Three months in. The S25 Ultra is the most boring Galaxy Ultra in years and that is meant as a compliment.
What changed
| Spec | S23 Ultra | S24 Ultra | S25 Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chip | SD 8 Gen 2 | SD 8 Gen 3 | SD 8 Elite |
| Weight | 233 g | 232 g | 218 g |
| Display | 6.8" 3088x1440 | 6.8" 3120x1440 | 6.9" 3120x1440 |
| Bezel uniformity | No | Mostly | Yes |
| S Pen Bluetooth | Yes | Yes | No |
| Battery (mAh) | 5000 | 5000 | 5000 |
| Telephoto | 10x periscope | 5x + 3x | 5x + 3x |
| Vapor chamber | Standard | 1.5x larger | 1.4x more area |
| Galaxy AI | No | Yes (One UI 6.1) | Yes (One UI 7) |
The headline differences against the S24 Ultra are: 14g lighter, slightly larger and now-uniform bezels, the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, and the S Pen lost its Bluetooth functionality[1]. That is the list. Cameras unchanged. Battery unchanged. Display unchanged in spec.
Performance
Source: Geekbench Browser
Geekbench 6 multi-core jumped from 6925 (S24 Ultra) to 9365 (S25 Ultra), a 35 percent year-over-year improvement[2]. That is unusually large in the Android world. The Snapdragon 8 Elite uses Qualcomm's first custom Oryon cores, the same architecture that made the X Elite laptops competitive.
In day-to-day use you will not feel a 35 percent jump. Phones are not CPU-bottlenecked for normal workloads. Where you feel it: gaming at high settings, AI processing on-device (Galaxy AI features run noticeably faster), and exporting 4K video in Adobe Rush.
Thermals
Source: My own bench, 22C ambient
The S24 Ultra throttled aggressively. After 20 minutes of 3DMark stress test it held only 58 percent of its peak frame rate. The S25 Ultra holds 78 percent over the same period thanks to a redesigned vapor chamber that covers more of the chassis. This is the practical, felt improvement.
The S Pen change
Samsung removed Bluetooth from the S Pen. You can no longer use it as a remote camera shutter. Reviewers were furious; users were not. Samsung's data showed under 1 percent of S Pen users used the Bluetooth features. They removed the BLE chip and the small battery, simplifying the pen and shaving manufacturing cost.
I never used the BLE features. I miss them not at all. If you did, this is a real loss.
Camera
Same hardware as the S24 Ultra. The processing is tuned slightly differently, less aggressive sharpening, less aggressive saturation boost. Photos look more natural by default.
The 5x telephoto plus 3x telephoto combination is still excellent. Beyond 30x digital zoom the AI fill becomes obvious.
Battery
5000 mAh same as last year. PCMark Work 3.0 hits 15.8 hours, an hour better than the S24 Ultra. Galaxy AI features running in background drag this number down by about an hour in a heavy AI day.
Buying advice
From an S24 Ultra: skip. The chip jump is real but everything else is a sidegrade.
From an S22 Ultra or older: yes. Three years of accumulated improvements and a chip that is now genuinely faster than the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
The S25 Ultra is what Samsung used to make: a refined, powerful, slightly boring upgrade. That is what most people actually want.
About the data
A note on what the numbers in this post represent so you can read them with the right confidence:
- "My own bench" rows are personal measurements on my own hardware. They are honest about my setup and reproducible there, but they should not be treated as universal benchmark scores.
- Benchmark numbers attributed to public sources (Geekbench Browser, DXOMARK, NotebookCheck, FIA timing) are illustrative, the trend is what matters, not the third decimal place. Cross-check against the source for anything you would act on financially.
- Client outcomes and ROI percentages in business-focused posts are anonymised composites drawn from my own consulting work. Real numbers, real direction, sanitised so individual clients are not identifiable.
- Foldable crease-depth and similar engineering measurements are estimates pulled from teardown reports and reviewer claims; manufacturers do not publish these directly.
- Forecasts and "what I bet" lines are exactly that, opinions, not predictions with a track record yet.
If you spot a number that contradicts a source you trust, tell me, I would rather correct it than be the chart that was off by 6 percent and pretended otherwise.