Review: Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
I’ll get right to the point. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is the best phone money can buy right now. And you’ll need less money to score one as of last week when Samsung cut the price. Let’s start with the design of the phone itself.
It’s a flat sided phone just like every phone seems to be these days. The thing is, that it felt really comfortable to hold in my hand, and didn’t have any sharp edges that I could feel. And despite being a big phone, it didn’t feel big. The screen also has really thin bezels as well as being bright, clear and fluid. So far I have zero complaints.
The back is where things get interesting. The Galaxy S25 Ultra features a 200MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide lens, and two telephoto lenses (50MP with 5x optical zoom and 10MP with 3x optical zoom), along with a 12MP front camera. And these cameras are top shelf. Let me show you three photos. Starting with a 12 MP photo:
Followed by a 200 MP photo:
Both of these photos really look good and detailed. Let’s try something different. As in a photo where I did a semi – macro shot to get this picture:
There is some blur, but it’s pretty decent. How about zoomed in photos?
It’s a weird place to see a pair football cleats, but this photo is pretty clear. Here’s a lower light shot.
Again, there’s nothing to complain about when it comes to this photo. Let’s move over to video. Here’s a 4K HDR video for you to look at:
Followed by an 8K video:
Both videos look good. But I have to say that the 4K video looks sharper than the 8K video. Likely because the 8K video is shot at 30 fps which is what the max that this phone will do at this resolution. But I seriously don’t think you’ll complain.
I usually don’t do speed tests because they are kind of meaningless at this point. Phones in general are pretty fast these days with iPhones tending to be at the top of the food chain. But the S25 Ultra isn’t too shabby putting in a Geekbench single-core score of 2,099 and a multi-core score of 8,103 from the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. As for all the AI stuff that the phone comes with, let me boil it down to this:
- The now brief that gives you an overview of your day wasn’t useful to me.
- Gemini was pretty good as it allowed for conversational AI that was useful to me. Plus I can use the camera to identify objects. That’s something that I did use a few times with good results. It also goes without saying that this destroys Apple Intelligence without trying too hard.
Let’s move over to some complaints if you want to call them that. I’ll start with battery life. This phone can make it through the day. But just barely. I suspect that it has to do with the fact that it has a 5000 mAh battery and the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor isn’t exactly power friendly. A bigger battery to take you late into the night would have been welcome. Then there’s the S Pen. Some have complained that because Bluetooth support in the S Pen is gone, that hobbles the S Pen. I disagree because in my week and a bit that I used the S25 Ultra, I never used the S Pen once. So I have to wonder should it even be there in the first place as I didn’t really encounter a situation where I needed to use it. Comment below and share your thoughts on that if you are an S Pen fan.
Finally, there’s the price. The starting price of the S25 Ultra is normally $1,918 with 256GB of storage. That is pretty pricey, but after last week’s price cut, I am guessing that this will spur sales. Which means that if you want an S25 Ultra, now would be a good time to get one. It has a great set of cameras, it has decent battery life, AI features that are useful, and a build that is top shelf. You honestly can’t go wrong with this phone.
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