Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Review

So look, I've been carrying the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra for about two weeks now — across Delhi metro commutes, sweaty Mumbai afternoons, and a weekend in Bengaluru where I probably took 400 photos I didn't need. And honestly? I think Samsung might've actually cracked the formula this time around. Not in the "oh it's slightly better than last year" way. More like they sat down and asked themselves what was genuinely annoying about the S25 Ultra and then just... fixed most of it.

Before I get into the weeds here, let me give you the quick version for anyone who's scrolling fast: Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, 200MP main camera that's been reworked with a new ISOCELL HP2 sensor, 5500mAh battery, 65W charging (finally!), and that S Pen is still hanging around. Price? A hefty Rs 1,34,999 for the base 12GB/256GB model. Yeah. We'll talk about that number later.

What's in the Box and First Impressions

Samsung's still doing the "no charger included" thing, which at this price honestly feels a bit ridiculous. You get the phone, a USB-C cable, the S Pen already slotted inside, some paperwork, and a SIM ejector tool. That's it. If you don't already own a 65W charger, budget another Rs 2,000-ish.

Picking the phone up for the first time though — something's different. The corners aren't as aggressive anymore. Previous Ultra models had this boxy, almost angular feel that dug into your palm during long calls. Samsung rounded those edges off and it makes a bigger difference than you'd expect. My hands aren't huge, and I could tell within the first five minutes.

Design and Build: Heavy but Considered

At 229 grams, this thing isn't light. Let's just get that out of the way. You'll feel it in your jeans pocket. But the weight distribution is surprisingly even, so it doesn't feel top-heavy like some phones do when you're watching YouTube in landscape mode.

Samsung went with what they're calling Armor Aluminum 2.0 for the frame and slapped Corning Gorilla Glass Armor 2 on both front and back. I dropped it once — from about waist height onto a tile floor, case-less, because I'm apparently that person now — and there wasn't a scratch. Not even a tiny one. Maybe I got lucky, but still.

Four colour options this time: Titanium Black, Titanium Grey, Titanium Violet, and a limited Titanium Blue that's probably going to sell out fast. I've been using the Grey and it picks up fewer fingerprints than I expected. The S Pen silo sits at the bottom-right, same as before, and the pen itself has been made slightly thicker. Better grip during long note-taking sessions is the claimed benefit. From what I've seen, it actually helps — my handwriting on-screen looked marginally less terrible than usual.

That Display Though

Here's where Samsung just doesn't lose to anyone right now. The 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel hits 2600 nits peak brightness, and I'm telling you — standing outside Connaught Place at 2pm in May, this screen was completely readable. No squinting, no cupping your hand around it. Just... visible. That's a first for me with any phone, honestly.

Resolution sits at 3088 x 1440 pixels with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. Scrolling through Instagram or Twitter feels liquid smooth, and watching anything HDR-capable on Netflix is genuinely gorgeous. Samsung's Vision Booster tech does this smart thing where it adjusts colour and contrast based on your lighting environment. Under tube lights at home versus harsh sunlight versus a dimly lit restaurant — the screen adapts without you doing anything.

The ultrasonic fingerprint sensor buried under the display is now in its third generation, and it's fast. I'd say sub-300 milliseconds based on my testing, though I wasn't using lab equipment — just a stopwatch app and a bunch of tries. Roughly 9 out of 10 unlocks happened on the first touch, even with slightly damp fingers after washing dishes. That's a noticeable improvement from the S25 Ultra where I'd sometimes need two taps.

Camera System: Four Lenses, Zero Weak Links

Alright, this is going to take a minute because Samsung packed a lot into the camera system and I've got opinions about all of it.

Up front, the main shooter is a 200MP ISOCELL HP2 sensor behind an f/1.7 aperture — wider than last year's f/1.8. Sounds like a small change on paper. In practice, those low-light shots around 11pm on a poorly lit Delhi street came out noticeably cleaner. Sharper details in shadows, less noise in the sky, and colours that didn't look like they'd been run through a filter.

Daytime photography is, predictably, excellent. The dynamic range on this sensor is wild — I shot a friend standing in front of a window with harsh backlighting, and the phone kept both his face and the bright sky outside properly exposed. Not perfect, mind you. There's a slight halo effect if you zoom in at pixel level. But for social media or even a decent-sized print? Brilliant.

The 12MP ultrawide has gained autofocus this year, which means you can shoot macro photos down to about 3cm. I tested this with some flowers at Lodhi Garden and the detail was impressive. Pollen grains visible, tiny insects in the background that I didn't even notice while shooting. This was previously a weakness Samsung ignored, so it's good to see them address it.

Now the telephoto setup — this is where things get interesting. There are two telephoto lenses: a 50MP 3x optical and a 50MP 5x periscope. Between the main camera and these two, you've got four distinct focal lengths to work with. During a friend's birthday dinner at a restaurant with mixed lighting, I bounced between all four and each one held up. The 5x periscope is particularly strong for candid shots across a crowded room where you can't physically get closer.

Samsung's Nightography AI processing has been refined again. I took some shots at about 1am near India Gate and the results looked natural — none of that oversharpened, artificially brightened look that night modes sometimes produce. Skin tones in low light were warm without looking orange, which is something I've complained about in older Samsung phones.

One more thing: the 50MP front camera now supports 8K selfie video recording. Do most people need 8K selfie video? Probably not. But content creators putting out stuff on YouTube will appreciate the flexibility to crop in during editing without losing quality.

Performance: As Fast As Android Gets

Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy on a 3nm process paired with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM. If numbers are your thing, this is the fastest Android configuration money can buy in early 2025. But what does that actually feel like in daily use?

Smooth. Relentlessly smooth. Apps open instantly — and I mean the heavy ones too, not just the calculator. Lightroom with a 200MP RAW file? Opens in under two seconds. BGMI at maximum graphics settings? Locked 60fps with zero stuttering during a one-hour session. I was actively trying to make this phone struggle and couldn't manage it.

Samsung put a multi-layer copper vapor cooling system inside, and it shows. During that hour-long gaming session, the back of the phone got warm — I'd estimate around 41-42 degrees if I had to guess — but never uncomfortable. Certainly never hot enough to make me want to put it down. Previous Samsung phones used to get noticeably hotter in the same scenario.

RAM management on One UI 7.0 running atop Android 15 seems better optimised too. I had about 15 apps in recents and didn't experience a single reload when jumping back to an app I'd opened 20 minutes earlier. That might sound minor, but if you're someone who bounces between WhatsApp, Chrome, a notes app, and your camera constantly, it matters a lot.

Battery Life and Charging

The 5500mAh cell inside the S25 Ultra consistently gave me between 7 and 8 hours of screen-on time. My usage pattern during the testing period was roughly: lots of WhatsApp, about an hour of Instagram/Twitter scrolling, 30-40 minutes of camera use, some Spotify streaming, and maybe 20 minutes of BGMI. On lighter days — mostly messaging and web browsing — I pushed past 9 hours.

Charging is where Samsung finally caught up. 65W wired takes you from completely dead to completely full in about 55 minutes. That's not the fastest in the industry (OnePlus would like a word at 100W), but it's a massive jump from the 45W that Samsung stubbornly stuck with for years. Getting to 50% in under 25 minutes is genuinely useful when you're grabbing a quick charge before heading out.

Wireless charging sits at 25W, which is fine for overnight top-ups. There's also 15W reverse wireless charging if you want to share juice with your Galaxy Watch or earbuds. Handy feature that I used more than I expected to, actually.

S Pen: Still Unique, Still Useful

Samsung's the only company still putting a stylus in a flagship phone, and I'm glad they haven't given up on it. The S Pen in the S25 Ultra has what Samsung calls "zero latency" — and while I'm not sure the latency is literally zero, the gap between pen movement and on-screen ink has shrunk to the point where it genuinely feels like writing on paper. Fast notes during a meeting? Done. Quick sketches while brainstorming? Surprisingly natural.

Air Actions are still there — the gesture controls where you wave the pen in the air to control presentations, skip songs, etc. I use these maybe once a week, if that. They're neat but not something I'd miss if they disappeared. Screen-off memo, on the other hand, where you pull the pen out and write directly on the locked screen? I use that almost daily. Grocery lists, random thoughts, phone numbers — it's faster than unlocking and opening a notes app.

Call Quality, Speakers, and Daily Basics

For a phone costing Rs 1,34,999, the basic phone stuff had better be excellent. And it is. Call quality on Jio 5G and Airtel 5G was consistently clear — voices sounded natural with good volume through the earpiece even in noisy environments. I took a few calls during a crowded Delhi metro platform and could hear the other person without pressing the phone harder against my ear.

Stereo speakers are powerful. Top earpiece and bottom driver produce loud, reasonably balanced stereo sound. Watching a YouTube video without headphones in a quiet room sounded surprisingly good — clear mids, present bass (for a phone), and enough volume to fill a small bedroom. Among the best phone speakers I've tested, honestly. Samsung's done well here for a few generations running.

Haptic feedback is Samsung's best yet. Keyboard typing feels precise and responsive. Notification vibrations are crisp. If you've used an iPhone and wished Samsung's haptics were that good — they're finally close. Not identical, but the gap has narrowed to where most people wouldn't notice a difference in blind testing.

Software: One UI 7.0 on Android 15

One UI has come a long way from the early days when Samsung's software felt bloated and slow. Version 8.0 is clean, fast, and pretty well thought out. Samsung's AI features are baked in now — Circle to Search works really well for identifying products or landmarks, live translation during phone calls is surprisingly accurate for Hindi-English mixed conversations, and the photo editing AI tools can remove objects from images without leaving obvious artifacts.

Bloatware is still present — a handful of Samsung apps and maybe two or three partner apps that showed up during setup. All removable though, which is more than you could say a couple of years ago. The Galaxy AI features that Samsung keeps pushing are hit-or-miss. Summarising long articles? Actually useful. Generating AI-written replies to messages? Almost always wrong in tone and I turned it off after day two.

Specifications

Pros and Cons

Who Should Buy This?

If you're someone who wants literally everything in one device — the best Android camera, a stylus for productivity, a screen that's visible anywhere, battery that lasts a full day, and the fastest processor available — the S25 Ultra is the phone. There's nothing else on Android that covers this much ground this well.

But if you're coming from an S24 Ultra or even an S25 Ultra, the upgrade calculus gets murkier. The improvements are real — better charging, better camera, better thermals — but whether they justify spending Rs 1,34,999 again depends entirely on how much those specific upgrades matter to your daily use. I'd say the S24 Ultra users have a stronger case for upgrading than S25 Ultra owners, but that's just my read on it.

The Price Question

Rs 1,34,999. That's the elephant in the room and there's no way around it. For the 12GB/256GB variant. If you want the 16GB/512GB, you're looking at even more. Available on Samsung.com, Amazon India, Flipkart, and Samsung Experience Stores across the country.

Is it worth the money? I think so, for the right person. If you're a photographer who doesn't want to carry a separate camera, if you take notes constantly, if you need a phone that can handle anything from gaming to video editing — yeah, the price is justified by what you're getting. But if you mainly scroll social media and watch YouTube, you could save Rs 60,000 and get 85% of this experience from something like the Xiaomi 15 Pro.

Final Thoughts

I keep coming back to that camera system. After two weeks with the S25 Ultra, every other phone's camera feels like it's missing something — a focal length, a level of detail, a particular capability. The 200MP main sensor, the finally-useful ultrawide with AF, the dual telephoto setup... it's the most complete camera package on any phone I've tested this year.

Samsung also deserves credit for fixing the charging situation. 65W isn't category-leading, sure, but it's enough to stop being a genuine complaint. Paired with the larger 5500mAh battery, the S25 Ultra goes from being a phone you have to think about charging to one you mostly don't.

Is it the best Android phone in India right now? I think it probably is. Whether that matters to you — whether you need the best, rather than something great at half the price — well, that's the kind of thing only you can really figure out. I've used a lot of phones and this one's the hardest to give back, if that tells you anything.