Galaxy S25 Ultra
The highest-end variant of Samsung’s flagship smartphone lineup for 2025, the S25 Ultra ships with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, a massive 6.9-inch display, and a quad camera setup.
Galaxy S24 Ultra
100x Space Zoom, a vibrant, curve-free AMOLED display, an S Pen with great features, and a lot more wrapped up in a titanium package. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is Samsung’s statement on what a traditional slab smartphone should be in 2024.
At its recent Galaxy Unpacked hardware event,Samsung officially unveiledits latest generation flagship phone lineup, theGalaxy S25 series, to the world. While the extra thin-and-light has been stealing some of the thunder this year, it’s arguably the Galaxy S25 Ultra that remains Samsung’s most hotly anticipated candy bar-style handset of 2025.
With the Galaxy S25 Ultra now available for pre-order, let’s compare and contrast the device with last year’s well receivedGalaxy S24 Ultramodel. Has Samsung done enough to justify a generational leap this time around, and does the S25 Ultra justify its ‘Ultra’ moniker?
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Price, specs, and availability
The fundamentals
By and large, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is an iterative upgrade over its predecessor, the S24 Ultra. As such, many of the differences between the two handsets come down to year-over-year spec bumps. Most notably, theQualcommSnapdragon 8 Gen 3 has been succeeded by the chipmaker’s newerSnapdragon 8 Elite processor, which results in a notable step up in compute power.
Design and build
The continued loss of the Galaxy Note’s brand identity
At first glance, the all-new Galaxy S25 Ultra and the outgoing S24 Ultra look rather similar. Both devices are roughly the same size in terms of general dimensions and overall footprint, and both feature the same tried and true mix of tempered glass on the front and the back, mixed with a metallic side frame.
The S25 Ultra is rounder in curvature, with softer corners.
Looking more closely, however, you’re able to spot subtle differences between the two Ultras. Samsung’s latest model, the S25 Ultra, is rounder in curvature, with softer corners across the board. On the one hand, this design change affords the new model a more comfortable in-hand feel, with an ever-so-slightly more compact frame to boot.
On the other hand, the sharp corners and flat design language of the outgoing S24 Ultra will be missed – it allowed the handset to stand out from the crowd, and it provides a subtle nod tothe late Galaxy Note serieswhile doing so.
Samsung officially teases its much-hyped Galaxy S25 Slim edition
After months of hype surrounding a possible Galaxy S25 Slim model, Samsung has officially teased the S25 Edge.
The S25 Ultra provides ever-so-slightly more screen real estate
Both the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the S24 Ultra have big, bright, and beautiful display panels. In terms of specifications, the two are largely comparable to one another. Both feature OLED technology for punchy and vivid colors, both offer LTPO variable refresh rates that can cycle between one and 120Hz, and both ship with pixel dense QHD+ resolutions.
With the S25 Ultra, Samsung has managed to subtly increase the size of the handset’s display to 6.9 inches when measured diagonally, compared to the S24 Ultra’s 6.8-inch panel. This slight change in screen real estate is unlikely to result in any noticeable difference in real-world usage, but it’s worth noting nonetheless.
Samsung’s new Galaxy AI features want to use your phone for you
At Galaxy Unpacked, Samsung show off its new personalized AI features coming to the Galaxy S25 lineup.
This year, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite runs the show
Samsung has outfitted the Galaxy S25 Ultra with Qualcomm’s latest processing package, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. We first saw this chipset launch in flagship phones such as theOnePlus 13, and it’s safe to say that it’s an absolute screamer. For reference, on the OnePlus, the 8 Elite scored a Geekbench 6 benchmark score of 3,121 in single-core and 9,498 in multi-core. I expect to see similar results on the S25 Ultra once the device is put through its paces, but time will tell.
Elsewhere, much of the hardware remains consistent between the two Ultra phones. Both feature a spacious 5,000 mAh battery capacity, both include 45W wired and 15w wireless charging, ship with ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, and offer 12GB of RAM and a choice between 256GB, 256GB, or 1TB of internal storage.
With the S25 Ultra, the device is officially certified asQi2 compliant.Unfortunately, Samsung has opted not to include the ring of magnets outlined in the Wireless Power Consortium’s Magnet Power Profile (MPP), which is a major pain point. Effectively, the wireless charging experience between the two devices will be functionally identical across the board.
Galaxy S25 series is here, but I’m left wanting more
It’s the era of iterative smartphone updates, so what did you really expect from the S25 series? Hint: the answer is a lot of AI and very few hardware tweaks.
With the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Samsung has opted not to mess with a good thing. The quad camera array featured in the device closely lines up with that of last year’s S24 Ultra. Both devices ship with a 200-megapixel main wide angle camera, a 10-megapixel 3x telephoto lens, and a 50-megapixel 5x telephoto sensor.
The ultrawide shooter, meanwhile, has been tinkered with just a bit: the S25 Ultra’s lens comes in at 50-megapixels, which is a much higher resolution sensor than the 12-megapixel lens on the outgoing S24 Ultra.
Of course, optical hardware is never the full story when it comes to modern smartphone cameras. The newer Snapdragon chip combined with upgraded image processing algorithms will surely play a role in overall image quality, and we’ll have to put the S25 Ultra through its paces to get a better idea of how it truly compares to the S24 Ultra.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has arrived, but there aren’t many changes
Samsung has officially revealed the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but there only a few differences compared to last year’s S24 Ultra.
Verdict: Is the Galaxy S25 Ultra a worthy successor to last year’s Galaxy S24 Ultra?
Samsung’s latest Ultra phone is better than ever, but it’s tough to justify picking it up over last year’s model
Put simply, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is the most compelling Ultra handset that Samsung has released. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise – it would be rather concerning if the handset was a demonstrable step backwards from its direct predecessor. Indeed, the S25 Ultra is more powerful, more capable, more AI-driven, and more comfortable to hold in the hand, when compared directly to the outgoing S24 Ultra.
That being said, the continued loss of the line’s physical brand identity, or, in other words, the homogenization of the phone’s design language with that of the rest of the smartphone industry, is a disappointing development. The removal of Bluetooth support on the S25 Ultra’s S Pen is also unfortunate, though I’m not convinced the majority of users will actually miss the feature.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra may no longer be Samsung’s best-of-the-best when it comes to candy bar smartphone offerings, but the handset remains an excellent choice overall. Now that the S25 Ultra is official, expect to see tons of discounts and sales on the S24 Ultra, as storefronts look to deplete their leftover inventories. If you’re able to snag an S24 Ultra for a few hundred dollars off its base price, I’d highly recommend springing for it as opposed to paying full price for an S25 Ultra.
The Galaxy S25 series is very similar to the S24 - unless you’re into AI
As far as smartphone updates go, Samsung’s Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra are incredibly incremental.
