The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is the latest flagship within Samsung’s prestigious S-series lineup in 2025, promising top of the line performance upgrades, improved AI features, and a refined design. While it brings notable upgrades, some changes may leave longtime Samsung users wondering if it truly lives up to the “Ultra” moniker. In this review, we’ll break down the design, display, performance, camera, AI features, and more to see whether it’s worth the upgrade.
Design & Display: Familiar But Further Refined
Samsung has refined rather than revolutionized the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s looks by adhering to a well-known design concept. Compared to its predecessor, the tablet is lighter and slimmer, which improves grip comfort without compromising screen size.
One of the most notable features of the 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED display is still its deep blacks, vibrant colors, and smooth 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. The visual experience is top-notch whether you’re gameplay, streaming, or browsing social media. Corning Gorilla Armor 2 adds longevity of the display by shielding it from drops and scratches.
To put it another way, this isn’t a significant change from the S24 Ultra, but this display is still among the best when compared to others because to its improved grip and elegant design. The Galaxy S25 Ultra now weighted at 219 Grams, which is lighter than the last generation and thickness at just 8.2mm.
Performance: Power Meets Efficiency
Every year, the SOC gets an upgrade, and this time the Galaxy S25 Ultra is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite For Galaxy processor, delivering top-tier performance across all tasks with optimized hardware and One UI 7 from Samsung. Whether you’re gaming, multitasking, or editing videos, the device handles everything effortlessly, with zero lag or slowdowns. Besides that, Samsung sets the standard of 12GB DDR5X RAM as the base with internal storage of starting at 256GB UFS4. Of course there is no external storage expansion slot, so one will have to upload it to the cloud as backup or get a bigger storage variant, this applies to all Galaxy S25 series.
Samsung has also improved battery life. The 5,000mAh battery lasts longer than ever before because of Samsung’s software optimizations and the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s improved power efficiency. Along with Qi wireless charging for increased convenience, it offers the same 45W wired fast charging, which takes just 30 minutes to charge from 0% to 65%. In real life, the phone will get through over one day easily to two without a sweat.
All of these factors work together to give the Galaxy S25 Ultra Flagship-level performance and increased efficiency, making it a powerful device for every user. A little bit over to the gaming side, the Galaxy S25 Ultra can hold 60FPS comfortably on Genshin Impact at high settings, making it a good candidate should you wanted to use this phone for more demanding titles.
Benchmarks
Since the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is driven by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, this means it is also tuned higher on processing portion and GPU clockspeed. These are the results that we obtained as above
Camera System: A Moderate Upgrade
Samsung has always been known for stellar camera technology, and the S25 Ultra continues that legacy with some enhancements and improvement, while it might looks the same, Samsung does a lot over the hardware and software to push it equal or better against competition and predecessors, and one will definitely felt some numerous enhancements that it provides.
The rear camera setup includes:
- 200MP primary sensor – Exceptional detail and clarity
- 50MP ultra-wide sensor – Wider perspective for landscapes and group shots
- 10MP telephoto lens (3x optical zoom) – Crisp mid-range zoom
- 50MP periscope telephoto lens (5x optical zoom) – Good zoom capability
Particularly in bright lighting circumstances, photographs are crisp, colorful, and detailed. Significant progress has been made in low-light photography, with enhanced color fidelity and reduced noise. The 50MP Ultra Wide Sensor has the advantage of producing wide angle photos with greater precision and detailed resolution.
Nevertheless, this is still one of the top smartphone cameras on the market. It has undergone a slight but much-needed update and improvement, and with the hardware and software adjustments made, it continues to perform as close to its best ability to enhance and clean up images so they are as accurate and vibrant as possible.
AI Features: Steps of improvements
Samsung has put a lot of emphasis on AI-powered features in the S25 Ultra, integrating Google’s Gemini AI to enhance the user experience. Some of the standout AI features include:
- AI-powered photo enhancements – Automatically adjust brightness, shadows, and sharpness, generative refill and object/subject removal
- Live call translation – Real-time language translation for phone calls
- Smart organization – AI-assisted photo sorting, note-taking, and reminders
- “Now Brief” AI Assistant – Personalized news and notifications based on user habits
To be honest, Galaxy AI has been here for a while now and this time around with OneUI 7, it does felt faster and much snappier with refined responses and slightly lower resources used over every prompt, hence this is an improvement with slowly but surely, better accuracy that can be put in good use with more users using and training it. While in most instances it is indeed a game changing feature, given time this will be a norm with more adoption towards AI. UI wise, the homescreen and icons is much rounder, bolder and easier to identify while the new Game Booster/game optimization selection has more detailed choices to focus, whether it is frame boost first, or performance, or for a long gameplay by limiting certain graphical or processing aspect, turning the Galaxy S25 Ultra an all rounder and no longer just confined to productivity only, but also for gaming and multitasking.
S Pen: A Minor Downgrade, but still capable as it is.
The Ultra series, which appeals to professionals, artists, and productivity fanatics, has always been distinguished by the S Pen. In contrast to its predecessor, the S25 Ultra has some unexpected downgrades, like fewer gesture capabilities and remote control. Users who mostly rely on the sophisticated S Pen features could find the changes surprised, even though it still works well as a stylus for taking notes and drawing.
Should You Buy It?
Here are some Pros and Cons which may help you to decide whether the S25 Ultra is the right device for you.
Pros:
- Stunning 6.9-inch AMOLED display with adaptive 120Hz refresh rate
- Flagship-level performance with Snapdragon 8 Elite
- Improved AI features for productivity and efficiency
- Excellent camera quality, particularly in low light
- Lighter and more ergonomic design
- 7 Years of OS and Security updates
Cons:
- S Pen loses some functionality
- IP68 Rating only
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a powerhouse of a smartphone, while Samsung is playing it safe on certain portion of the hardware and design, it is still a marvelous phone that stands out especially when it comes to display, performance, camera tuning, software and battery life. To me, the lack of Bluetooth on the S-Pen is not much of a deal breaker, as it is still retains of its basic functionality, and moreover, Samsung still committed to support the phone up to 7 years of software and security updates, which is one of the longest support provided by Samsung. To me, it is still an exciting phone and for those wanting to upgrade to this one, especially if you wanted to get the taste of the latest Galaxy AI and Performance combined, this phone can be highly considered to get as one of the top tier flagships in 2025.
Now to the price, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is officially selling from RM5999 for the 256GB storage, and if you buy online now, you can get the 512GB storage for the same price. Click here to know more and purchase.