Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review

30 January 2025


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xPandamon, 31 Jan 2025Who would've thought, neither battery life nor the &qu... moreGSM's battery tests tend to be a little more aggressive, but I've been seeing really good things about the battery life from other online publications.

Overall, I do agree with you. I expected a much wider lead in battery life from the larger capcacity silicon carbon battey phones vs. the smaller li-on battery on the S25 Ultra. Aside from the Xiaomi and Oppo, the charging speeds aren't much faster. I don't think these resutls are enough of a difference to force Samsung to use silicon carbon batteries. I think the Fold would benefit more than the Ultra.

It's still early though. I'll await more tests.

    DroidBoye, 31 Jan 2025Anyone noticed in the comparison section of the battery run... moreX200 Pro and Find X8 Pro aren't necessarily better than this phone AND the fact that they use an FHD+ screen also holds them back. HOWEVER, the Oneplus 13 is a genuine improvement over this phone despite having the same QHD screen. Weird stuff done by Oppo/Vivo that resulted in the lower battery runtimes for the X8 Pro and X200 Pro, perhaps a more inefficient display?

    Anyways, the gaming runtime over here doesn't matter as in other gaming tests the Oneplus phones perform fine if you crank down the settings. Samsung's phones throttle so hard that they maintain good battery life but you dont get high fps if you crank up the game settings.

    So essentially, "good optimisation" in terms of software just means being more restrictive. Which is why i don't really like Apple despite their monstrous battery figures and now Samsung's joining that category. Immensely disappointed.

      • ?
      • Anonymous
      • nGV
      • 31 Jan 2025

      sdkk, 31 Jan 2025According to the comments under all the reviews I've s... moreVocal minority. You're bound to hear more complaints than people who don't care.

        Looks refined, but boring indeed... barely any updates since s23 or s22 unless you absolutely want the fastest chipset. I think samsung is getting a bit self-indulgent

          • P
          • Pfei
          • 0Kh
          • 31 Jan 2025

          I don't know, I quite like the overall look of the photos but for example the bush/tree in the second 1x photo looks really bad compared to the same photo taken with the Vivo X200 Pro, it makes it looks the S25 like it's generations older

            • H
            • HAC
            • x1S
            • 31 Jan 2025

            David 040882, 31 Jan 2025Good for you. Wasted money, but good for you if you can aff... morewhat do u suggest as an alternative?

              raditz594, 31 Jan 2025They will bring it back next year and then act like its a n... morei dont think it'll come back this soon. They'll let everyone forget it and then 5 years later when they've run out of upgrade ideas they're gonna slap this one in. Apple-like stuff.

                • s
                • sdkk
                • 3FL
                • 31 Jan 2025

                Anonymous, 31 Jan 2025"muh bluetooth S-Pen" Change the record. It�... moreAccording to the comments under all the reviews I've seen + all my friends, it turns out that 9 out of 10 people with Ultra use the Bluetooth functions.

                  Anonymous, 31 Jan 2025The S-Pen is still part of the Ultra, but it no longer supp... moreThey will bring it back next year and then act like its a new feature

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                    • Anonymous
                    • nGV
                    • 31 Jan 2025

                    Kloot, 31 Jan 2025You know I went to bat for Samsung this week because everyo... more"muh bluetooth S-Pen"

                    Change the record. It's boring. Barely anyone even used this.

                      • s
                      • sdkk
                      • 3FL
                      • 31 Jan 2025

                      Kloot, 31 Jan 2025You know I went to bat for Samsung this week because everyo... moreI tried to explain this to several users here. It doesn't matter to me what Samsung will do, because for a number of reasons I don't like working with their devices. But the company should at least think a little about Samsung's people/fans, not just about its profit. Their fans shouldn't be happy that Samsung is doing wonders in optimization and with a smaller battery they have similar results as other companies. Fans should be angry that they are not offered a new generation battery with a 1000mAh larger capacity, which together with the wonderful optimization will give them additional hours on a single charge. And this is just one example, and there are more, but I don't want to waste time describing them. Even if I don't use their devices, I regret that Samsung has gone from being a leader in innovation and development to an iPhone clone. Only we - the users - suffer from this.

                        Samsung is going in the wrong direction! Why does more samsung phones copy the Apple design? Samsung cant come up with their own design? The specs are great on this phone, but samsung has lost too many court battles and is forced to install all its bloatware. I am looking for a new phone maker to go with, leaving samsung. What phone should I look into?

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                          • Anonymous
                          • 58V
                          • 31 Jan 2025

                          cpu at 60 % and GPU at 50 , what a joke the Snapdragon is. Well Android is all about paper specs so I suppose its fine.....

                            Anonymous, 31 Jan 2025The S-Pen is still part of the Ultra, but it no longer supp... moreYou know I went to bat for Samsung this week because everyone kind of beats them up for not innovating enough, and now... I apologize to everyone. This company can buzz off. Remove a brilliant feature everyone liked - price goes up. All their incremental improvements, blah blah blah best s25 ever : you stepped in it Samsung. You already removed card slots and aux ports, which - ay tech moves on I guess but this is too stupid. Fix this Samsung.

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                              • Anonymous
                              • s81
                              • 31 Jan 2025

                              With the spen downgrade i will rather buy the s24 ultra and dump the s25 ultra.

                              Sami why are you going backwards

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                                • Anonymous
                                • U@C
                                • 31 Jan 2025

                                The S-Pen is still part of the Ultra, but it no longer supports Bluetooth. This means no more air actions and no more remote camera shutter.

                                Samsung this is really bad ... get it updated to support it







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                                  • Anonymous
                                  • nGV
                                  • 31 Jan 2025

                                  Eduard33, 31 Jan 2025Other than Apple and Google everyone else is at 6000mah or ... moreYou sure about that?
                                  Sony is at 5000mah
                                  Motorola is at 5000mah
                                  Nothing is at 5000mah
                                  Honor is at 5270mah for Europe.
                                  ASUS and Huawei are under 6000mah.

                                    DroidBoye, 31 Jan 2025GSMArena changed the values. The S25U has way lower overall... moreSometime if you changed propotion of subtest it apply to all phones you need to click reset to see it the way Gsmarena intend,

                                      Eduard33, 31 Jan 2025Accurate for their tests, sure. But almost any other compar... moreWhat real world usage? Can you show us someone who do streaming test with different score?

                                        xPandamon, 31 Jan 2025Buddy, you good? All of the ones upvoting this, so you guys... moreGSMArena changed the values. The S25U has way lower overall battery values the first time I saw this review. Those people also saw it too and they're not wrong. IDK why the values have changed. I made sure that the parameters have been resetted before I made the comment.

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