Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, S25+ and S25 hands-on review

Galaxy S25 and S25+ hands-on

The standard Galaxy S25 and the S25+ retain a design closely resembling last year’s models. However, both are 0.4mm thinner than their predecessors. While this doesn’t significantly alter the handling, it is an impressive feat when you consider you are getting a 5% reduction in thickness without compromising battery capacity or features.

What’s less impressive is that the materials used for the body of the S25 and S25+ remain unchanged. Both devices still feature Samsung's Armor Aluminum for the frames and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 for the front and back panels. It would have been a welcome upgrade if Samsung had opted for Gorilla Armor Glass, offering improved shatter protection.

Galaxy S25+

The main colorways are four - Navy, Icy Blue, Mint and Silver Shadow, while the online-exclusive options are Blue Black, Coral Red and Pink Gold.

Galaxy S25

In terms of camera hardware, there have been no changes either and you still get the same three cameras on the back - a 50MP main cam, a 3x zoom camara and a 12MP ultrawide, which still lacks autofocus. Of course, these cameras are now paired with the new ISP inside the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which Samsung calls their next-gen ProVisual Engine, so there should be some improvements, especially in low-light video.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a nice upgrade - there are no Exynos models this year and all phones use Qualcomm silicon. What's interesting is that the vanilla S25, for the first time, gets 12GB RAM by default across all configurations, which should improve performance even further.

Unfortunately, the smaller Galaxy S25 is still missing UWB support and is offered with 128GB internal storage in its base tier.

Galaxy S25+ and Galaxy S25

The displays, cameras, battery capacities, and charging speeds on the S25/S25+ appear unchanged from last year’s models, making this release somewhat underwhelming. In contrast, competitors from China are pushing ahead with faster charging protocols and incorporating more energy-dense battery technologies, such as silicon-carbon (Si/C) anodes, and we wish the S25 duo had some standout hardware upgrades.

Check out the following page to see what's new with software. Samsung seems to be making strides in AI (with the help of Google), and it seems their new features in this area are enough to make these devices exciting again.