Same $1,299 starting price. Same four cameras. One gets a faster chip and rounder corners — the other keeps a more capable S Pen. Here's what that means in real life.
The S25 Ultra is a genuine improvement over the S24 Ultra — but not a dramatic one. The Snapdragon 8 Elite chip benchmarks 35% faster in multi-core, the design is slightly more comfortable to hold, and the ultrawide camera gets a significant sensor upgrade (50MP vs 12MP). But the battery capacity is the same, the main 200MP camera is virtually unchanged, and the S Pen actually lost Bluetooth functionality. If you own an S24 Ultra, there's no urgent reason to upgrade. If you're buying new, the S25 Ultra is the better phone — and the S24 Ultra is now available at a discount.
You could put both phones in a lineup and most people wouldn't spot the difference immediately. That's a feature, not a bug — the Ultra look is established enough to be recognizable on sight. But hold them, and you'll feel something.
The S25 Ultra has slightly rounded corners where the S24 Ultra stays sharp and rectangular. It sounds minor. In practice, after thirty minutes in a back pocket or a palm, the S25 Ultra's gentler frame is noticeably more comfortable. Samsung also shaved 1.4mm from the width and 0.4mm from the thickness — numbers that are easy to dismiss but combine into a phone that just feels a little less like a clipboard.
162.8 × 77.6 × 8.2 mm · 218g
Grade 5 titanium · Gorilla Armor 2
162.3 × 79.0 × 8.6 mm · 232g
Grade 2 titanium · Gorilla Armor 1
The S25 Ultra also moves to grade 5 titanium (the same alloy used in aerospace applications) from the grade 2 used in the S24 Ultra. It's stronger and more resistant to bending under pressure. In practice, neither phone is likely to fail under normal use — but grade 5 is objectively better materials science, for what that's worth.
The S25 Ultra has "floating lens" camera rings — the lens elements sit slightly raised off the back surface, leaving tiny gaps. It looks distinctive. It also collects pocket lint at an impressive rate. Not a dealbreaker, but worth knowing if you're the type who doesn't use a case.
Let's be direct about this. The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy in the S25 Ultra is a meaningful improvement over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the S24 Ultra. Not just marketing. Real benchmark differences.
A 35% multi-core improvement is significant in absolute terms. In daily use, you'll feel it most when rendering video, running multiple apps simultaneously, or using on-device AI features. For basic tasks — email, social media, calls — both phones are fast enough that you'll never think about the chip at all.
The S25 Ultra also gets a 40% larger vapor cooling chamber, which matters for sustained workloads. Under heavy gaming or video rendering, the S24 Ultra would throttle performance to manage heat. The S25 Ultra sustains higher performance for longer before it has to back off.
Samsung has loaded both phones with Galaxy AI features, but the S25 Ultra's more powerful NPU (neural processing unit) handles on-device AI tasks faster. Things like real-time translation, generative editing in the camera, and Gemini integration respond more quickly. If AI features are central to how you use a phone, the chip upgrade has real-world consequences here.
Samsung didn't overhaul the camera system. The main 200MP sensor carries forward mostly unchanged. The telephoto lenses are the same. But there's one genuine upgrade that matters: the ultrawide.
| Camera | S25 Ultra | S24 Ultra | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main | 200MP, f/1.7, OIS | 200MP, f/1.7, OIS | Tie |
| Ultrawide | 50MP, f/1.9 | 12MP, f/2.2 | S25 Ultra ↑ |
| 3× Telephoto | 10MP, f/2.4 | 10MP, f/2.4 | Tie |
| 5× Telephoto | 50MP, f/3.4 | 50MP, f/3.4 | Tie |
| Selfie | 12MP, f/2.2 | 12MP, f/2.2 | Tie |
| Video max | 8K@30fps | 8K@30fps | Tie |
The 50MP ultrawide on the S25 Ultra is a meaningful sensor upgrade over the 12MP on the S24 Ultra — more pixels means more detail in wide shots and better low-light performance at that focal length. In landscape photography and architecture shots, the difference is visible. In quick casual shots, less so.
Samsung has also refined its processing algorithms across the board. Skin tones are more natural, HDR handling is less aggressive, and low-light shots show less noise at equivalent exposures. These aren't spec differences — they're tuning decisions that reveal themselves in side-by-side photos but rarely in the numbers.
If portrait photography or low-light ultrawide shots are important to you, the S25 Ultra's camera upgrade is real and worth having. If you mostly shoot with the main lens in good light, you're unlikely to notice a meaningful difference in your actual photo library.
Here's the thing nobody expected Samsung to do: make the S Pen worse.
The S24 Ultra's S Pen has Bluetooth. You can use it for air gestures — swipe in the air to advance slides, scroll through a gallery, trigger the shutter on the camera from a distance. It's the kind of feature that sounds gimmicky until you're presenting to a room of people and realize you don't need to walk back to your phone to move to the next slide.
The S25 Ultra's S Pen has no Bluetooth. No air gestures. No remote shutter. Just a very precise pressure-sensitive stylus that's excellent for note-taking, drawing, and annotation — and nothing beyond that.
If you actively use the S Pen's Bluetooth features on an S24 Ultra, the S25 Ultra is a step backward for your specific use case. The writing experience is unchanged — both styli are excellent on the page — but the S24 Ultra is the more feature-complete device when it comes to stylus functionality.
Samsung hasn't explained the removal publicly. The most likely reason is battery optimization — Bluetooth in the S Pen required a small internal battery and charging coil, adding weight and complexity. Removing it saves a little space and a little manufacturing cost. Whether that trade was worth it depends entirely on which features you actually used.
Both phones carry a 5,000mAh battery. Samsung didn't change the capacity. What changed is the efficiency of the chip running on that battery, which is why the S25 Ultra shows modest real-world endurance gains despite identical hardware.
| Test | S25 Ultra | S24 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Video playback | 31 hours | 30 hours |
| Gaming | ~11% improvement | Baseline |
| Web browsing | Minimal improvement | Baseline |
| Charging speed | 45W wired | 45W wired |
| Wireless charging | 15W | 15W |
The improvements are real but modest. In most usage scenarios the S25 Ultra will last a few minutes longer — not a few hours. Both phones easily get through a full day of heavy use.
Charging speed is unchanged at 45W — not a high number by 2025 standards. Competitors like OnePlus and Xiaomi regularly offer 80–100W+ charging. Samsung has chosen not to compete on this front, and both phones will take roughly 65–70 minutes to charge from empty. Worth knowing before you commit.
| Spec | S25 Ultra | S24 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | February 2025 | January 2024 |
| Price (256GB) | $1,299 | $1,299 (now discounted) |
| Chipset | Snapdragon 8 Elite (3nm) | Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (4nm) |
| Display | 6.9″ Dynamic AMOLED 2X | 6.8″ Dynamic AMOLED 2X |
| Resolution | 1440 × 3120, 120Hz | 1440 × 3120, 120Hz |
| Brightness | 2,600 nits peak | 2,600 nits peak |
| RAM | 12GB | 12GB |
| Storage | 256GB / 512GB / 1TB | 256GB / 512GB / 1TB |
| Main camera | 200MP, f/1.7, OIS | 200MP, f/1.7, OIS |
| Ultrawide | 50MP, f/1.9 | 12MP, f/2.2 |
| Battery | 5,000mAh | 5,000mAh |
| Charging | 45W wired, 15W wireless | 45W wired, 15W wireless |
| S Pen | Yes (no Bluetooth) | Yes (with Bluetooth) |
| Frame material | Grade 5 titanium | Grade 2 titanium |
| Glass | Gorilla Armor 2 | Gorilla Armor 1 |
| Water resistance | IP68 | IP68 |
| Dimensions | 162.8 × 77.6 × 8.2mm | 162.3 × 79.0 × 8.6mm |
| Weight | 218g | 232g |
| OS at launch | Android 15 / One UI 7 | Android 14 / One UI 6 |
| OS updates | 7 years guaranteed | 7 years guaranteed |
The honest summary: if you have an S24 Ultra, keep it through 2025. The upgrade cost isn't justified by the real-world differences. If you're buying new or upgrading from an S23 series or older, the S25 Ultra is the right choice — it's the better phone, and both cost the same at retail.
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