Samsung's latest flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra device has been on the market for a few weeks now. It launched with the new One UI 7 from the company and has been priced at Rs 1,29,999 (before any offers) for the base model. I have been using one for a while, and here is my experience:
The device is unsurprisingly big and quite heavy. It has rounded corners this time and slimmer and thinner (thinner bezels, too) than the S24 Ultra. The 6.9-inch display gets Corning Gorilla Armor 2 on top for added protection plus the device itself is IP68 dust and water-resistant. The bottom of the phone carries the S Pen slot, one outlet for loudspeakers, USB type-C and dual SIM card tray slot. The right side houses the volume buttons and power/lock keys; while the left side is left all plain except for antenna marks; and the top has additional mics. Coming to the back, it houses the four-camera system with circles around the lenses with suttle Samsung branding in the bottom half.
The 6.9-inch Super AMOLED (3120x1440) display supports upto 120 refresh rates – it's a quality display panel that does a nice job of handling HDR content along with good viewing angles. It's usable under direct sunlight and is more than 'good enough' to end long articles with sharpness intact.
Coming to the camera department, you get a 200MP main (f/1.7) camera, a 50MP telephoto (f/3.4) camera, a 10MP telephoto (f/2.4), and a 50MP ultra-wide (f/1.9) camera. The new ultrawide camera seems to have better dynamic range, not that it was too bad but still it has that covered. There's good but not great telephoto performance if you want to nitpick when it comes to detailing in what's otherwise a solid camera setup. The front-facing 12MP (f/2.2) camera is quick to take shots and can take some nice portrait shots in good to medium lighting conditions. You can record videos in log mode for better control and editing abilities.
Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset for Galaxy (up to 4.4Ghz octa-core processor, Adreno 830 GPU, X80 5G Modem) alongside 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB UFS 4.0 internal storage (also comes in 512GB and 1TB storage options). It's running One UI 7 based on Android 15 and with the February security patch. You can read a more detailed take on One UI 7 here. Regarding performance, it is safe to say the Galaxy S25 Ultra doesn't disappoint. For gaming, you can expect to play games like ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Wuthering Waves’ at 60FPS with the highest settings and no heating issues.
Powered by a 5,000mAh battery unit, the phone has reliable and sufficiently long battery life – lasting a day frequently even with two SIM cards in use for calls. You don't get a charger in the box but a compatible fast charger can charge it from 1 per cent to full in a bit over an hour. Not sure why, but Samsung didn't remove the Bluetooth capabilities of the S Pen so now you can't use it to take photos when in your hand.
Loudspeakers on the phone are loud (though not the loudest on a Galaxy S phones) and have good depth and coverage for different genres. WiFi as well as GPS performance was top throughout my usage. 5G network reception, I thought was only slightly better than the previous generation, which is to say it was generally good outdoors.
All in all, the Galaxy S25 Ultra continues Samsung's efforts to be at the forefront of smartphones that aren't short on AI features and capabilities. From improved image detection and deletion features to quicker AI search results in Gemini, the phone has that part covered. If you already have a Galaxy S24 Ultra, I don't see any major reasons to upgrade, but on the other hand, if you're looking for a big phone and have the budget to splurge, there's not much wrong with the Galaxy S25 Ultra for pretty much any kind of Android user.
