Galaxy S25 Ultra: incremental, in the right places

The S25 Ultra arrived January 2025. Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, new rounded corners (finally), and a Galaxy AI suite that has actually got useful in the year since the S24.

Hardware 6.9 inch flat display, 2600 nits peak. Titanium frame, slightly lighter at 218g. The corners are now rounded to match the iPhone 15 Pro Max design language. Some will hate it. I prefer it in hand.

Snapdragon 8 Elite The Oryon cores are fast. Geekbench scores are uninteresting. What matters is that on-device LLM inference for Galaxy AI is now plausible without the cloud.

Galaxy AI Now Brief is genuinely useful. Drawing Assist is fun. Cross-app Actions is the feature I use most: "send the photo I just took to Sarah on Telegram, then summarise the thread".

Camera 200MP main, new 50MP ultrawide (was 12MP), same 5x telephoto. The ultrawide upgrade matters more day to day than spec sheets suggest.

Battery 5000mAh. Same as the S24 Ultra. Slight efficiency gains from the new chip mean roughly 8% better real-world life.

Should you upgrade? From an S24 Ultra: only if you care about Galaxy AI. From an S22 Ultra or earlier: yes.

Buying £1,249 for 256GB. Holding the line on price was the right call.