This is the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Series. It has some amazing improvements to Galaxy AI, especially two mind-blowing features. There’s an updated design with the S25 Ultra but removed one feature you might not be happy with. But it still might be my next Android smartphone moving forward.
Then how about the rest of the S25 Series? Well, here’s my hands-on experience with the phones.
Design
So, the S25 Ultra has a less boxy design than last year, with rounded corners that look more like those of its brothers, the S25 and the S25 Plus, or even the previous S24 and the S24 Plus.
So yeah, this means that the whole series is now consistent with one another. Now, the reason for these new rounded edges is due to some complaints about how the edges were too sharp and too boxy for some. While I didn’t have an issue with that on my S24 Ultra, this newly updated design does feel nicer to hold.
Then aesthetic-wise, the camera bump is fully in black, similar to the Z Fold Series last year.
Then the S Pen makes a return here but with a slight difference because Samsung has removed the Bluetooth functionality and also the remote gesture controls.
While this does make the S Pen lighter, together with the whole phone of course, but I think this change will not go down well with fans, especially those of you who use these gesture controls or even using the S Pen as a camera shutter button.
But if you want those gesture controls, you can always get the S Pen Pro. So is this a bummer for you?
Speaking of being light, Samsung has made all of the S25 models slimmer and lighter. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is 15g lighter than the Galaxy S24 Ultra, while the Galaxy S25 and the Galaxy S25 Plus weigh 7g and 6g lighter than the previous generation.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is also protected by the Corning Gorilla Glass Armor 2 in front with a Victus 2 at the back with titanium chassis, while its brothers both feature Victus 2 at the front and back with an Armor Aluminum Chassis.
Display
Then as for the display, the Galaxy S25 and the S25 Plus come with a Dynamic AMOLED display that is identical to the previous generation. However, the Ultra features a slightly bigger Dynamic AMOLED display at 6.9-inch compared to the S24 Ultra’s 6.8-inch.
Then the S25 Ultra also comes with 15% slimmer bezels than the S24 Ultra. So yeah, there are two updates on the screen over here.
As for the S25 Series screen specs, it has a 6.2-inch FHD+ display for the S25. Then the S25 Plus comes with a 6.7-inch QHD+ display, a similar resolution to the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Then of course each of these displays comes with the adaptive refresh rate from 1 to 120 Hz. Yep, all of them. So what’s up iPhone?
Cameras
Then in terms of cameras, the S25 and the S25 Plus see no difference between the previous generation. As a recap, it has a 50MP main, 10MP telephoto, and a 12MP ultrawide camera.
But the Galaxy S25 Ultra has a new and larger 50MP ultrawide camera compared to the previous 12MP ultrawide camera. Now, this does of course allow for better macro shots with more detail than before, so no need for those dedicated macro cameras instead.
Other than that, the Galaxy S25 Ultra comes with a 200MP main lens, the previous 50MP telephoto lens, together with a previous 10MP 67mm telephoto lens.
Then the selfie cameras for all of the S25 Series remain unchanged from the previous generation.
Nighttime photography, or the Nightography for the rear cameras, has also been given a boost on this particular Galaxy S25 Ultra as it uses the new next-gen ProVisual Engine where pictures will apparently have more detail and have less noise through the double-analysis noise removal feature, which is something that I’ll be going further during my in-depth review of the phone.
This is because the cameras on this S25 Ultra have a custom Spatio-Temporal filter that can differentiate between a moving object and what is not moving. So that was pretty interesting indeed.
Another great thing is that if you love taking videos, the S25 models will come with pro-grade video quality, a 10 bit HDR instead of 8 bit SDR on the previous generation, which will allow you to customize or fine-tune the video according to your liking after you shot the video.
This also detects overexposed areas with false colors or even zebra patterns in your video, something that we always use on these two cinema-quality Blackmagic 6K cameras.
What’s also great is the fact that they also have LOG recording, and yes, even 8K LOG recording, something that this phone has compared to my Blackmagic cinema cameras.
Specs
Then the most significant change is the fact that all models across all regions everywhere will feature the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset instead of Samsung’s Exynos chipsets in certain regions, such as here in Malaysia.
So yeah, I guess that’s the reason why we saw TM Roh in person at the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii last year.
So yeah, it does seem that all of the leaks and the rumors regarding the design, the chipset, and everything about the S25 Series that we have been covering on our website have been spot on so far.
But as they have done with the previous devices, the Snapdragon 8 Elite that Samsung is using for this S25 Series is not the same as everyone else, because once again it is the specifically-designed Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy with 40% better NPU performance, 37% better CPU performance, with 30% better GPU performance for all of the S25 models with this new chipset.
For gamers, there’ll be a 40% improved ray tracing performance compared to the previous generation. From a hardware perspective, it also has a 40% bigger vapor chamber too, to make sure that it doesn’t overheat.
As for the RAM and storage, there is 12GB of RAM with either 256GB or 512GB of internal storage for all of the devices. But only the S25 Ultra gets the 1TB storage variant.
Battery
Battery-wise, everything for the S25 Series has remained unchanged from the previous generation, including the battery size and the fast charging speed. However, due to the hardware updates mentioned earlier, there’ll be even longer battery life, which of course we’ll see if that is true once I use the phone daily.
Software
As for software, Samsung nailed the whole of last year and now they’re making it even better.
And there’s even more, so there’s a UI level called Now Brief which can offer personal insights based on your everyday routines and habits and also provide helpful suggestions or even guess what you want based on your calendar, as well as provide a summary of your day’s events.
It can even give you reminders of expiring travel tickets, expiring vouchers, or even coupons on your phone.
On One UI 7, which comes with all of these phones, there’s the new Now Bar for Live Activities, Scores, Music, Google Maps, and more.
Then there’s the new Audio Eraser feature which can tone down or even eliminate any unwanted external sounds. But what’s even cooler is the fact that you can even remove certain audio from your downloaded videos, for example removing a singing voice in a song or removing the music but leaving the singing voice. Yep, I tried it in the hands-on area and it was mind-blowing.
Speaking of music, there’s also the Circle To Search For Music, where if you’re playing a YouTube video and want to know what exactly is that music being played, you can just press and hold the virtual home button, select the music icon, and it will tell you what exact music it is.
Then there’s also the Best Face feature where it takes a live photo of your pictures. So for example, if you’re taking a picture of a person who blinks a lot or probably looking elsewhere instead of looking at the camera, you will get AI to choose which is the best.
Then there’s also a novelty feature, but kind of cool, which is called Gen Stickers to generate stickers that you can use on any app since it’s produced on the Samsung keyboard directly.
Then there are also more improved AI features that are already available for the Galaxy devices, like an improved version of the Generative Edit, an improved Portrait Studio, and also some cool features like the virtual aperture controls, which I’ll go more into further when I get my hands on the phone of course.
Since these new devices also come with Samsung’s brand new One UI 7 built on Android 15, I’ll be doing an in-depth review or a look at this brand new UI as well.
Stay tuned for the in-depth review, coming soon!
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🛒 Pricing & Variants:
Galaxy S25 Ultra
Colours: Titanium Silverblue, Titanium Gray, Titanium Whitesilver, Titanium Black
Online Exclusive Colours: Titanium Jadegreen, Titanium Pinkgold, Titanium Jetblack
👉 1TB – RM7,799
👉 512GB – RM6,599
👉 256GB – RM5,999
Galaxy S25+
Colours: Navy, Icyblue, Mint, Silver Shadow
Online Exclusive Colours: Blueblack, Coralred, Pinkgold
👉 512GB – RM5,599
👉 256GB – RM4,999
Galaxy S25
Colours: Navy, Icyblue, Mint, Silver Shadow
Online Exclusive Colours: Blueblack, Coralred, Pinkgold
👉 512GB – RM4,599
👉 256GB – RM3,999
To buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, please visit: https://www.samsung.com/my/smartphones/galaxy-s25-ultra/buy/