Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: A flagship that feels fresh at a closer look

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. At first glance, you wouldn’t be penalized for wondering if the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra was actually its predecessor, the S24 Ultra. Barring a few minute differences that only a closer look will reveal, the latest flagship from the house of Samsung veers too close to what the company had already showcased last year.

This, though, has given it a chance to showcase all the work it did inside the phone—with software improvements and AI optimizations. It is, of course, no surprise that Samsung has made its flagship smartphone all about its AI smarts for the second year running. While that’s the obvious, what is particularly appreciable is that the Galaxy S25 Ultra feels like Samsung took in user feedback from its previous phone, filtered them to zero-in on what was missing, and tried to fill these gaps.

As a result, you get a phone that is nearly the same in dimensions, but is actually noticeably lighter. In fact, thanks to good build weight distribution, the Galaxy S25 Ultra does not feel like a heavy phone despite its near-unwieldy size. The display, which is identical bar none with its predecessor, is a tenth of an inch larger than before—for all practical purposes, it feels the same.

Also read: Always-listening AI gadgets are here, but should you trust them? In fact, in every way, Samsung has done exactly what Apple did a few months ago—upgrade its largest flagship phone so incrementally that it would actually take a few minutes to find out what’s new. The Galaxy S25 Ultra has a new ultra wide-angle camera with a 50-megapixel image sensor and a larger aperture lens, upgraded from a 12-megapixel one before. Whether you’d use this camera much or not is really subjective, but the upgrade