battery Life

Our battery benchmark uses PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 Battery Life test to determine a modern Android-based smartphone's battery uptime in minutes. This controlled benchmark simulates real-world usage with a combination of both web and social media browsing, video and photo editing, parsing data with various file formats, writing (on documents), and more. 

Despite staying at 5,000mAh for years, the Galaxy S25 Ultra phone achieved 15 hours and 13 minutes of benchmark uptime. This is almost one hour more than the Honor Magic7 Pro despite Honor having the same chipset, an additional power management chip, and a larger battery. 

It shows how Samsung’s many years of optimising its software for efficiency is paying off in spades. That said, it’s possible that the “for Galaxy” variant of the Snapdragon processor also comes with power management perks we aren’t informed about, and it’s not just a clock rate bump for bigger numbers.

Like its predecessor, the Galaxy S25 Ultra supports up to 45W of wired charging. Like before, it doesn’t come with the official Samsung 45W adapter (oddly listed as “not for sale” at the time of publishing). 

The phone took ~25 minutes from empty to 50% and about an hour from 50% to 100%. Overall, its 45W charging averaged 80+ minutes for a full tank, putting it slightly behind competing flagship Android phones that can fill up 5,000mAh in slightly less time. 

As a whole, the Galaxy S25 Ultra has excellent battery stats, both in duration and charging speed, even if its specs aren’t as advanced as those of its Chinese peers. 

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is easily one of the most powerful and stable premium flagship Android phones available so far. However, Samsung’s mishandling of its most popular product makes us worry about the future of Galaxy S series handsets.

At a superficial level, the Galaxy S25 Ultra repeats the success of its predecessor. This year’s Ultra still offers top-tier daily performance in a more pleasant design, is thinner and lighter with great cameras, a long battery life, decent charging speeds, and impeccable polish in its hardware and software that few brands can hope to achieve. Frankly, if Samsung stopped there, this would have sufficed as a phone worthy of its name.

Some niceties are the improved breadth of AI perks and the adoption of a deeper Bixby integration with Google’s Gemini Live. It also transplanted some of Google’s mobile AI features. In addition to improving old Galaxy AI tools, it added a few new Galaxy AI features, like Filter for photo editing and Audio Eraser for video editing.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra seems to have met the technical definition of “new and improved.” Coupled with its predecessor’s status as the ultimate premium smartphone in 2024, the successor could've been a shoo-in for the same accolade in 2025.

Sadly, the Galaxy S25 Ultra made us feel that Samsung slightly lost the plot in its Ultra handsets. Its magic, which made it different from a sea of Chinese aspirants, was somewhat diminished because of carelessness.

Besides the processor and browsing experience, actual hardware refinements were less pronounced. While the ultrawide camera got a real upgrade, it’s not as frequently used as the telephoto or main cameras. The display’s scratch resistance is also four times better than before, but that’s to Corning’s credit, not Samsung's. 

Short of its Bixby+Gemini integration into its power button, agentic AI still feels unreliable owing to its strange compatibility and implementation (covered in great detail above). While AI has been revolutionary in helping users with piecemeal tasks, like editing media and transcribing meeting notes, the vagueness of daily productivity is still challenging for AI to understand; thus, it’s not ready for day-to-day use. We also did not expect agentic AI to be so advanced on such short notice, so it's not a penalty to Samsung.

The actual hurt came from the Ultra' S Pen. There were no new stylus-specific AI features for the second year. Samsung also removed crucial Bluetooth features in its bid to retire Air Actions, but didn’t replace it with newer, better stylus features, AI-powered or otherwise.

The Koreans were in an excellent position to be one of the first companies in the world to develop a built-in phone stylus that leverages AI to create something unprecedented. Instead, they’ve somehow diluted the S Pen's value proposition, affecting the appeal of getting an Ultra. If you didn’t need a high-tech stylus or the telephoto capabilities that its extensive rear camera set offers, its Galaxy S25+ might be a better fit for S$400 less. For an Ultra to be worthy of its name, it must offer more than what other phones can do for you.

Stylus misdirection aside, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is still one of the most reliable premium Android phones you can buy in Singapore. One can count on one hand the number of Android phone brands that offer robust security packages, broad compatibility with home appliances, and mature feature sets all in one device. If you combine that with everything the Galaxy S25 Ultra excelled in, Samsung still stands out.

If you have an Ultra launched within the last two years that was spared from green or pink display lines, the Galaxy S25 Ultra poses a murkier upgrade path. That said, non-Samsung users or those who don’t lose sleep over the S Pen will feel that the Galaxy S25 Ultra is its best showcase yet. 

We’re still giving it a reasonably high score to show that it’s a charming and excellent premium handset. To get an Editor’s Choice nomination, Samsung must show its willingness to take risks, innovate, and tell users what getting an Ultra truly means. If that happens, Samsung and its users will be better off.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra retails at S$1,828 (256GB) onwards at the following touchpoints in Singapore:

• Samsung Online Store
• Samsung Shop App
• Samsung Experience Stores
• Samsung Official Store in Lazada, Shopee, and KrisShop
• Local telecommunication operators (M1, Singtel and StarHub)
• Selected Consumer Electronics & IT online stores (Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, Gain City, Harvey Norman)
• Other selected channels: iShopChangi and ZYM Mobile