Galaxy S25, S25+ and S25 Ultra: Samsung's new triumvirate plus new additions

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As expected, Samsung presented its three new top smartphones at the first Unpacked 2025 event. The Galaxy S25, S25+ and S25 Ultra look confusingly similar to their predecessors, with advances coming primarily from the software.

Externally, the Galaxy S25 and S25+ look almost identical to their predecessors. Only the S25 Ultra looks a little different; Samsung has given the frame slightly rounded corners. This makes the smartphone more comfortable to hold. The surfaces are also made of matt glass on the back and metal frames, with titanium on the Ultra and aluminum on the basic models.

The main focus is on AI, which is intended to change the way you use your smartphone. To this end, Samsung has integrated Google's AI assistant Gemini with its own Galaxy AI and enabled it to process more complex requests beyond the boundaries of apps. For example, you can ask the assistant for the best restaurant in the area in one go and have it send a message to a contact from the address book for a meal together, which is entered directly in the calendar. Samsung's vision is to move away from controlling individual apps and instead let the AI decide how a request is implemented.

So far, this overarching AI has mainly worked with the apps from Google and Samsung and a handful of others, such as Spotify and Uber. However, Samsung allows other providers to dock their apps to its own interfaces.

Everything at a glance

The existing features of Galaxy AI, i.e. numerous tools for image editing, text and speech translation, notes and more, remain the same. New features include the Audio Eraser for videos, which can be used to remove various noises from videos, and the Now Brief and Now Bar. Both display information from different sources as an overview, the Now Bar as a small bar at the bottom of the lock screen, the Now Brief as a widget or app. The AI can now also process YouTube videos with one click, provide content summaries and compile further information. The functions of Galaxy AI can be switched on and off individually, and you can also cut off Samsung AI's cloud access completely. Then only the local components will work.

However, Samsung has still not cut off all the old habits, even the old AI assistant Bixby still makes an appearance. In the photo gallery, a click on the eye icon wakes it up, Bixby then analyzes the photo just like Gemini and provides information about it, if desired also in spoken language. Why the new AI is not also used here remains a mystery.

Samsung also guarantees Android and security updates for its new devices for seven years. The software will therefore be kept up to date until the beginning of 2032 and Android 22.

Little new in terms of hardware

Not much has changed in terms of hardware. The three devices have all become slightly lighter, with the same battery capacities of 4000, 4900 and 5000 mAh. The screens are also unchanged, at least on paper: 6.2 inches and 2340 x 1080 pixels for the S25, 6.7 inches for the S25+ and 6.9 inches for the S25 Ultra, each with a resolution of 3120 x 1440 pixels. In order to use the full resolution, however, you have to do it yourself; both large models are preset with a reduced number of pixels. The Ultra protects the panel with Gorilla Glass Armor 2, a material that, in addition to being shatterproof, is primarily designed to reduce reflections. In fact, the surroundings on the S25 Ultra's screen are much less reflective than on other smartphone displays.

Samsung has also left the cameras virtually unchanged. The quartet of 200-megapixel main camera, 50-megapixel ultra-wide angle (previously it was only 12 megapixels) and two telephoto lenses with triple (10 megapixels) and quintuple (50 megapixels) magnification in the S25 Ultra have been given a macro mode with a close-up limit of two centimeters as an innovation. The Galaxy S25 and S25+ have the same cameras as their predecessors: 50 megapixel main camera, triple telephoto with 10 megapixels and 50 megapixel ultra-wide angle.

The most important innovation on the hardware side is the Snapdragon 8 Elite from Qualcomm. The new chip delivers significantly more performance for computing and graphics tasks as well as AI tasks. To keep waste heat in check, Samsung has increased the vapor chamber in the devices by 40 percent in the Ultra and 15 percent in the two smaller models. All three now have 12 GB of RAM. For the Galaxy S25, this means an increase compared to the 8 GB in the base model of the S24. The top version of the S24 Ultra was also available with 16 GB, but Samsung has now removed this RAM upgrade.

S Pen loses Bluetooth

The S Pen still has its place in the Galaxy S25 Ultra. However, the pen has been downgraded compared to the previous versions, as Samsung has removed the Bluetooth LE module. It is now only a passive stylus and the Bluetooth functions such as remote camera shutter release and gesture control have been removed. In an interview, a Samsung spokesperson justified this decision with market research, which showed that these functions were hardly used.

The prices for the three Galaxy smartphones are pleasingly consistent, as they are identical to those of their predecessors. The entry-level version of the Galaxy S25 with 128 GB of memory costs 899 euros, while the memory is doubled for 959 euros. The S25 with 512 GB is new to the range and costs 1079 euros. If you have more to spend, you can get the Galaxy S25+ from 1149 euros, the cheapest version of which has 256 GB of memory. The version with 512 GB costs 1269.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra starts at a price of 1449 euros for the 256 GByte version, with double the storage costing 1569 euros. Exclusively in its own online store, Samsung also offers the S25 Ultra with 1 TByte of internal memory at a price of 1809 euros.

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Samsung Galaxy S25 Hands-on (16 Bilder)

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Galaxy S25 Slim is coming

The three expected S25 models will soon be joined by another model. Samsung has announced the Galaxy S25 Slim, a particularly flat version of the smartphone, as the fourth new product. The manufacturer has not yet revealed any technical details about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim, nor a price or exact date. Touching was also forbidden until now. At the Unpacked event in San José, the Slim could only be seen behind glass, and not at all at the press launch in Germany.

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