During its latest Unpacked event, Samsung dished all the details on the Galaxy S25 lineup. The Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus start at $799.99 and $999.99, respectively, while the S25 Ultra runs a cool $1299.99 in its entry-level configuration. You can preorder the phones ahead of their launch on February 7th, but before you do, you’re probably wondering what’s new.
The phones don’t look or feel much different, save for the slightly curvier Galaxy S25 Ultra. The Snapdragon Elite 8 is perhaps the S25 family’s most notable hardware upgrade, which is up to 40 percent faster than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and comes with a new neural processing unit to support Samsung’s expanded Galaxy AI experience. The company introduced multimodal and generative AI improvements, after all, and the Galaxy S25 line will be among the first to usher in new Google Gemini features.
Our reviews are still forthcoming, and it’s much too early for us to determine whether any of these phones are actually worth upgrading for. But that doesn’t mean we can’t distill their differences to help you determine which device you’d rather buy. Keep reading for a full breakdown of all of the hardware and software changes, the unique traits of each Galaxy S25 device, and a closer look at their specs — plus their counterparts from last year.
In terms of shape and size, it’s hard to tell the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus from their last-gen counterparts. But the S25 Ultra looks a bit different than the S24 Ultra with its subtly rounded corners and flat edges, which are more visually aligned with the smaller phones. It’s the thinnest and lightest Ultra yet, even if only by a hair. And the Ultra-exclusive S Pen is back, albeit without gestures and the remote shutter feature.
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Samsung says the aluminum frame on the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus features at least one recycled component. Both sandwich their components between slabs of Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus 2, but the Ultra uses a titanium frame and a display that’s protected by Corning Gorilla Armor 2. It’s a ceramic-infused material said to be stronger than typical tempered glass with antireflective and scratch-resistant properties. (The rear still uses Victus 2.)
Samsung also tweaked the design of the camera modules on all three phones, adding a thicker bordering hump with a bolder aesthetic. The S25 and S25 Plus come in several new color options, too, including an “icy” blue and a new mint green to help them stand apart, as well as navy and silver for a more traditional aesthetic. Three more colors will be available exclusively from Samsung.com: black, red, and rose gold.
The Ultra has its own set of titanium colors, including black, gray, and silverish hues of blue and white. If you order the Ultra from Samsung.com, you’ll also be able to choose from rose gold, black, and green.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 series is available with largely the same memory and storage options as the previous models, except all three models now start with 12GB of RAM. You can get the base Galaxy S25 with 128GB or 256GB of storage, while the Plus starts with 256GB of storage with a 512GB option. The Ultra, meanwhile, offers the same starting configurations as the Plus, along with a 1TB configuration.
All three Galaxy S25 phones use a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset — no matter where in the world you’re purchasing from. The processor uses an Oryon CPU similar to the ones you’ll find in newer Qualcomm laptops.
The 3nm chip has two “prime” cores and six performance cores with a dedicated “Hexagon” neural processing unit that supports multimodal AI capabilities with 40 percent faster efficiency compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The added headroom allows support for more on-device AI functions, including Generative Edit. Many of these features should generally work faster without the added overhead of server-side processing.
Overall, Samsung claims the Snapdragon 8 Elite offers 37 percent faster CPU performance and 30 percent faster GPU performance for gaming, at least compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 it’s replacing. That being said, we can’t yet discern how that translates in practice.
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The Dynamic AMOLED displays on the Galaxy S25 smartphones are largely unchanged compared to the previous generation. The base Galaxy S25 still has a 6.2-inch Full HD Plus display, while the 6.7-inch display on the Galaxy S25 Plus remains Quad HD Plus.
The S25 Ultra’s display is slightly larger than last year’s at 6.9 inches — a 0.1-inch increase to make up for the slight curve — with the same QHD Plus resolution. All three still support a maximum 120Hz variable refresh rate.
The Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus have the same three rear cameras, including a 50-megapixel wide sensor, a 12-megapixel ultrawide option, and a 10-megapixel telephoto sensor. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S25 Ultra offers four total rear cameras, including a main 200-megapixel wide-angle camera, a new 50-megapixel ultrawide camera with macro mode (up from the S24 Ultra’s 12-megapixel), a 50-megapixel telephoto sensor with 5x optical zoom, and a 12-megapixel sensor for 3x zoom. All still use the same 12-megapixel front camera.
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Recording options are largely similar across the board, with all three Galaxy S25 models supporting 8K resolution at up to 30 frames per second on their main wide-angle sensors and 4K at up to 60 frames per second for all cameras. However, the Galaxy S25 Ultra supports 4K at up to 120 frames per second.
Samsung now enables 10-bit HDR recording by default on all S25 phones, and they retain the Log color profile option for advanced color grading. The cameras picked up other software-enabled tricks, too, including the Audio Eraser feature first seen in Pixel phones. That feature lets you choose and isolate specific sounds — including voices, music, and wind — with the option to lower the rest or mute them entirely.
There’s also a new Virtual Aperture feature in Expert RAW, allowing you to adjust your footage’s depth of field after recording. There’s a new suite of filters inspired by iconic film looks, too.
Samsung says its new ProScaler feature on the Galaxy S25 Plus and Ultra offers 40 percent better upscaling compared to the Galaxy S24’s based on its signal-to-noise ratio. Since that feature requires QHD Plus resolution, you won’t find it on the base Galaxy S25.
Like the Galaxy S24 line, the Galaxy S25, S25 Plus, and S25 Ultra use 4,000mAh, 4,900mAh, and 5,000mAh batteries, respectively. That being said, Samsung says they offer the longest battery life of any Galaxy phones to date, largely thanks to hardware and software efficiency improvements.
Fast charging over USB-C returns in all three, of course, but they’re now also “Qi2 Ready.” That means there are no magnets embedded directly in the devices — which is the case with Apple’s latest handsets — but you will be able to obtain 15W wireless charging speeds when paired with Samsung’s magnetic Qi2 Ready cases. That should effectively enable you to use magnetic Qi2 chargers with Samsung Galaxy S25 devices.
The Galaxy S25’s launch is less about the hardware and more an opportunity to introduce One UI 7, its AI-heavy take on Android 15. While there are several visual tweaks, the bigger change is in Galaxy AI’s expanded granularity and cohesiveness.
a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&>a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-gray”>Photo by Dominic Preston / The Verge
Both Samsung and Google are introducing new multimodal AI features with the Galaxy S25’s launch. Google Gemini Live will launch first on the Galaxy S25, for example, though it will eventually come to the Galaxy S24 and Google Pixel 9. It’s a full-fledged conversational AI companion that’s now the default assistant when long-pressing the home button. (Bixby is still available in its own app.)
Gemini Live supports natural language commands for generative tasks and on-device functions. You can feed it images and files to facilitate requests, and it can dive into multiple apps to help complete them.
You can also get more personalized daily summaries with Now Brief, which is accessible directly from the lockscreen’s new Now Bar (which feels similar to the iPhone’s Dynamic Island). You’ll also notice a redesigned AI Select menu (which you may remember as Smart Select), 20 supported languages for on-device translations, call transcriptions directly within the dialer, and more. Most of these changes should port to older Galaxy flagships, but we’re not yet sure whether all of them will.
No, you’re not experiencing deja vu — the Galaxy S25 smartphones feel largely familiar on paper, as our comparison chart below illustrates. Outside the processor bump, the hardware differences are pretty minor compared to Samsung’s last-gen phones.
The software changes are the most significant upgrades this year, but many of those features will come to older phones, too, thanks to the now-customary seven years of OS updates you’ll get when purchasing a flagship Galaxy phone. Check out the full specs below to see how exactly these devices compare.
