Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Samsung’s first Unpacked of the year is arguably its most important event yet. It sets the tone for the bulk of the smartphone market in the first half of 2025 and introduces Samsung’s flagship for this year, Galaxy S25 Ultra. of Galaxy S25 AND S25+ tagged along, which is probably the highest praise we can give them. Oh, and Samsung teased one Galaxy S25 Edge and while it has about four edges, it has little to do with its legendary names.
So without further ado, here’s our hot take on the series.
One UI 7 is great, AI finally looks attractive
The first half of Samsung’s 1 hour and 10 minute January 2025 presentation was all about One UI and AI, so it’s only fair to start with that.
For the first time, Samsung delayed its One UI update from late fall to mid-winter. Seeing the end result makes that delay feel worthwhile. Samsung’s new take on the UI feels fresh and, more importantly, faster. And it brings unprecedented features, such as a vertical app drawer – just imagine all the possibilities!
All kidding aside, the new Gemini-powered AI feels valuable — not just gimmicky. Circle to search can now recognize phone numbers, emails and URLs for quick action. Multimodal AI agents interpret text, speech, images, and even video for natural interactions—for example, you can ask Gemini to find a specific photo in Gallery. Search is content aware suggesting your next step – sharing a GIF or saving an event.
Natural language input allows you to control some phone features. For example, you can search your Gallery by voice and ask the AI assistant to pull up photos from your trip to a certain location. You can even ask it to enlarge the font if it’s too small!
We love the new design of the Galaxy S25 Ultra
The Galaxy S Ultra entered its rectangular phase in early 2022 with the Galaxy S22 Ultra. It was special and unique, and it was suitable for a phone equipped with a pen.
But the new rounded shape looks smarter and more importantly, it brings a huge improvement in handling. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a big phone and that makes it comfortable in the hand.
Impressively, Samsung made the screen 0.1 inches bigger, the phone 0.4mm thinner and 14g lighter, without compromising durability or the size of internals like the battery!
The best screen glass just gets better
The Galaxy S24 Ultra remained the only phone with an anti-reflective display on the market, despite rumors that other manufacturers would come out with the same technology. The less reflective screen proved great for outdoor visibility, like us The summer battery test was proven.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra could have easily been downgraded in that regard, but it brings a further improved panel – Gorilla Armor 2 retains its anti-reflective coating, but is brighter and more stable.
The new 50MP ultra-wide sounds good on paper, but early samples aren’t convincing
Samsung only upgraded the ultra-wide-angle camera on the Galaxy S25 Ultra – the other 12 cameras across the Ultra, Plus and Vanilla remained unchanged. Gone is the 12MP sensor with f/2.2 optics, in comes a new 50MP imager with a brighter f/1.9 lens. The focal length remains at 120°.
The higher-megapixel camera shoots 8K video and, on paper, should produce ultra-wide shots with more detail, while its improved aperture should deliver better low-light shots.
However, we are not seeing it in our first samples. We have two camera comparisons between the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the S25 Ultra (part 1, part 2) and we cannot easily say that the new camera is better. The older one seems to produce sharper photos with more detail.
This is a theme throughout – the 200MP main camera enjoys the newer (and likely faster) Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and yet, we’re seeing sharper and more detailed images from the flagship phone. old.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is the world’s worst Ultra in photography
Compare Samsung Ultra with Xiaomi 14 Ultra, vivo’s X100 Ultra, Huawei’s Pura 70 UltraOR Oppo Find X7 Ultra and will come last in overall image performance. Not a good look for the company that invented the segment.
S pen down, really???
Surprisingly, Samsung removed Bluetooth connectivity from the S Pen on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. There is also no accelerometer, which means no aerial actions. The S Pen used to be the best remote shutter in the world, and now it’s just a stylus. Very strange.
Only Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform for Galaxy
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a big step up from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. “For Galaxy” shows slightly higher clock speeds on the main 2x Oryon V2 Phoenix L cores, GPU and NPU. The “original” SD 8 Elite has them clocked at 4.32GHz, while the Galaxy-exclusive CPU clocks in at 4.47GHz.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
Fans around the world will be happy that every single Galaxy S25 unit around the globe uses this chip.
The Galaxy S25 and S25+ are boring
Apart from the new chip, the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ are unchanged from their predecessors. They have the same screens, the same batteries, the same charging speeds and the same cameras.
They didn’t have the anti-reflective screen, the new ultra-wide camera, or even an ultra-wide autofocus. But hey, the Galaxy S25 now comes with the same 12GB of RAM as the Plus and Ultra.
No global variant with 16GB RAM
But seriously, only 12GB of RAM on the Galaxy S25 Ultra sounds insulting. The Pixel 9 Pro has 16 GB, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra reaches 16 GB, while the OnePlus 13 even has up to 24 GB of RAM.
Samsung Galaxy S25
Yes, there’s a 16GB Galaxy S24 Ultra, technically, but you can’t buy one outside Korea, China and Taiwan. Once again, it’s not a good look.
Now there’s a Galaxy S25 Edge
Samsung teased him Galaxy S25 Edge. Rumored as the S25 Slim, the Edge revives a legendary line of devices from Samsung. The first was Galaxy Note Edge which had a beveled right edge that opened up additional functions such as Edge screen. Others, like the Galaxy S6 edge, S6 edge+ and Galaxy S7 edge had two beveled blades that felt as sharp as a knife at the time.
of The new Galaxy S25 Edge it seems blunt in comparison. It looks more like one Galaxy Alpha.
Are there many models now?
There could be at least one Galaxy S25 model out there right now. If Samsung releases a Galaxy S25 FE later, it would make the series even more difficult to navigate. We may be ready for a world where the smaller or mid-sized Galaxy S is unnecessary.
