I just went hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra — and it beats the iPhone in one big way

Early Verdict

I have a confession about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. I wish my iPhone were more like it.

Make no mistake, the hardware changes made by Samsung here are minimal. You get a slightly bigger 6.9-inch display, a slightly thinner and lighter design with curved corners and a more powerful 50MP ultrawide camera.

But the big story here is AI — and this time the features are less “look what I can do!” party tricks and more practical “here’s how I can help you” smarts. This is Samsung's plan to become the best phone.

For example, you can look up the date for an upcoming concert with your voice, add it to your calendar and send the details to your friend in a text with a single voice request. The S25 Ultra knows which apps to use and does the work for you. Welcome to the AI agent era.

Say you’re in the YouTube app. Tap the AI Select button and the S25 Ultra will analyze what’s on your screen to present recommendations — like turning that clip of a dog into a GIF on the fly. The S25 Ultra is chockfull of helpful AI features like this, thanks to a combination of Samsung’s One UI 7 software and an even deeper partnership with Google Gemini.

While I’ve only spent an hour or so with the S25 Ultra so far, I came away from my hands-on session thinking that Apple Intelligence on the iPhone has a long way to go to catch up. If AI is the new battleground for smartphones, Samsung is now winning the war.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra price and release date

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is available for pre-order now, with a February 7 release date. You’ll be able to buy through carriers, Amazon, Best Buy and Samsung.com. The phone starts at $1,299 / £1,249 for 256GB of storage. Check out our Samsung Galaxy S25 pre-order deals page to get the biggest discounts.

Samsung is also rolling out a New Galaxy Club program. You can enroll for $8.33 per month, and you’ll be able to upgrade to the newest Galaxy device any time after 12 months. You’ll also get one year of Samsung Care+ through Galaxy Club.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra specs

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra design, colors and display

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra kind of reverses the design of last year’s Galaxy S24 Ultra. Instead of rounded edges and sharp corners, you now get flat edges and rounded corners. I think it’s a change for the better, as the S25 Ultra feels less slippery in your hand. At the same time, the rounded-off corners are comfier; they don’t dig into your palm. I also like how the rear cameras now look like they’re floating above the chassis.

I give credit to Samsung for making the S25 Ultra lighter and thinner, but there’s a trade-off. Samsung took out 15 grams of weight and shaved off .02 inches while also trimming the bezels. The result is a big-screen handset that’s very sleek at 6.41 x 3.06 x 0.32 inches and 7.69 ounces. That’s practically the same exact dimensions as the iPhone 16 Pro Max (6.42 x 3.06 x 0.32 inches), but Apple’s device is a bit heavier at 7.99 ounces.

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

The trade-off is that Samsung has removed the Bluetooth LE radio from the S Pen on the S25 Ultra, which means you can’t perform Air Actions like remotely activating the camera shutter. I can live with that.

The 6.9-inch OLED display on the Galaxy S25 Ultra has the same QHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate as before, but this screen is built tougher. It uses Corning’s Gorilla Glass Armor 2 tech to deliver a promised 28% better resistance to fractures and 60% less screen damage repair.

Samsung offers four standard colors with the Galaxy S25 Ultra and a few exclusive colors through Samsung.com. There’s Titanium Black, Titanium Gray, Titanium Silverblue and Titanium Whitesilver. I’m a fan of the Silverblue hue, which really pops, but I noticed that the back of the phone quickly picked up fingerprint smudges.

Samsung.com will offer exclusive S25 Ultra colors: Titanium PinkGoldTitanium Jetblack and Titanium Jadegreen.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Galaxy AI features

The Galaxy S25 Ultra builds on the solid Galaxy AI foundation from the S24 Ultra, which introduced handy features like Circle to Search and Live Translate. Samsung’s goal with its improved Galaxy AI? Introduce AI agents that can do stuff on your behalf, integrate the AI more deeply into the software and make it more personal.

There’s two Galaxy AI features that impressed me most during my hands-on time. The first is cross-app actions. Long press the side button the S25 Ultra, and this phone turns into your personal concierge. For example, I could say :find the next Buffalo Bills game and add it to my calendar.” It worked instantly. You can also long press and ask about the cooking video you’re watching. You can say “list the dishes from this video and add them to my notes.”

This feature works with Samsung’s native apps, the full Google suite of apps and a couple of third-party apps so far in Spotify and WhatsApp. If this sounds a lot like the voice control feature for apps that’s coming to Siri in a future iOS 18 update, you’re right. But Samsung’s version is ready right right now.

Thanks to built-in Google Gemini, the S25 Ultra can also help you perform tasks by leveraging your camera. For example, you can point the camera at your fridge, and you’ll get recommendations on what dishes you can make based on your ingredients.

Circle to Search is getting an upgrade, too. It now works with sound, and it can recognize phone numbers, emails and urls for quick actions.

The other major pillar of Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S25 Ultra is personalization. This phone has its own personal data engine that’s stored on the device, and it can recommend routines based on your activities, such as asking if you want to turn Bluetooth on when you get in the car.

Have a Galaxy Ring or Samsung Galaxy Watch? Galaxy AI can tell when you’ve fallen asleep and turn off your Samsung TV for you (no sleep timer required).

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra OneUI 7: Now Brief and Now Bar

This personalization extends to two major new features for the Galaxy S25 Ultra: Now Brief and Now Bar. The Now Brief is easily accessible from your home screen and gives you quick access to weather, calendar reminders and suggestions for routines based on your personal habits (like driving mode). It also surfaces news articles based on your interests.

There’s an Evening Brief, too, which can give you a quick summary of the day’s events, photos you took, reminders about upcoming travel and more. Presumably the Now Brief will get more useful over time as the S25 Ultra learns more about you.

The other major new personalization feature within the One UI 7 running on the latest Samsung phones is the Now Bar, which delivers short tidbits of info and AI-powered recommendations. Think of it like the Dynamic Island on the iPhone with Live Activities. Thanks to the Now Bar, you can see things like sports scores, directions to your next meeting, countdown timers and more. This info can appear on your lock screen as well.

If you’re freaked out by all this AI personalization, Samsung says you can always opt out, as well as reset or delete your data. The company claims that the personal data engine is “locked down” with end-to-end encryption and that Samsung uses “post quantum enhanced data security,” though I don’t know what that means.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra cameras and photo editing

The Galaxy S25 Ultra offers one major camera upgrade on the hardware front, and that’s the jump from 12MP to 50MP for the ultrawide lens. This should result in crisper ultrawide shots but also macro photos with up to 4x greater detail.

I snapped some shots of flowers after toggling on 50MP mode, and I could get much closer to the subject while enjoying an astounding level of detail on the petals. The images looked quite bright, too, even though we were indoors.

Samsung is also promising a boost to Nightography on the S25 Ultra with less noise and what’s called double-analysis noise removal. This involves real-time analysis of every pixel.

The S25 Ultra steps up its AI game for photo editing as well. You should expect improved generative edits, with smarter tools that don’t just remove unwanted subjects but their shadows, too.

Just like the Galaxy Z Fold 6, you can also use Sketch to Image to add items to your pictures using AI. You can draw right on top of your pics or use a text prompt.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra video

When it comes to video, the S25 Ultra supports recording 10-bit HDR footage, which gives you 4x richer colors versus 8-bit. And for the first time, you can record in the Log format, which gives professional videographers more creative control over the lighting, colors and more.

My favorite new video feature on the S25 Ultra is Audio Eraser, which can recognize up to six different sounds and remove what you want for cleaner sounding clips. Available sounds include speaker, music, wind, nature, crowd and noise. I tried this feature very briefly and it seemed to work well, but I’ll have to compare it side by side with the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s Audio Mix feature — whose sound quality can be iffy based on our testing.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: Snapdragon 8 Elite and Performance

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is once again powered by a special chip in the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. This is an overclocked 3nm chip that promises faster performance than, say, the OnePlus 13.

Samsung claims that you’ll get 40% better NPU performance, 37% faster CPU and 30% GPU compared to the S24 Ultra. You can also expect better ray tracing performance for more realistic game play, but we’ll have to put that to the test.

I can’t say how fast this phone is yet, but it was very responsive and smooth during our hands-on demo. This chip is backed up by 12GB of RAM and your choice of 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra battery and charging

The Galaxy S25 Ultra packs the same 5,000 mAh battery as the last few Samsung Galaxy Ultra phones, but that doesn’t mean it won’t last longer on a charger than the S24 Ultra. We expect at least some efficiency games with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.

Alas, the charging for the S25 Ultra is stuck at 45 watts of power, so you shouldn’t expect to see an improvement in charging speeds. It's rated for 65% in 30 minutes, which is good but not best-in-class. So what about Qi 2.0 charging, which would let you connect this flagship to all sorts of magnetized accessories? The S25 Ultra technically supports it, but only if you spring for a case that supports the new standard. There are no magnets in the phone itself. Bummer.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra outlook

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra looks like yet another iterative upgrade on paper, and it kind of is on the hardware front. But at the same time, Samsung is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with AI on a phone, making it more practical and personal, which is something I appreciate.

The cross-app actions and the integration of Gemini in particular are impressive on the S25 Ultra, and I look forward to seeing Samsung bringing in more third-party apps for taking advantage of its AI agents.

Don’t get me wrong. The hardware looks solid, and I appreciate the slimmer and lighter design and bigger and more durable screen. The 50MP ultra wide camera could also help elevate your macro shots, and I look forward to putting Samsung’s Nightography upgrades to the test.

The big question is whether the S25 Ultra is worth upgrading to if Samsung winds up making many of the AI features available on older devices, and how far back they decide to go. For now, though, the Galaxy S25 Ultra looks like the big-screen AI phone to beat and smarter than any iPhone 16 with Apple Intelligence.