Samsung is back with a brand-new edition of its Galaxy Ultra range, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. This phone is the latest premium handset from the tech giant and stands atop a new Galaxy range that also includes the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus.
I have been using the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra as my daily drive for a number of weeks and I'm convinced that this is the best Android phone I've ever tested... even if some of the AI smarts still feel a little gimmicky right now.
AI not-so-smarts aside, it's so good I'm sure I've heard my trusty-old Pixel 8 weeping in its box as I neglected it for this review unit.
Here are 5 things to know about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra...
1. It's chonky, at 6.9 inches
This phone is biiig. Like really big. It's 0.1 inches bigger than the S24 Ultra and, at 6.9 inches, it now means it sizes up exactly to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, its nearest Apple-shaped rival. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra measures 77.6 x 162.8 x 8.2 and weighs 218g.
This amount of screen real estate means that it's a glorious thing to look at and, surprisingly, holding it isn't too much of an issue.
Its sides are flat — the bezel has been slimmed down slightly from the S24 Ultra — which makes it easier to hold and also gives the handset something of a premium edge. But it is sizeable, to a point that I was expecting the people around me to start jumping up and down and shouting at it, as if it were the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The S25 Ultra screen is bright, brilliantly so. It has more nits than your average primary school class, measuring 1,860 of them in the display's output. This makes it brighter than its aforementioned Apple rival and offers up a fantastic viewing experience.
The screen is also 120Hz — the more Hz, the smoother the experience — which makes it one of the best 4K AMOLED displays around.
2. Design is very demure
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is an ultra-modern-looking phone. As mentioned, the sides are flat which makes the screen feel almost bezel free.
The frame is made from titanium, which is pretty much the most premium material a handset can be made of right now. The colours available are a little muted, though. My review unit was Titanium Black which has a matte look that felt devalued as soon as it got fingerprint smudge all over it.
There's also Titanium Gray, Titanium Silverblue and Titanium Whitesilver available and a couple of exclusive online colours: Jadegreen, Jetblack and Pinkgold.
Don't worry, I've asked Samsung if its space bar is broken, too.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is a stylish handset, no doubt, and this is especially the case when you flip the thing over. That camera array is... quite something. Three huge lenses lie vertically on the left of the devices, flanked by two smaller cameras and a sensor.
On the base of the handset is the SIM slot and the all-powerful S Pen. Actually, it's not quite as powerful as it has been in previous models, as Samsung has, for some reason, taken aways its Bluetooth capabilities. This means those who loved using the stylus for remote camera control and its gesture-based Air Actions controls will be disappointed.
3. AI is here and here to stay
Sorry everyone, 2025 is the year that even our phones are bowing down to the robot overlords. While Samsung went hard with its AI features in the S24 Ultra, it's doubled down and then some with the AI smarts its equipped the S25 Ultra with.
Google Gemini Live is onboard to make AI feel 'conversational'. Well, about as conversational as shouting at Alexa to turn the music down. Gemini is Google's ChatGPT rival and can be summoned by long pressing the power button.
It's fun but still does feel like you are asking a chatbot a series of questions. I managed to ask it to find the remaining Chelsea fixtures for the season and add them to my (Google) Calendar. It didn't fire back abuse for liking Chelsea, though, which would have been far more realistic.
Now Brief is actually pretty helpful. It offers up a summary of information from your apps into one digestible place, offering us up Spotify playlist recommendations and the like. It looks decent and the more information that is fed into it, the more you will get out of it. The problem is, not every third-party app plays nicely with this feature.
The AI audio eraser is impressive, taking out any unwanted noise from your recordings. Samsung thinks this would work well for any music you might be recording on the handset. I didn't record any music, but my voice notes sounded on point.
AI Select is fun, where you can highlight anything on the screen to get contextual information, as well as text translations and the like. It is all very useable, but I found myself having to conjure up ways to use these features. They just aren't part of the natural way I use a phone, so instead of being essential AI companions, they are more like fun gimmicks.
Take AI image generation. I LOVE that I can make a picture of a dog wearing a beret and flying past the Eiffel Tower, but do I actually need to make a picture of a dog wearing a beret and flying past the Eiffel Tower? Actually, don't answer that...
4. Cameras have been given an AI upgrade
The cameras on board the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra are jaw dropping. They are only subtle changes to the already-impressive previous line-up, offering: 200MP / 10MP / 50MP / 50MP rear cameras and a 12MP front camera.
But the big thing here is that AI has been blended into the camera's features. If you are taking a portrait, then the Object-Aware Engine will light things according to what objects are in the picture.
The 50MP Ultra Wide camera is built for macro photography so point the S25 Ultra at a flower and you'll be sneezing at the close-up sight of pollen. This is the one camera lens that's been significantly upgraded from the S24.
Then there's the Telephoto lens — something called the ProVisual Engine manages to smooth off any jagged sections you sometimes have in a zoomed-in pic and works fantastically well. And if you want to go closer, the Space Zoom uses AI to make things that much clearer and you can pretend you are a Day of The Jackal style sniper while using it.
5. Battery is bonkers for such a powerful phone
The S25 Ultra is a performance powerhouse. It runs on a bespoke Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which has been given a Galaxy makeover. This is a top chip so everything about this phone is fast. The loading of web pages, the dipping in and out of apps, the ability to film and edit video on the fly.
Then there's the gaming side of things. This screen is bigger than the screen on the original Nintendo Switch, so it's primed for gaming.
Obviously we rinsed Balatro on the thing, but that didn't exactly try out the phone's graphical prowess. But Alto's Odyssey did and it made the desert adventure that little bit more stunning. It did warm the phone up, though, but not to Sahara-style levels.
You would expect this sort of power to burn out the battery but I got a decent 17 hours out of the thing per charge.
Given I am a person who gets the fear if my phone isn't charging overnight, this meant I could shift how I charge my phone, doing so in the office — after an overnight with no charge and a morning commute consisting of Netflix, Spotify and doom-scrolling — rather than at home.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review: Final Verdict
The S25 Ultra is the best Android phone I've ever tested. But there are caveats: it's not a significant upgrade from its predecessor (although it looks much nicer) so may not do enough to entice the fair weather Samsung supporters. But if you are looking to try your hand at Android, this is the handset to go for.
As for the AI enhancements, they're good enough, and it's clear that they will get better with some software enhancements.
No matter what any tech company says: AI isn't the life changer they want it to be just yet. Sure, it makes some things a little easier and some things a little fun but this if this S25 Ultra was stripped of these, you wouldn't shed a tear – because what's left is still a stunning slab of technology.
Pricing and availability
All Samsung Galaxy S25 models are available to order now. Here’s the pricing breakdown, plus the available colours for each model.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: 256GB - £1,249 | 512GB - £1,349 | 1TB – £1,549
Titan Black, Titan Gray, Titan Silverblue, Titan Whitesilver
Samsung Galaxy S25+: 256GB – £999 | 512GB – £1,099
Icyblue, Navy, Mint, Silver Shadow
Samsung Galaxy S25: 128GB – £799 | 256GB – £859 | 512GB - £979
Icyblue, Navy, Mint, Silver Shadow