Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra vs Galaxy S24 Ultra: do we need a refresh?

Updated: Jan 27, 2025, 12:02 PM 

Intro

Samsung's Galaxy S25 series has been announced, with the expected Galaxy S25 Ultra taking up the top-o'-the-foodchain spot. It's big, it's powerful, it has the most features from the trio, and it must be compared to its predecessor — the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

What we are most excited about lies inside — the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy is a slightly overclocked version of the 3 nm chip. Samsung has promised that it has made a 40% larger vapor cooling chamber to ensure that everything ticks and tocks just right, even with prolonged usage.

The camera hardware has not changed much on paper, but it seems Samsung did change some of its post-processing philosophy. More on that in the camera section.

So, it's time to compare, wonder and ponder — how much better is the new Galaxy S25 Ultra, compared to last year's Galaxy S24 Ultra? Worth an upgrade? Or is it better to pick up an S24 Ultra at a discount now?

Design and Size

The Ultra models typically have a stark rectangular shape for that notebook-like, business look. However, the Galaxy S25 Ultra now comes with slightly rounded corners. We have to admit, we were expecting a much bigger slope when the S25 Ultra was first announced. However, in person and in-hand, the Galaxy S25 Ultra still has a very business-like, stark rectangular look. It's just that it doesn't jab in your palm as much. The sides are flat and matte, and of course — titanium coated. 

The Galaxy S24 Ultra has that older notebook-like look, with a clean rectangle outline, sharp corners, flat top and bottom. Its side frames are slightly rounded, tumbling out a bit. In either case, both of these phones feel nice to hold and are pretty to look at.

But the Galaxy S25 Ultra still rocks the beloved S Pen stylus, IP68 protection, and the dual speakers, of course.

We are no fans of the "floating lens" design of the cameras on the back of the S25 Ultra. The lens rings are ever-so-slightly lifted off the back of the phone, leaving tiny gaps. Tiny enough to be super-hard (impossible?) to clean, but just right enough to accept all of the lint, hairs, and random gunk your pockets have to donate.

On paper, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is very slightly thinner and lighter than the S24 Ultra. We can definitely feel a tiny difference in weight, but when it comes to thickness perception — the S24 Ultra feels a bit thinner when held due to its rounded frame and tapered corners.

The locations for the power and volume buttons, speakers and S Pen slot, camera lenses and selfie punch-hole — they are quite similar and you should feel at home if you are coming from another Samsung phone.

For colors, we have the "muted" titanium shades on the top-tier Ultra phones. The S24 Ultra comes in yellow and violet, next to the more "boring" black and gray. It also has two exclusive options in the Samsung.com store — orange and light green. The S25 Ultra comes in Black, Gray, Silverblue, Whitesilver, with Samsung.com exclusive colors being Pinkgold, Jetblack, and Jadegreen. A lot of words mixed in here to describe colors that look mostly pale and muted, but at least they sound fun.

Display Differences

Samsung's AMOLED panels have peaked for a while now. The latest branding is Dynamic AMOLED 2X, signifying both the adaptive refresh rate (1-120 Hz) and the high peak brightness, now reaching 2,600 nits. Nothing's changed on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, only the size. Since its bezels are slighly thinner, the screen diagonal of the S25 Ultra now measures at 6.9 inches, up from the S24 Ultra's 6.8. Negligible difference really, if any. 

Both phones come with a Gorilla Armor glass on the front — the collab that mixes Corning's hardened glass panels with Samsung's next-level anti-glare coating, which we first saw with last year's Galaxy S24 Ultra. It helps the screen pop easier, even when in a brightly-lit environment, and is definitely one of the upgrades we appreciated most last year. The panel on the Galaxy S25 Ultra is branded Gorilla Armor 2, so it should be slightly more shatter-resistant. However, checking side-by-side, we couldn't see a difference in glare. The screen reflections off the S25 Ultra are a bit more blue-tinted, but not less bright in general.

So, they are basically the same excellent panel, with infinite contrast, sharp resolution, vibrant colors, HDR support, and variable refresh rate up to 120 Hz. The S25 Ultra's minimum brightness does drop below 1 nit, which is excellent news for bedtime viewers who just can't let TikTok go at lights out.

Underneath that display glass we have the same ultrasonic fingerprint scanners. Samsung has been perfecting it over multiple generations and we have to say it's very fast and accurate — it merely requires you touch the signified screen area for a split second. Face unlock is also available on Samsung phones, but it only uses the selfie camera, so it's not as secure or accepted in banking or payment apps, for example.

Performance and Software

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite is now official — it's the latest and fastest chip from the company, finally built on a 3 nm process (basically, more power yet more energy efficiency). And yes, this is the second time Qualcomm has changed the branding of its top-shelf chips over the last few years, but who's counting.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite is the beating heart inside the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and it comes with the special "for Galaxy" moniker. Meaning, it's slightly overclocked, over a "normal" Snapdragon 8 Elite. Just like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 inside the Galaxy S24 Ultra is "Made for Galaxy". The newer chip has 30% faster CPU, 37% faster GPU, and 40% faster NPU speeds compared to last year's flagship, as per Samsung and Qualcomm's own words.

Great work with CPU speeds, the new Snapdragon 8 Elite is truly a sharpened blade. However, it does unfortunately, love the heat a bit too much. It may have hit a high of 6200 on the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme stress test, but it quickly begins throttling. By loop 3, it's down in the 4,000 range. By loop 7, it is hovering at 3,000 points and holds around there until the end.

It's not a bad score to end up at for sure, we were just hoping for more. For example, the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro has excellent thermal management (or a desire to self-destruct) and barely throttles in this test. It starts with a max score of 5,900 but doesn't fall under 5,800 after that.

Stress tests aside, the Galaxy S25 Ultra does feel snappy and responsive. A colleagure here at the office jokes that "it took 3 nm chips to stop Samsungs from stuttering". Though, I've been using the Galaxy S24 Ultra for a year now and haven't really noticed much lagging or stuttering. In fact, it still runs great and I don't even feel super-pumped about switching to an S25 Ultra.

Unfortunately, any word on RAM upgrade turned out to be false prophecies. The Galaxy S25 Ultra comes in the same RAM and storage combos as the S24 Ultra — 12 GB across the board, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB in storage options.

The good news is that early adopters are able to score a "free storage upgrade" during the pre-order period, plus a more generous money offer on a trade-in.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra also runs Android 15 with One UI 7 on top out of the box. There's a fresh new UI redesign with Live Notifications a-la the iPhone Dynamic Island widget, and some new AI tricks. A new AI Select, which works like Circle to Search on steroids, immediately recognizing everything that's on your screen. It can now also process multi-modal queries, to pull information from multiple apps and sources, and execute actions within other apps. But yes, those are Google's new Gemini features. Samsung was a bit mum about Bixby during the presentation. It's still here, but by default, the side button now activated Gemini, and Bixby feels a bit swept under the rug.

The good news is that, since it's all Gemini-powered, these features will be coming to the S24 Ultra and other Android phones. Now, Samsung did also showcase a new smart search function in the phone's settings. If you don't get it on your device... it's not a huge loss, really, as it's far less impressive or helpful than what Samsung showed us on stage.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra video editor now also has an Audio Eraser feature to clean up voices in your vlogging adventures. Kind of like the iPhone 16 Pro's Audio Mix, which has a few different ways to process voices and try and clean up external noise. The Galaxy S25 Ultra doesn't have modes of processing, you just pick whether you want to "erase" voice, external noises, or music from your video. It works ok-ish, for what it is, and we can see it helping some content creators when they end up recording or vlogging in a noisy environment.

With a software support commitment of 7 years, we do expect the still-relatively-new Galaxy S24 phones to continue to get such new features. So, unless the Galaxy S25 Ultra gets something that specifically needs the power of the Snapdragon 8 Elite to work, there shouldn't be much of a difference in One UI 7 on the S24 vs the S25.

Camera

The Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with a 200 MP main, 10 MP 3x zoom, 50 MP 5x zoom, and 12 MP ultra-wide camera. The module and the software behind it were excellent, and put the Galaxy S24 Ultra straight on the top of our PhoneArena Camera Benchmark test. It has since fallen beihing by a couple of points, but it's still among the best cameras you can get on a phone.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra uses the same hardware, the only difference is that the ultra-wide camera now has a 50 MP sensor.

Ultimately, the Galaxy S25 Ultra did score a couple of extra points in a few spots in our tests. So, what's different? Well, it's a surprise, really. 

Samsung has decided to work on its little oversharpening problem. The Galaxy S25 Ultra does deliver slightly softer, yet clearer fine details in the photos. Though, mind you, that's only when pixel-peeping.

For a more big-picture difference, we have to discuss the colors. The S25 Ultra does veer away from dying the greens to toxic color, and the overall propensity of green-cast on the photos. Again, small differences, which you may not even come across, depending on the scenes you are taking a photo of.

For night photos, the S25 Ultra has a bit more contrast, a bit better details and sharpness. An upgrade is definitely visible, but not huge.

In general, it can be said that the Galaxy S25 Ultra's cameras are slightly better than the S24 Ultra. Slightly.

Battery Life and Charging

Over the past few years, a 5,000 mAh battery in an Android flagship has become pretty much standard. Manufacturers seem to have hit a limit or a sweet-spot of what a 6.9-inch phone can hold. Yes, some competitors are pushing those limits, going up to 5,600 mAh or even 6,000 mAh in the new OnePlus 13. 

But the Galaxy S25 Ultra still sticks to that comfortable 5,000 mAh.

The Galaxy S24 Ultra can last us more than a day with casual use, so as long as the Galaxy S25 Ultra can maintain that endurance, it will be fine. The chip will be the big make-it-or-break-it here — will the 3 nm build give us energy efficiency gains, or will it be offset by how power-hungry it is?

Well, it seems that 3 nm chip is, indeed, making better use of that battery. With the same capacity, the S25 Ultra can lasta bit longer in every category in our tests. It's nothing groundbreaking — about half an hour of YouTube streaming or gaming, but it's still better to go up than go down. 

The good news is that charging speeds are the same across both phones, at 45 W on the wire. So that's 68% of charge for 30 minutes on the charger. The new Qi2 wireless charging standard may give us 15 W pucks, which is cool. But don't expect to use magnetic accessories with the S25 Ultra. It's "Qi2-ready", not entirely Qi2 compatible. Meaning, it doesn't have the magnetic ring needed for the standard. You'll need to slap a case on for that. 

Summary

So yes, the horrible truth is that the Galaxy S25 Ultra is a minor upgrade over the S24 Ultra. Yeah, that chip is exciting, but we can't really complain from the performance of the Galaxy S24 Ultra currently. So, should you be getting Titan Jade Green with envy? Nah, don't go that far.

The Galaxy series is quite mature and we can't say upgrading a year-old-phone is a necessity. It's definitely fun to observe how the S25 has evolved after the S24, but right now, we believe you will be just fine holding on to your old Galaxy S24 Ultra throughout 2025.

What if you are coming from an older phone? Is the Galaxy S24 Ultra the better deal here? If you can find one at a serious discount... yes. It's nearly the same phone, from display to camera performance, from battery capacity to software features. The S25 Ultra will be slightly faster, and maybe it will get an extra AI feature or so. For now, it's hard to tell. But if those things are lower on your priority list, do consider a discounted S24 Ultra.