I didn’t think my review of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra would be taking this angle. I’ve found Samsung phone launches to be rather dull affairs for a few years. None of the features really impressed me while my iPhone continued to do everything I could need. But testing the Galaxy S25 Ultra and a trip to China have completely turned everything on it’s head.
I’ll wrap up those thoughts at the end of this review, but let’s get the usual stuff out of the way.
Design and Build Quality
What can I say about the design and build quality except this feels every cent of the price tag you’re paying for it. And it would want to. The Galaxy S25 Ultra has a titanium frame with an ever so slightly rounded edge and matte finish on the rear.
It’s a big phone. That should go without saying, given it’s Samsung’s primary flagship. Yet, despite weighing 218g and having a 6.9-inch screen, it didn’t feel big or heavy. My daily driver is an iPhone 16 Pro, weighing in at 199g with a 6.3-inch display. I wasn’t left feeling the Samsung was too big. I was actually left wondering if I should return to a bigger phone.
In all of my testing in the past couple of years, I’ve been completely happy with the “smaller” iPhone or smaller Xiaomi 15. But from the viewing experience of the display to the extra typing space, I loved the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
I’m not including any images here because if you really want to get an idea of how the phone looks or feels, you should try make it into any phone shop. They will almost certainly have a phone on display so you can check it out properly.
The additional size also unlocks more space for hardware, like the camera. Which was an absolute treat on my trip to China.
Camera
Am I a fool for thinking the iPhone 16 Pro camera was everything I would ever need? Perhaps for regular day-to-day point and shoot style photography, the iPhone did everything I needed. And maybe an iPhone in the hands of a great photographer is going to be better than the Galaxy S25 Ultra in my hands. Actually, it almost certainly would be!
However, the Galaxy S25 Ultra left me trying harder. A fellow tech reviewer, John Reilly, said the Xiaomi 15 Ultra made him “want to be a better photographer”. His words were ringing in my ears has I whipped out the Galaxy S25 Ultra while holidaying in China.
Halfway through the trip, I installed Expert RAW mode and starting using the camera with much more intent. Chongqing is a foodie and photographer’s dream.
Note: This images are compressed as part of our website optimisation but retain most of the quality. These are not the RAW images.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra was just amazing at picking up wide varieties of colour and depth of detail. RAW mode meant a little more setting up in the shot (which needs a patient other half – thankfully I’m blessed there) and some time spent editing afterwards.
But what I found to be the real “ace up the sleeve” for Samsung was the different lenses. The S25 Ultra has a 200MP wide-angle lens, 50MP ultra-wide angle lens, 10MP telephoto lens with 3x zoom and 50MP periscope telephoto lens which also has a 5x optical zoom.
I used every single one of these lenses on my trip because I needed to. Sometimes the shot you want is far away, sometimes it’s really near. And the Galaxy S25 Ultra has something in the kit for every kind of photo.
I will admit, that we the renewed interest in mobile photography that the Samsung gave me, I did start to take better shots with my iPhone too, which also features RAW mode. But when a big photo opportunity appeared, it was the Galaxy 25 Ultra that I impulsively reached for.
Samsung’s AI Features Are a Mixed Bag
From the impressive photography hardware of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, it feels natural to segue to the phone’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) features. Like every other consumer tech company right now, Samsung is struggling to make AI relevant to everyday phone users.
Travelling in China, I knew there would be two great uses for AI on a smartphone; image editing and translation.
Image Editing
When you’re trying to get the perfect shot in China, particularly at a tourist hotspot, you’re going to get a lot of other people in the frame. You can either wait, or if you have a Samsung, trust AI can fix it afterwards.
Now, Samsung isn’t the first to do this. Google’s Magic Eraser has been beyond impressive for some time. But the generative AI fill on the Galaxy S25 Ultra is extremely impressive. Particularly when you get to use Samsung’s S-Pen and feel like a proper graphic designer (sorry, if you’re a graphic designer, and you just felt nauseous).
Take this shot I grabbed of a popular spot in Chongqing.
You can see the image is cropped a bit and the quality drops a little in the AI-edited version. But the removal of the girl and the belongings on the stairs is great. The quality drop makes sense in terms of saving money and resources for Samsung given the amount it takes to generate with AI.
But generally this is a useful tool for the average smartphone owner to have at their disposal.
Translation
I always highlight that I’m in a great position when it comes to translation assessment. Despite years of trying to learn German, I’m still awful at it. Years of looking through translation apps had left me utterly disappointed until the Honor Magic 7 Pro came along and blew my mind -specifically when it came to translation.
Naturally, I was excited to try out Samsung’s AI-translation features. I also had the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, which should have added to my experience. Unfortunately, that conversational feature was oversold and really slow.
The Samsung Interpreter app (translator app) when used in a one-to-one environment where it’s quiet, and both parties are very clear on how the translation service works, it’s ok at best. But the flow of conversation is pretty slow. The translation accuracy varied dramatically and I believe this is down to one thing. I’ve learned that when speaking to a smart translation app, I speak differently to help the app understand context and meaning better. This seems to be when Samsung’s on-board translation worked well.
In more impromptu scenarios, the phone struggled. For me, this is a big fail given AI-should make this unnecessary. Translation should be AI’s biggest strength, but Samsung just hasn’t handled it that well. There were a few occasions where a taxi driver might swing around and say something, but I wasn’t ready for them.
The idea of the Interpreter App is that you leave it running and it translates everything. But when used in this mode, nearly everything was just a jumbled mess of nonsense. It works much better when you trigger translations back and forth, but this defeats the purpose.
My search for the perfect smart translation solution, continues.
Other Hardware and Performance
All of that on-board and even cloud-based AI power needs lots of hardware. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is powered by the ever-impressive Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, custom-built specifically for Samsung.
This makes the phone one of the best on the market for gaming and productivity – so take your pick!
If you are on the bleeding edge of connectivity, you can also enjoy Wi-Fi 7 (hello Eir customers), but realistically, most customers will be happy with the 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity in general.
The 5000 mAh battery delivered a battery life that was plenty for me in China. Before anyone asks, I did have an eSIM in the phone so it was operating fully as a regular smartphone would be with the usual background services running and social media apps installed and logged in. I was getting nearly two days out of the phone, but I wasn’t using it for navigation and payments, as that was all on my iPhone.
When it did come time to charge, it was really fast. I use a powerful adaptive 140w Belkin charger which was able to provide the maximum 45W wired charging and was easily able to take the phone from nearly dead to a light day’s worth of charge in just 30 minutes. Great when you’re popping back to the hotel to freshen up before dinner and realise you’re on 20% battery.
The phone does support wireless charging too. You’ll get 15W wireless charging and even be able to charge another device with 4.5W charging. But I’d keep this for emergencies, given it’s extremely slow and hardly worth giving up the power of your Samsung unless really necessary.
Samsung’s One UI 7
I want to add a note on Samsung’s version of Android, One UI 7. Largely, I’ve been very impressed with it. Some manufacturers wrap Android in a style that I can only describe as a “little childish”. Samsung’s remains nice and easy to navigate while also remaining highly customisable to your needs.
Again, AI here is a bit of a mixed bag. I never enjoyed the Now Briefing features. But recent updates have brought a live features similar to the iPhone’s Dynamic Island to Samsung.
Google’s Gemini AI is the default assistant, which is fantastic news given how utterly useless Bixby has been since forever. You can now hold the side button, launch Gemini AI and even ask about what’s on your screen. It’s a nice feature that I could imagine I’d get a lot of use out of long term (even though I’m a ChatGPT man really).
The Goosed Verdict: Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Review
As I hinted at from the outset, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra left me considering a change. Two phones have done this already this year; this phone and the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. Both phones are bigger, which I’m unsure about, but both phones are also massively photography based.
After a few days at home, I’m not taking as many photos and that desire to change has fizzled out a little. Not because I don’t think I’d love the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but because it’s an expensive switch and I have the entire Apple ecosystem in my life.
But this is the first time in years when I’ve been left feeling like my iPhone doesn’t do everything I want. I know there’s something missing now and I would be completely happy a weird thief came along and swapped my iPhone 16 Pro for a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.
That might all sound like a very weird way to recommend a phone, but for me that’s a massive recommendation. If you want a great camera alongside an enjoyable phone to use and don’t mind slightly bigger form factors; the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is the best well-rounded and low risk phone on the market for you. That is assuming you don’t have a tight budget.
Person holding a Samsung smartphone on the Great Wall of China under a clear blue sky.The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra costs €1,429 SIM-free from the likes of Harvey Norman and will still cost around €500 on most people’s average bill pay plan. You can check out our calculator to see what the best value way to buy your phone is, but typically, it’s SIM-free and then grab the best SIM-only plan for yourself.
