I was a Samsung girl for ages before I started at CGM, so when the opportunity came to test out the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra smartphone, I was excited to jump back in. In the past, I was more of a mid-range user, so something more like the S25+, with my last standard smartphone review from Samsung being the S22+. A lot can change in three years, so I have been looking forward to this!
As always with Samsung, the S25 Ultra is a stunning device. I was able to test the Titanium Silverblue version, but as I mentioned at Samsung Unpacked, the team has gone back to basics with their array of blues across the S25 line. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra also comes in Titanium Black, Titanium Grey, Titanium Whitesilver and Titanium Silverblue, with samsung.com exclusives, Titanium Pinkgold, Titanium Jetblack and Titanium Jadegreen.
The design of the Ultra model is always professional and stylish, and they stick to tamer colours to enforce that aesthetic. I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed that the Coralred colourway is not available in the S25 Ultra model—professionals can like pink too! The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has clean lines and curved edges, giving the device a premium feel all around.
“As always with Samsung, the S25 Ultra is a stunning device.”
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has a gorgeous display that is right in line with the overall quality of the device. The screen is a 6.9” 3120 x 1440 QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display. The quality is exactly what you need for watching Netflix, playing games, or shooting photos and videos, and with the emphasis Samsung has put on content creation, this makes perfect sense.
In phone calls, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now offers call recording, allowing you to create a transcription of your call. In the same space, you can actually live translate, which allows you to have a conversation with someone who speaks a different language, and it would do the translation in real time. In practice, this was actually pretty smooth, and it picked up what I was saying accurately.
Galaxy AI is the most prominent push this year from Samsung, and the S25 Ultra does quite a bit to bring AI to the forefront of the smartphone device. A significant portion of the AI experience comes from Gemini, which is not exclusive to Samsung devices. You can use Gemini to streamline your day or projects and even have it research, summarize and send emails or create calendar holds on your behalf. A feature you’ll find on other phones as well is Circle to Search, though now Samsung allows you to do this to hear audio, too. In practice, I could use it to identify songs in TikTok videos, though Shazam was able to do it a little faster.
Thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, AI processes were quick and painless. Something that will be vital for content creators or other video editors is the ability to shoot in LOG now (logarithmic footage). It was confirmed that this will be across the entire S25 range, as well. Another great feature is Audio Eraser, which can identify different kinds of sounds and let you amplify or lower the volume individually, be it voices, ambient sound, running water, typing, etc. Though Audio Eraser does not completely remove unwanted sounds, it can let you control them based on your needs, and it does so extremely well.
Galaxy AI lets you turn your photos into various other styles, like cartoons or sketches, using Portrait Studio. I found that, for me, it wasn’t so accurate, but some really cool images came out for my children and friends. More than anything, it was fun, and you could draw on your pictures using Sketch to Image and create new images from photos you have taken. It might be a bit gimmicky, but it is worth it.
Galaxy AI’s Generative Edit was also incredibly impressive. When removing objects, you can simply click and hold or draw around what you want to remove. Samsung’s Galaxy AI was almost always accurate in snapping to the edges of what I wanted to remove. What was even better was that the background it filled in would be nearly flawless.
“The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has the best object eraser on any smartphone, hands down.”
I even tested this with an area of wall covered in boxes, with no reference as to what was behind it. Galaxy AI created its own wall, and though it wasn’t my wall, it looked half-decent. When removing cables on my patterned floor, it was able to recreate the pattern, and you’d never know it was there. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has the best object eraser on any smartphone, hands down.
Something else I found interesting was the ability to use one of your photos of, say, a sunset to create a filter to use either over other photos you’ve taken or while taking a new photo. I was able to create an orange hue over snow-covered trees, and with a bit more thought, I think this could create really unique pictures.
Hands down, my favourite feature on the new Samsung S25 Ultra is the Best Face feature. With motion photos turned on, you can go into any photo you took and use the Best Face feature to adjust each individual’s face to something more pleasing. Though this can be handy for anyone, as someone trying to take a photo of two children, I can promise you they are almost never ready at the same time.
All I do is click their face and then Best Face, and it finds a moment where they weren’t blinking or turned, etc, to tidy things up! Camera features are getting better and better, and Samsung definitely had a few tricks up their sleeves for the S25 line-up, and I’m impressed.
To go alongside these great AI photo capabilities, we first need a great camera. Of course, The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra impresses, and this year, they made an upgrade that will please quite a few content creators and photographers. The majority of the S25 Ultra’s camera specs—including the 12MP selfie camera—have gone unchanged.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra smartphone features a 200MP wide-angle lens, a 10MP telephoto lens, a 50MP periscope telephoto lens, and a 12MP selfie camera, which all remain unchanged from the S24 Ultra. However, the ultrawide camera on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has been bumped from a 12MP camera to a comfortable 50MP lens. It is nice to see Samsung making upgrades, even if it is only one here and there.
In my research, I found that Samsung downgraded the selfie camera from a 40MP to a 12MP lens from the S22 to S23. I would love to see Samsung pay a bit more attention here in 2025. Cheaper phones are giving us better camera specs regularly. Though the argument can be made that the Ultra line is for professionals and creators, who will likely use front cameras for a lot of their content, regular users will use the front camera often, as I do with my children, and seeing it left behind—or even worse, downgraded—is disappointing.
“That 200MP sensor is doing wonders for users, and it is one place that Samsung remains ahead of the game.”
That being said, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra takes some truly beautiful photos with the main camera array. Most impressive has been the zoom capabilities, which not only have an incredible range but are crips and clear up close. With the OnePlus 13, zooms would clearly use AI to fill in the image, but the S25 Ultra does it so naturally that you would never know that there is other processing going on beyond the lenses. That 200MP sensor is doing wonders for users, and it is one place that Samsung remains ahead of the game
But let’s talk about what’s powering the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra smartphone and its features overall. The S25 Ultra is sporting the latest Octa-core Snapdragon 8 Elite chip with an Adreno 830 GPU. The device comes in two configurations, with 12GB of RAM and either 256/512 GB of storage. What this means is that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra can handle anything you can throw at it, whether you’re a gamer, content creator, AI user, or just like to push your smartphone to the limit.
What was impressive to me this time around was the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra’s cooling. This year, Samsung implemented a 40% larger vapour chamber cooling system. Usually, just during the start-up process of a phone where I download all my apps at once has things heating up. In the S25 Ultra’s case, I didn’t even notice a temperature change.
The same goes for the device while charging and gaming at the same time. Where on my OnePlus 13, I could notice the back getting warmer, though not alarmingly so, on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, I barely noticed a difference. Now, it should be mentioned that this is done during regular use, and a lot of testing I see out there is pushing the S25 Ultra to its maximum. I am here for real-world testing, and I was impressed with the heat dissipation.
Somewhere I am sitting in the middle with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is its battery. It features a 5000 mAh battery and supports 45W charging, 15W wireless charging, and 4.5W reverse charging. While that isn’t necessarily bad, it should be better. For instance, the OnePlus 13, which was released recently, features a 6000 mAh battery with 100W charging, 50W wireless, 10W reverse wireless, and 5W reverse wired.
Out of curiosity, I went back to look at previous Galaxy Ultra devices. Every Ultra since the S20 Ultra has had the same battery and charging capabilities. That means in five years, Samsung hasn’t made an upgrade to the life of their device, but they have certainly updated the power it uses. AI capabilities were barely a thought in 2020, and now they are at the forefront of every device. Yes, we are learning to harness the battery power better, but that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve improvement or even better fast charging.
It feels like Samsung looks to the iPhone to see where it stands, and since it beats the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s 4685 mAh battery, that is good enough. Samsung is the Android smartphone leader in North America. If we step outside of that and look at what players like Xiaomi, OnePlus, and even budget brands like Poco and Redmi (owned by Xiaomi) are doing, they are equal or ahead of the game in battery and usually camera specs, too, while remaining extremely competitive in price, some blowing Samsung out of the water.
But I digress…Samsung is making a good enough phone at top-of-the-line pricing, with the S25 Ultra starting at $1,918.99 CAD ($1,299 USD). For the sake of this review, I will review it for the device it is, not the device it is not, but I want it to be heard that Samsung needs to step it up if they want to keep raising their prices while remaining in the top spot.
While speaking to someone who is a die-hard Samsung user, the reason they were okay with Samsung not bringing ultra-fast charging or a bigger battery was because they were overnight chargers, and the battery lasted from morning until night without issue. I can attest to that as well, heading to bed at around 30% left before my nighttime charging routine as well.
“Samsung’s main camera, processing capabilities, and editing features make the S25 Ultra a smartphone worth having in your arsenal.”
That being said, when travelling for work, I become a part-time content creator, and I am not confident that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra would last me from morning to night under heavy recording, editing and social media use. There will absolutely be times when you need some extra juice under these circumstances—as would be the case with any smartphone, even those with larger batteries. Opting for a bit of that 100W fast-charging could be a game changer for a smartphone that is meant to take on the most intense gaming, creating and more.
I am harping a lot on Samsung for a lot of what they don’t do. I have been saying the same things for years in my reviews for the Galaxy Fold line of devices. Though I believe they should be striving to reach new heights with their hardware rather than only focusing on AI and software, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is still an excellent smartphone and one that will be a vital tool for mobile gamers, content creators and mobile photographers.
Samsung’s main camera, processing capabilities and editing features make the S25 Ultra a smartphone worth having in your arsenal. If you can digest the price, you won’t be disappointed with what you get (unless you’re really into selfies). The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra sits at the forefront of AI capabilities, I just hope that in future iterations, they can bump up the battery and front camera to sit at par with other brands that come in at lower prices.
- MULTIPLE TASKS WITH ONE ASK: Streamline your day with an assistant that gets you. Ask it to Google search for a pet-friendly vegan restaurant nearby and text it to your friend— your Galaxy S25 Ultra handles multiple tasks with a single ask.¹
- START THE DAY SMARTER: Stay one step ahead with a phone that gives you the info you need before you even know you need it with Now Brief.²
