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Galaxy S25 Ultra Review: The Best Phone Screen Ever—Just Don’t Ask About the AI
Samsung calls this phone “Ultra” for a reason: it’s supposed to be the best of everything. But when the regular Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus share many of its top features at significantly lower prices, that “Ultra” starts to feel more like a branding choice than a necessity.
The Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus, starting at $800 and $1,000 respectively, are packed with value. You can read our full review of those, but here, let’s focus on the $1,300 Galaxy S25 Ultra—the flagship Samsung wants to define your smartphone dreams.
I tested the S25 Ultra inside the beautiful, open lobby of the LinkedIn building in San Francisco—one of the city’s POPOS (privately owned public open spaces). Think: long panels of blonde wood lining the ceiling and back wall. I snapped a photo using Samsung’s new ultrawide lens, and the result was stunning. The image captured the building’s dramatic lines with striking detail, even revealing the subtle grain in the wood. Riding that creative high, I decided to feed the photo into the new Gemini AI assistant and test the “Talk Live About This” feature.
That’s when the magic turned into mayhem.
With the certainty of a child inventing a story, Gemini confidently declared the image was of the Miner Auditorium at the de Young Museum. Fun fact: the de Young doesn’t have a Miner Auditorium. Extra fun fact: that’s a real place—but it’s part of SFJazz. And my photo? Yeah, still very much LinkedIn’s lobby.
Welcome to the AI-powered future, where confidence doesn’t always equal accuracy.
A Masterpiece of a Screen, a Misstep of a Price
At a time when tech companies are shoving AI into every corner of their products, Samsung is no different. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is loaded with AI features—some clever, some clumsy—but that’s not what makes this phone shine.
The real stars here are the new processor, the jaw-droppingly sharp ultrawide camera, and pro-level video tools that bring Samsung closer than ever to Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro. Samsung wisely held onto everything great about last year’s S24 Ultra, and also, unfortunately, kept the $1,300 price tag.
Design-wise, the S25 Ultra marks another step away from the Galaxy Note legacy. The edgy, “look at me” personality of earlier models is gone. It’s as if Samsung, like Pete Davidson erasing his tattoos, is cleaning up its image. Gone is the “Space Zoom 100x” badge once boldly printed on the S20 Ultra. Gone are the dramatic videos hyping just how black “Phantom Black” really was.
The new Ultra is sleeker, lighter, more refined—and a little boring. It feels great in hand, performs like a beast, and offers arguably the best phone camera setup available. But ask yourself: do you need all of this?
Should You Actually Buy the Galaxy S25 Ultra?
Let’s be clear: if you’re eyeing the Ultra mainly for its AI features, don’t. Samsung and Google’s Gemini integration offers an occasional glimpse of a brilliant future, but the present is hit-or-miss.
The real value lies in the Ultra’s unbeatable screen and exceptional camera system—features that do stand a tier above the S25 and S25 Plus. Its video capabilities, especially with log recording, push it closer to being a legitimate filmmaker’s tool.
Still, $1,300 is a lot to drop—especially when this phone doesn’t even fold in half.
If you’re still on a Galaxy S22 Ultra or older, this is a meaningful upgrade. For S23 Ultra owners, unless your battery is on its last legs or you land a killer trade-in deal, you’re probably better off waiting. And S24 Ultra users? Don’t bother. Treat yourself to a steak dinner and a good movie instead.
AI Features: Promise Meets Pitfall
The S25 Ultra introduces the Now Bar on the lock screen—a swipeable carousel of useful info like directions, calendar events, and sports scores. It’s helpful, but limited. It can’t, for instance, keep up with a live rideshare the way Apple’s Live Activities can.
Now Brief, another addition, tries to give you a daily digest of your life—pulling from your calendar, photos, Galaxy Watch, and email. After two weeks, it mostly just showed me weather updates, my schedule, a few photos, and political headlines I didn’t ask for. I didn’t need Mike Lindell with my morning coffee.
Where Gemini really shows potential is in its ability to act across apps. I asked it to find upcoming Air Jordan 1 releases and add them to a note. It did. I told it to scan my email for soccer practice dates and put them in my calendar. Again, success.
But reliability is the Achilles’ heel. Like the time I asked Gemini to send my friend a GIF of Homer Simpson backing into the bushes. It nailed the idea… but forgot to include the actual link. My friend got a message that read, “Here is a link to a GIF online of Homer Simpson walking back into bushes.” And nothing else.
There’s also the human factor—we’re still not used to issuing complex, multi-step requests to our phones. The AI may be ready, but we’re not quite there yet.
Design: Sleek, Light, Familiar
The S25 Ultra brings back flat edges and a slimmed-down body. It’s 15 grams lighter than the S24 Ultra, and surprisingly comfortable to hold—less “brick in your pocket,” more “tech you forget you’re holding.”
Samsung also stretched the screen ever so slightly to 6.9 inches by shaving down the bezels. Combined with an anti-reflective coating, this makes the display a joy to use—indoors or out. Even mundane tasks like scrolling your news feed feel cinematic.
As for the S Pen, it’s still tucked inside the phone, but it no longer supports Bluetooth. That means no Air Actions and no remote shutter control. But considering less than 1% of users ever used those features, you probably won’t miss them.
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The New Ultrawide Camera Is a Star
The S25 Ultra packs four rear cameras: a wide, an ultrawide, a 3x telephoto, and a 5x telephoto, plus a 12MP selfie shooter. Most of these are carried over from the S24 Ultra, except the ultrawide—and that’s where things get exciting.
The new 50MP ultrawide lens hits a near-perfect balance: wide enough to be dramatic without warping the edges. The detail is crisp, and the resolution gives macro shots serious depth. Whether capturing a shadowy street at blue hour or a bustling café, it handles tricky lighting and moving subjects with ease.
In macro mode, the ultrawide camera can lock onto tight subjects and deliver sharp, vibrant results. Photos of a succulent plant, a Godzilla toy by the window, or even my cat Peebles gazing through sunlit glass—each shot looked rich and expressive.
Of course, it’s not flawless. There’s occasional image noise, and over-sharpening is still a thing. But overall, this ultrawide lens elevates everyday scenes into gallery-worthy images.
Final Verdict
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a technical marvel with the best smartphone display ever and cameras that can make you forget you’re not using a DSLR. But its AI features are inconsistent, and its high price makes it hard to recommend over the more practical S25 and S25 Plus—unless you’re a power user who lives for screen clarity and pro video capture.
Buy it for the screen. Buy it for the cameras. But don’t buy it just for the AI—unless you enjoy talking to a confidently wrong robot.
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