The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra isn’t so ‘ultra’ anymore

When you yell “Can you just Google it?” at your AI assistant, it’s fair to say that the AI assistant is not doing its job.

I was browning some beef on the stove and trying to determine when my husband’s flight was landing. I didn’t have the flight number, but there are only so many direct flights between Detroit and Seattle in a day. So I long-pressed the power button on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and asked Google’s Gemini assistant to find the information for me. It said it couldn’t. So I insisted — loudly — to just Google it, plus or minus an expletive. It couldn’t even do that, so I went to Google myself and had the answer in seconds. AI, everybody.

This wouldn’t matter except AI smarts are supposed to be the big deal with this phone. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a barely warmed-over version of last year’s device, with some lightly bumped specs and ever-so-slight design changes. That’s fine! The S24 Ultra was a great piece of hardware, and the S23 Ultra was, too. Samsung didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. But it means the company is relying on these “Galaxy AI” features — plus some help from Gemini — to give the S25 Ultra that new-phone zhuzh. And despite all its sparkle, Galaxy AI isn’t up to the task.

More than anything, Samsung has lost the plot on what makes this “Ultra” phone ultra. The Ultra used to — and kind of still is — the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink phone. It has the stylus, the big screen, all the cameras, and just about every other souped-up spec you could think of. But over the past few years, Samsung just hasn’t found a way to make this phone any more special. In fact, it’s gotten just a little bit less special, if anything.

The S24 Ultra downgraded the 10x zoom to a 5x, which is just okay at 10x, despite Samsung’s claims it’s just as good. The S25 Ultra downgrades the smart stylus into a dumb one without Bluetooth connectivity and air control features. I wouldn’t have a problem with that if those things had been sacrificed for some other compelling feature. But I can’t see what’s been added, and at $1,299, this is one of the most expensive phones you can buy that doesn’t fold in half. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a damn good phone. But I think at that price, it’s fair to ask for just a little more.

Samsung introduced us to the concept of Galaxy AI last year, which includes some proprietary features like writing tools, note summarization, call translation, and wacky photo editing tools. This year, it places a new assistant front and center: Google’s Gemini. Bixby is still around in a supporting role, but Gemini is the default helper you’ll get when you long-press the wake button. With the S25 series, Gemini can take action across multiple apps for you including in Gmail and Calendar and a bunch of Samsung’s native apps. This was the function I was most excited to try on the S25 Ultra, but it’s an Android feature coming to many other phones, too.

The results were mixed. I asked it to put an event on my calendar based on what was on my phone screen, and it did it. Date, time, location were all correct. It felt kind of magical, which I realize is a very low bar for magic. Other results were less impressive. If I asked it to generate a list of five videos to watch on a particular topic and add them to a note, it only added the headline text — even when I prompted it to add them as hyperlinks.

The other problem is, AI makes shit up a lot. I asked it to find a specific recipe for an espresso martini on YouTube and add the ingredients to a note. It appeared to follow directions by pulling up the video I referenced, and the ingredients seemed like they might be in an espresso martini. But they were totally different from what was featured in the video. I tried to ask it about details of a flight leaving from San Francisco, and even though I had it reference my confirmation email, it kept insisting that my flight was leaving from San Jose. It makes you think twice about relying on AI for anything but the lowest of low-stakes tasks!

Samsung has also integrated AI features here and there across the OS. A prominent AI feature called Now Brief offers summaries of your activities throughout the day and supposedly surfaces relevant information based on your calendar and location. It’s on the homescreen by default and pops up on the lockscreen when a new one is available. I find it to be mostly useless. It kept showing political news headlines that I don’t want to be bombarded with in the middle of the day, so I turned those off.

None of this is unique to the Galaxy S25 Ultra or even the S25 series. These AI features — which occupied most of Samsung’s Unpacked presentation introducing these phones — will very likely come to previous Galaxy phones later this year. I love to see older phones get new features. But it also makes it very hard to see what sets the S25 Ultra apart from the rest of the S25 series or even the other Android competition. There’s also a strong possibility that Samsung will start charging for these features at the end of 2025; Samsung’s fine print only guarantees that they’ll be free through the end of 2025. Don’t be surprised if your AI phone suddenly comes with an AI subscription fee.

The S25 series ships with One UI 7.0, a significant update to Samsung’s Android skin. It’s also a particularly iOS-y update, most notably with split quick settings and notification shades and a Dynamic Island-like Now Bar with time-sensitive information. I don’t think it’s a particularly bad influence, and you can undo or tweak many of these changes. I appreciate the ability to put all my apps on one page in the app tray so I don’t have to scroll between multiple pages, like on other Android phones. There’s a time to do your own thing and there’s a time to just follow the crowd.

Samsung took another good cue from Apple with the S25 Ultra’s new shape. The previous couple of Ultra phones had a boxy shape that paid tribute to the Note series. But those pointed corners were sharp and made the phone uncomfortable to hold. This year, Samsung ditched what was left of the Note styling and adopted curved corners like the rest of the S series.

The Ultra also loses what was left of its curved edges in favor of straight sides that make it easier to pick up. They’re subtle changes, but they do make the S25 Ultra more comfortable to hold and use, at the expense of looking like every other modern smartphone from the front. I think it’s a net positive. I’d rather have a comfortable phone than a unique-looking one that digs into my palm.

The Ultra uses an updated Gorilla Armor 2 protective layer on its screen. It’s supposed to withstand drops onto concrete better than the previous version, which I didn’t test in my time with the phone. But I can say its scratch-resistance has held up well to a week of abuse, and the screen’s antireflective coating makes it one of the easiest phones to use in direct sunlight. But that was also true of the S24 Ultra.

The S25 Ultra, like the S25 and S25 Plus, uses a version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset that’s specially tuned for Galaxy phones. I used the 8 Elite in the OnePlus 13 and couldn’t tell you any notable difference in performance between the two. Everyday tasks ran smoothly on the 8 Elite. The phone crashed and restarted itself in one instance, which was a little unusual, but I haven’t seen anything else like that in the week I’ve been using it.

Battery life is about par for a flagship smartphone in 2025. I usually got through an average day with 60 percent or so left over. Good, but not amazing. The S25 series is Qi2 Ready, which means it supports the latest wireless charging standard but only with a special magnetic case — it doesn’t have magnets built into the phone. It’s a fair compromise since most people will put their phone in a case and never take it off, but it’s a bummer for the case-averse like me.

The S25 Ultra still has an S Pen, but Samsung removed Bluetooth features that allowed you to use the stylus like a magic wand. Samsung says few people used those features, and on balance, it’s no great loss. But it’s the principle more than anything that stings.

The cameras on the S25 Ultra are unchanged with one exception: a new 50-megapixel ultrawide. Samsung’s claim that it performs better in low light seems to hold up — I can see more fine detail in shots from the new camera compared to the ultrawide on the S24 Ultra. Likewise, the new ultrawide — probably helped by a wider f/1.9 aperture — allows the system to use lower ISOs to get the same level of brightness in a shot, which helps keep noise down, too. It’s definitely an upgrade; is it one that Ultra owners were clamoring for? I’m less sure about that.

Samsung’s other notable claim is that its low-light video processing has been improved to better distinguish between moving and static subjects, in theory allowing for smarter application of noise reduction. I can’t say this is anything I’ve had a particular complaint about on past Galaxy phones, but low-light video is still a challenge for any mobile camera.

And it appears to be working: in side-by-side video clips with the S24 Ultra, I can clearly see more fine detail from the S25 Ultra, particularly in dim indoor lighting. It isn’t a paradigm shift, but progress is progress. Otherwise, the S25 Ultra’s images look very much like what I’ve come to expect from Samsung. This camera loves its vibrant reds and blues, and portrait mode segmentation is still some of the best in the game.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra remains one of the best phones you can buy. The screen is excellent, the cameras are some of the best in the game, and you’ll have a hard time finding any workload tough enough to challenge it. That’s all been true of the last few Ultra phones, and it’s true of this one. But I think there’s something intangible that the Ultra has been losing over the past couple of generations.

You can buy the Galaxy S25 Plus or the Pixel 9 Pro if you just want a good Android phone. The reason to buy a Galaxy S-series Ultra is because you don’t want something that’s just good; you want something that’s special. This phone feels a little less special than the S24 Ultra did, which felt a little less special than the S23 Ultra. Complaining about the “specialness” of a phone would be silly for any other phone. But this is the Ultra! Doesn’t that mean something?

It used to come with a 10x telephoto camera and a stylus that worked like a magic wand. It used to look strikingly different from the rest of the S series, or any other phone, for that matter. Some of these changes have been for the better, but Samsung hasn’t made up for what it’s cutting. For now, the S25 Ultra still feels like something special. But if the trend continues, then the Ultra could become just another big phone.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge