The Galaxy S25 Ultra, introduced in the present day, sheds extra of its Note roots this 12 months with rounded corners and flat edges that align it extra with the remainder of the S sequence. It comes with Qualcomm’s newest chipset, an upgraded ultrawide digicam, and never a lot else, hardware-wise. With no worth enhance over final 12 months’s mannequin — beginning at $1,299 — it’s a light-weight refresh of Samsung’s greatest cellphone, with a serious emphasis on One UI 7.0’s AI upgrades.
Something concerning the shift from curved edges to flat sides makes the S25 Ultra look hefty in photographs, like if the Cybertruck have been a cellphone. But it’s truly barely smaller and lighter than final 12 months’s machine, even with an even bigger 6.9-inch display due to slimmer bezels. It’s outfitted with a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor tuned for Galaxy gadgets — that’s true for all S25-series telephones bought in all areas, which hasn’t been the case lately. And it nonetheless comes with yet another robust spec: seven years of OS updates and safety patches.
There are some attention-grabbing issues not on the Ultra this 12 months, although. Bixby is not the default digital assistant. It’s nonetheless current and you’ll summon it by way of its personal app. But Google Gemini will reply whenever you long-press the wake button on the aspect of the cellphone.
The included S Pen, one other holdover from the Note period, will get a little bit of a downgrade. It not helps Bluetooth, so the air gesture controls that earlier variations supplied are gone. The S25 Ultra’s included S Pen is only a fundamental stylus, no magic wand tips up its sleeve. Bummer.
Camera {hardware} is essentially unchanged from the earlier mannequin, aside from a brand new 50-megapixel ultrawide, changing a 12-megapixel module. Samsung claims that an improve to the S25’s algorithmic picture processing has improved element in zoomed photos. On the video aspect, Samsung now gives a Galaxy Log profile together with a customized LUT.
The most attention-grabbing adjustments are software-side in One UI 7.0. My colleague Dominic Preston has rundown of the brand new stuff because it additionally seems on the S25 and S25 Plus fashions. Unsurprisingly, all of it has to do with AI, and far of it we have been already acquainted with due to the One UI 7.0 beta. But a few issues made me sit up and listen.
The first is the flexibility to make use of AI throughout apps to take motion, like taking an image of a flyer and having Gemini add the dates to your calendar and ship your partner an e mail about it. Maybe this doesn’t sound like a lot, however a few of us have to recollect which day is “loopy hair day” at preschool, when conferences are, and the deadline for signing up for this season’s soccer class. A bit of assist can be good. This will first work throughout Google Workspace and Samsung native apps, with the addition of WhatsApp and Spotify.
The different factor I’m to see in motion is recommended routines. In idea, the S25 telephones will have the ability to discover if there are specific settings you have a tendency to make use of on the identical time every single day or below sure situations — like turning Bluetooth on each time you get within the automotive and turning it off whenever you get out. When it sees a sample, it ought to have the ability to counsel a routine to handle these actions for you routinely. You’ll have the ability to customise the routine parameters to your liking, however you received’t need to undergo the tedious work of setting it up from scratch. That could possibly be cool!
The factor is, these things isn’t unique to the S25 Ultra and even the S25 sequence. Samsung smartphone product supervisor Blake Gaiser instructed me Samsung will deliver its new AI options to older gadgets the place potential. The firm actually appears dedicated to delivering these updates to older telephones — however don’t neglect that they in all probability received’t at all times be free.
We’ll discover out quickly sufficient whether or not that is the AI replace that can lastly ship on the promise of AI on our smartphones; the Galaxy S25 Ultra and its S25 siblings ship on February seventh.
