Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review: flagship phone with elegant body and fierce gaming performance

With the official launch of the Samsung Galaxy S25 series in Taiwan, we have tested the highest-end S25 Ultra to see its performance.

Appearance and design

Compared with last year’s S24 Ultra, the S25 Ultra is closer to the S25/S25+.

The 4 corners are decorated with arcs, no longer sharp, but not as round as the S25/S25+, and the protrusion feels slightly relaxed when holding it. The sides of the screen and back cover are completely flat and square, and the blocks felt by the tiger’s mouth and fingertips when holding them will be more obvious than those of the previous generation. Fortunately, the body weight is 218 g, which is 14 g less than the previous generation, and the overall grip comfort is still improved.

This year’s titanium blue back cover has a more obvious metallic luster. It is illuminated by light sources in different directions, and the texture reflected by the light is much better.

Samsung’s island-style lens has always been its favorite design language, and this generation also has a sense of suspension. It is unlike other competitors who emphasize camera functions that make the camera have a huge bump in the back in order to increase the camera module.

Performance test

Thanks to the excellent performance of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, Samsung has used the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor with a higher pulse this time in the entire Galaxy S25 series. In particular, the S25 Ultra’s heat-smoothing plate is increased by 40% compared with the previous generation, and combined with customized heat interface materials (TIMs) further improve the overall heat dissipation effect, the game performance has significantly improved.

From actual measurement, we can see that the single-core and multi-core performance of the S25 Ultra in CPU is more than 40% higher than that of the S24 Ultra. When using Geekbench, GPU performance has also increased by 21% and 52% respectively in OpenCL and Vulkan.

The most relevant 3DMark performance of the game is also improved by 35% to 50%, with the lowest gear of the 20-minute stress test even higher than the highest score of the S24 Ultra, and the overall stability of the stress test falls from 60% to 70%.

Camera experience

This time, the in-camera level indicator is better than the previous generation. In addition to selecting the horizontal axis, it also has more pitch angle indicators, which are closer to the level seen by professional cameras.

At the Taiwan Lantern Festival in Taoyuan, several night scenes were shot, and the ultra-wide angle and telephoto can be output stably.

Added screening in the same field: Theme-style induction protective case

The advantage of the theme-type induction protective case is that the induction back cover can be removed, so that the exquisite back of the phone is revealed while the protective frame is protected, and the heat dissipation effect is better, making it more suitable for users who play games for a long time. The theme-based induction protective case of the S25 series has been launched in black and white. In order to match the silver edge of the S25 Ultra titanium blue, we still chose a white model. If it is a dark body, we can choose a black model.

However, compared with the S24 Ultra version, the outer frame is high enough to protect the lens, the S25 Ultra version has been changed to a lens protection small frame sensing card. This way, although the grip is slightly more comfortable, it only covers the outer frame to protect the outer frame. In the state, the lens will still be about 0.1 to 0.2 mm higher than the frame, which cannot fully protect the lens, so you need to pay more attention when using it.

Summarize

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is indeed unexpected to run into the slim body of the flagship phone with super high gaming performance like an e-sports phone. Samsung has also strengthened the speaker at the earpiece, and the sounding state of the earpiece and microphone is more balanced than that of the S24 Ultra, and the listening experience is better when playing games and watching videos.

This time, the S25 Ultra only raised the photosensitive element to 50 megapixels in the wide-angle camera module, and the rest did not change, which made people feel a pity, but the standard wide-angle 200 million pixels and the 50 million pixels of the 5x mirror are enough to cope with. There are various environments, and I hope that the 3x mirror that is most commonly used in general telephotometers can also be upgraded to high-pixel photosensitive components in the future.

If you really have to find the shortcomings, this time, the Bluetooth remote control function of the stylus should be the one that consumers think is the most deprivation. After all, there are those that have been there before or not now, which is a bit unreasonable. Taiwanese consumers should now want Samsung to launch eSIM-equipped models in Taiwan. After all, the S25 has dual physical SIM card slot + eSIM models internationally. eSIM can really greatly improve the convenience of frequent users abroad.

There is also a suspension shortcut function provided by the previous model, which was unplugged on the S25 Ultra. For users who often need to take screenshots in games, the key screenshots are far less responsive than floating shortcut screenshots.

Although there are some minor shortcomings, overall, the flaws do not hide the merits. If you care a lot about camera improvement, the S25 Ultra does have the same S24 Ultra as the S24 Ultra Difference Not too many. However, in terms of performance The increase is indeed obvious to gamers. For users who are playing games and want flagship phones, the S25 Ultra is worth buying.