Samsung Galaxy S25+ in for review

This just in, the Galaxy S25+ has arrived and we've started work on its review. But in the meantime, let's do an unboxing.

As before, the Galaxy S25+ ships with a USB-C cable and a SIM eject tool. You'd need to supply your own case and charger. Charging, as before, peaks at 45 watts.

This is a running theme throughout the new Galaxy S25 series (but especially on the non-Ultra models) - little has changed. The Galaxy S25+ is an almost identical phone to its predecessor. It's easier to list what's changed - you get the new Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC and that's about it.

That's somewhat of a big deal if we dig a bit deeper than "it's just a chip upgrade". The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a substantial jump over the 8 Gen 3. On the CPU side, the new Oryon prime core runs at up to 4.32GHz - a massive boost over the 3.4GHz of the Cortex-X4 core. Qualcomm boasts a 45% faster processor in the Elite. Moving to graphics, the Elite boasts a 40% increase in performance. The neural processing unit, aka the NPU that runs all that AI magic, is 45% more powerful per watt. Finally, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is touted as 45% more efficient.

Those are all staggering numbers. In our own benchmark testing (Galaxy S25 Ultra review), we found the new SoC to be around 30% faster in multi-core and around 25% faster in single-core tests, ditto with graphics tests).

The Galaxy S25+ feels new and refreshing in a tangible way. However, most of that comes thanks to the visual overhaul that is One UI 7, which is bound to trickle down to the Galaxy S24+ as well. The all-important animation snappiness and fluidity are a level above and the interface seems higher quality.

There are subtle new UI sounds that give the software a physical presence. Samsung took its time with this release and it shows. We're still kind of sour that the vertically scrolling app drawer didn't happen. At this point, it's only Samsung that lacks the feature.

But however big an upgrade the Snapdragon 8 Elite and One UI 7, there's no going around the fact that the Galaxy S25+ is pretty much identical to its predecessor in the other ways that matter - same display, same battery size, and charging speed, and worse yet, same cameras. We can't see many people upgrading even if we take into account Samsung's generous pre-order trade-in offers.

Samsung Galaxy S25+