Overview

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is Samsung’s most complete smartphone yet, but it’s also facing the toughest competition from Apple and the Chinese flagships. The quad-camera system now includes two telephoto lenses that actually deliver at every zoom level, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 brings desktop-class ray tracing to mobile. At $1,299, it’s expensive - but this is the phone you buy if you want every feature Samsung can throw at a slab.

Design & Build

Samsung finally ditched the sharp corners that made the S24 Ultra a pocket-lining menace. The S25 Ultra adopts softer, Note-style curved corners while keeping the flat display and titanium frame. It’s still a heavy phone at 234g, but the weight distribution is good enough that it doesn’t feel like a brick. The S Pen slot is back and the stylus itself has been slightly shortened - still full-featured with Air Actions and Bluetooth remote shutter. The anti-reflective Gorilla Glass Armor 2 coating is genuinely impressive; I could read the screen in direct sunlight without cranking brightness.

Performance

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 for Galaxy is a beast. I ran sustained benchmarks and the performance delta over the 8 Gen 4 is about 18% in GPU tasks, thanks to the new Adreno 850 ray-tracing core. Gaming at max settings in Genshin Impact and Warzone Mobile is buttery smooth at 120fps, and the vapor chamber cooling keeps the phone warm but never uncomfortable. 16GB of RAM means absolutely no app reloads - I left 20 apps open overnight and every single one resumed instantly.

Features

The camera system is the headline. The 200MP main sensor captures staggering detail in good light, and the dual telephoto setup (3x and 5x optical, plus the 10x periscope) means you have real optical reach at every common focal length. The 10x shots are noticeably sharper than the iPhone’s digital-assisted 5x zoom. Samsung’s processing has finally toned down the oversharpening - skin tones look natural and HDR isn’t overcooked. One UI 7 is smooth and feature-rich, and Samsung promises seven years of OS updates.

Pros

• Best zoom camera system on any phone
• Anti-reflective display is incredible outdoors
• Desktop-class gaming performance
• S Pen remains a unique productivity advantage

Cons

• 45W charging is slow compared to Chinese competition (80-100W)
• Still heavy despite better ergonomics
• One UI still has some Samsung bloatware
• Price keeps creeping up

Verdict

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is the Android phone to beat in 2026. The camera versatility, raw performance, and S Pen productivity make it the most capable slab phone money can buy. If you can stomach the weight and the price, there’s nothing else that does everything quite as well.

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