- Us humans have the tendency to rely on visual changes to understand things, right? So it would be easy to see how you look at the brand new $1,299 S25 Ultra and think, "Wow, that sure looks a lot like last year's $1,299 S24 Ultra. " I mean, it's been a whole year, and what did they do?
They made the edges a little boxier? Sure, I guess that's great. It's funny, it looks slightly thicker, but it is actually physically thinner.
As much as I like boxy though, it is a little bit sharper in some places. Oh, and they also made the bezels a little bit thinner. So now the screen is 6.
9 inches instead of 6. 8. Nice.
And it's also a bit of a more durable Gorilla Glass on the outside, but just remember, it's still glass. Also, the camera rings on the outside are just a little more pronounced. Fancy.
You know, but none of this really makes a huge difference to usability. To really understand this phone, you have to look what's happening on the inside. (paper ripping) (soft upbeat music) So there's basically one major new thing to care about with this phone.
See if you watch the OnePlus 13 review, you know I talked about the three big pillars that a bunch of these new flagships coming out in 2025 are gonna have, the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, these super bright new displays, and silicon carbide batteries, all pretty awesome technologies. But this new S25 Ultra only has one of those things. It has the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.
It also doesn't have IP69, it doesn't add Qi2 magnets, it doesn't bring back the 10x zoom, or even add high frequency PWM dimming. They even actually downgraded the S Pen, which I'll get to in a minute. They have just played it incredibly safe with this phone.
They just took last year's award-winning flagship phone and did the bare minimum, a spec bump. And here's the thing, Samsung in the US has risen to this point where that's kind of all we realistically expect from them anymore. It's kinda the same thing with the iPhone by the way, because in places like the US where they're huge, they just actually don't have pressure to compete directly against the Vivos and Xiaomis and Oppos of the world because those guys don't have any meaningful traction in the US.
So Samsung has established themselves as the go-to safe option for so many people. So now that they have, of course they're playing it safe. So I and other reviewers will say things like, "Well if you want another great phone but has a brighter display, IP69, a way better battery life, faster charging, and a $400 lower price tag, you can get a OnePlus 13 and it'll be awesome.
Now you won't really find it in most carrier stores around here, but you can find it if you know what you're looking for. And it doesn't really work with every carrier, like Verizon you can forget about it. But I can't daily it on AT&T only really because they don't support wifi calling on devices that aren't officially carried by them.
So in this soundproof video studio, I can't make calls all the time. So it's just brutal for me. But you could probably still make it work.
Or how about if you just want a flagship with better cameras across the board. Vivo X200 Pro, it's the obvious choice. You'll have to import it, if you know what you're doing, and most people don't, but that's a good option.
And look, I could go on and on, but here, as long as people in the US buy their phones from carriers, which they do, and as long as they keep putting out phones that play it safe and don't totally suck, which they are, then they will continue to be the go-to and people will just keep buying 'em and they will never feel threatened. So this phone plays it safe, doesn't totally suck. That new Snapdragon 8 Elite Chip is really good.
It's the best part of this phone, honestly, compared to last year. The phone is fast as hell. It benchmarks crazy high, rivaling Apple's A18 Pro chip.
It's a little lower in single core, but it's actually higher in multi-core. And using this phone, it's just so smooth, it's smoother and more efficient than ever before. So I have nothing but good things to say about the performance.
Samsung also paired that chip with a 40% larger vapor chamber and none of my regular use has gotten anywhere near warming up this phone. And it looks like all the international versions of the S25s are all gonna get this new chip. So no Exynos chips in certain regions, everyone is gonna enjoy this performance.
But that's also all gonna be true about basically every other flagship that comes out in the Android world for the next 10, 11 months. So if you pick this phone, it won't be because of the chip, it will be because of Samsung's stuff, all their software, One UI 7, and the AI features they've chosen to add. So Samsung's software is good, it just got this big overhaul with One UI 7 on top of Android 15.
And the longer I use it, honestly, the more I like it. I do keep seeing features that are clearly inspired by iOS, which is totally normal, but they've kind of done it in their own way. So like instead of the total dynamic island copycat, like OnePlus did, they have this new Now Bar at a more reachable spot at the bottom of the phone that shows ongoing activities like timers with Samsung's timer or ongoing navigation instructions with Google Maps or media with Spotify.
And if you click it, it'll expand and give you more info. So that's nice. Or the new notification shade, which is swipe down from the right for quick controls or swipe down from the left for notifications.
Where have we seen that before? But with this one, you can actually then swipe back and forth between them and you can change which side is which in the settings if you want to. So that's nice.
The new lock screen customization is also clearly inspired. You know, hold down on your lock screen to bring it up, play with the clock placement and the styling and font weights. But there are way more styles and options with Samsung's here.
And then of course, there's all new AI stuff, some of which is good, some of which is pretty weak I've found. So I've used the Object Eraser in the Photos app, for example, a few times. It's really good.
If you ever need to remove a background object with AI generative fill, this is one of the best ones. The natural language search in the settings in the gallery also really good. I love just being able to find a setting buried in there with hundreds of available options just by saying the right thing and finding an old photo by describing it is even more cool and it actually works.
AI select is decent. I was hoping it would be a little more responsive and like react more obviously to different contexts on my screen. But I like that it lets you quickly summarize something text related or make a GIF quickly from something like a video.
I'm still more of a Circle to Search guy, though. The daily briefs though, honestly, not that good. Every time I click it, I wonder why it's being shown to me.
It's barely AI, it's just like, "Here's your calendar again, here's the weather again, here's a single random news story and maybe a Spotify playlist. " That's it. I'm gonna turn this one off.
But worst of all is actually the unknown cost. See, I don't know if you caught it, but Samsung's messaging about all these AI features has been, you know, they're the greatest thing ever, they're the biggest new features on these phones, but also free until the end of 2025, which, but then what? They haven't said.
So you know, clearly these AI features, they've cost some money to develop and they cost some money to run and so they're free for now, but we don't really know at what point is Samsung going to start charging for them? How much are they gonna charge? Part of me thinks Samsung doesn't even really know the answer to that question yet.
They might be reacting to other companies or waiting for others to make moves first. But just in general, it's not great to have that looming over your head as a user. Also, I feel like I need to do some sort of AI commercial versus reality comparison at some point or something 'cause I don't know about you, but I don't know how long it's gonna be before we get to the point where I ask an AI to plan a trip for me and then I just follow the trip blindly.
Like I still want some control. I don't trust it that much yet. Even now, Gemini on this phone, plus a few plugins, let's it do some more interesting and complicated things, like you can reach into apps and do compound tasks.
So I can say things like, "Look up the next Brooklyn Nets home game and add it to my calendar," and it'll do it. And I've done stuff like that and been impressed, but then I'll see one or two little errors in it and it's not quite 100% accurate and then it kind of breaks the illusion of the magic and I don't feel like I would trust it to do the bigger things. So, that's a story for another day, though.
Here's something about this phone, though, that really summarizes so many of the thoughts I've had about it. This is one of the only phones with this. The S Pen, a super precise stylus that fits into the side of the phone, already a pretty niche feature.
They first added it to the Ultra from the Note series with the S22s and they've continued adding capabilities to it over the years. This year, Samsung removed the Bluetooth functionality from the S Pen, which means it can no longer be used as a remote control shutter for the camera or for any of the media playback controls. And the old S Pen, which does that stuff on the old phone, doesn't fit in the new phone.
So they took a feature away and the justification was, "Well the data shows that people didn't really use it. Less than 1% of people ever actually activated that feature on the phone. So we just got rid of it.
" And logically, I guess that does make sense, but if you follow that logic out, many people never even use the stylus at all. Why not remove that? And I think the answer is right in the name.
It's supposed to be the Ultra, it's supposed to be the phone for cramming in tons of extra features, extra little things for the small amount of people who will actually use them and notice them and love them. If we didn't want all that, we'd just get a regular S25. Like Samsung, you know you just added log to the camera app, right?
Like this is a feature almost no one is going to even know their phone has, but for the people who will use it, like maybe a YouTube creator who has an entire car channel that they run where they just shoot it on phones, it's awesome. It's gonna be a great feature. But you know, okay, it doesn't add to the bill of materials.
So I guess you don't have to get rid of that. But what about the new 50 megapixel ultra wide camera? That's also, it's been a genuinely nice upgrade.
It's still bins to 12 megapixels, but all of my ultra wide shots now are much sharper corner to corner. And in darker light, the better sensor gathers more light and gives more usable images consistently. It's something a lot of people wouldn't have noticed, but in the Ultra, it's worth it.
So when Samsung says they got rid of the Bluetooth and downgraded the S Pen, it's not that that decision doesn't make logical sense, it's just that we wanted the reason to be, "We got rid of that so we could fit in this other awesome feature that we just shoved into this phone, 'cause it's crammed with useful stuff. " But there's none of that. Like this phone is supposed to be the best that they can offer.
It's in the name, it's what we pay the premium for, but this specific decision was, it's just the most obvious example of, "We're not really concerned actually about that here. It's more like we could save a few cents per unit and continue to appeal towards the masses. " I'm gonna go ahead and guess that's why this phone also doesn't have a silicon carbide battery.
I'm gonna guess that's why they didn't spring for IP69 certification. I'm guessing that's also why they didn't add Qi2 magnets into the phone itself, because even without that stuff, this phone is still fine. Honestly it's still really good.
Even without a huge display upgrade, this is still absolutely one of the best displays. Super crisp, very bright, high refresh rate LTPO, and it's got that underrated anti-reflective coding. Media looks great on it.
Games look great on it. It's just not the best. The new chip works wonders with efficiency and battery life has been awesome on this phone.
I've ended days with 30, 40% left, but it's not the best. But hey, it's still awesome. The rest of the cameras beyond this ultra wide are basically staying the same as last year and they've turned out to be totally fine too.
Plenty of speed, great auto focus, a little bright sometimes and kind of overprocessed, but that's the Samsung thing for a while. They're awesome, but not the best. This phone, this S25 Ultra, is awesome, but it's missed out on an opportunity to be the best.
And I think for 1,299 bucks it's fair to expect the best. So it's been fascinating watching the competition catch right back up, watching the lack of pressure show itself, and it's crazy how fast we went from last year being like, "Why would you buy anything else? " To this year saying, "You could buy anything else.
" Now a couple other things that didn't quite fit into the rest of this review/rant, one, the battery does seem to charge a little bit faster, not a lot faster, but a little bit faster. And the hardware, in general, I think it feels a little more generic, yes, but there's still some thoughtful stuff. Like they flipped the sim card tray to the opposite orientation, which doesn't sound like much, but more than once I have poked the microphone of a phone instead of the sim card ejector port because of a confusing location.
So I appreciate that. The regular S25 and S25 Plus have basically every single software and AI feature that I've talked about for this entire video and the new Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. So my initial thoughts about maybe the cost of the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy being like a big bump, making them feel the pressure, trying to squeeze down other cost savings on the phone, taking out Bluetooth from the S Pen.
I thought that might hold water, but not anymore, 'cause these phones still have it and they are 799 and 999 and probably a better value for most people. Before the enthusiasts, you know, those of you who would watch a whole 18 minute YouTube video on a new phone before choosing to buy it or not, now you know. The tables have turned.
But also now, shout out to Best Buy for sponsoring this portion of the video. Whether you're upgrading to the latest Galaxy S25 Ultra or looking to try something else, Best Buy has what you need. You can shop online at the link below or in store at Best Buy.
Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
