I went hands-on with all three Galaxy S25 phones and they’re impressive, but the déjà vu is real

When Samsung led me into a content capture area in New York City to get a first look at the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, I must admit that I was pessimistic. Up until that point, all the leaks suggested Samsung would show off three phones that looked nearly identical to the previous year’s versions. Sure enough, when I got into that room to see them for myself, it was like déjà vu — the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus, and Galaxy S25 Ultra are near clones of their older models, making this the fourth year in a row without any major overhaul to the Galaxy S look.

Below the surface, though, Samsung has done some cool new things with these devices. The problem is that you need to go hunting for those cool things, and I’m not sure playing a game of hide-and-seek with your customers for the main selling points of your new phone is the best idea.

Regardless, let me tell you all about the Galaxy S25 series as I experienced it in NYC. Let’s start with the main draw: the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

With the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Samsung is trying its best to fix that problem. For the first time since 2021, the 2025 Ultra model actually looks like it belongs in the family. Samsung achieved this through three very subtle changes.

First, the titanium sides of the Galaxy S25 Ultra are totally flat. The Galaxy S24 Ultra had slightly convex sides, continuing the look and feel of a Galaxy Note. That element is gone now, bringing the Galaxy S25 Ultra much closer to the look of the non-Ultra phones, which received perfectly flat sides in 2024 and will continue on with them in 2025 (I’ll touch more on them in a second).

The second change is that the pointy corners are entirely gone. You can see the difference this makes in the image above. Samsung made the Ultra corners a little less pointy in 2024, but now they have nearly the same curvature as the corners on the standard and Plus models. This is excellent news, as it finally means holding a Galaxy S Ultra phone in one hand won’t feel like you’re jamming a LEGO into your palm.

Third, Samsung changed the camera module designs on all three phones by adding thick bezels around each lens, making them look much more uniform across the lineup. This makes the Galaxy S25 Ultra fit in a bit better, as its lenses have historically been much larger than what you see on the smaller phones. Now, all the lenses look the same (even though they are definitively not).

Of course, the Galaxy S25 Ultra still is the odd man out because of its gargantuan size and the fact that it has an S Pen slot. It still looks and feels slightly amiss, but at least it fits in better than it has since 2021, which was before the Galaxy S Ultra line swallowed up the Note design.

Honestly, I like where Samsung is going with this. My favorite Ultra phone is still the Galaxy S21 Ultra, so I feel like Samsung is returning to what it originally envisioned for the Ultra, which is a big, super-powerful version of a Galaxy S — not a Galaxy Note.

Finally, Samsung also made several other minor tweaks. The display bezels are slightly smaller, giving the phone a 6.9-inch display even though it still fits in the same-sized frame as the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s 6.8-inch one. The phone is also significantly lighter and has a brand new version of the Gorilla Glass Armor display covering, unsurprisingly called Armor 2.

The Ultra also comes in a few new colors: Titanium Silverblue, Titanium Whitesilver, Titanium Gray, and Titanium Black. Pay no attention to the names, as all four colors are essentially different shades of gray. There are also three Samsung.com exclusive colorways: Titanium Pinkgold, Titanium Jetblack, and Titanium Jadegreen.

While Samsung spent a lot of time refining the look of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, it paid much less attention to the Galaxy S25 and its bigger brother, the Galaxy S25 Plus. In fact, other than the new camera lens bezels on the back, Samsung barely changed anything.

The Galaxy S25 is still one of the most compact premium Android phones you can get with a 6.2-inch display. It still has flat sides and a frosted glass back, and is still protected on the front and back by Gorilla Glass Victus 2.

One notable change is on the inside: This year, it has 12GB of RAM, a nice step up from the 8GB from previous years. It still has the same battery capacity, though, at 4,000mAh, along with the same charging speeds (25W wired and 15W wireless). There are no camera upgrades.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy S25 Plus is still just a slightly larger version of the Galaxy S25. Of the three phones, this is the one that’s changed the least. It has the same 6.7-inch display as it did in 2024. It has the same battery, the same amount of RAM, the same charging speeds, etc. If it didn’t have the new lens bezels, it would literally be the same phone.

Samsung did give the phones some new colors, though. As usual, both phones have the same color options, which include Navy, Mint, Silver Shadow, and Icyblue. Interestingly, Silver Shadow and Icyblue are so close in hue that I had difficulty telling them apart unless they were right next to one another. Mint is also barely green, so it blends in pretty well next to Icyblue. In other words, the Navy colorway is the only one that actually stands out (it looks really nice, a very deep blue).

The Samsung.com exclusive colors for the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25 Plus include Blueblack, Coralred, and Pinkgold.

As with 2024, Samsung has put almost all its focus on the AI features in the Android 15-based One UI 7 for the Galaxy S25 phones. During my briefing in NYC, Samsung barely even touched on hardware upgrades, spending at least 80% of the event talking about Galaxy AI. Thankfully, some of the features really seem innovative and useful this year.

First, Google Gemini is taking over as the default digital assistant. This means holding down the side key will launch Gemini by default, with Bixby taking a backseat. Gemini also is what powers many of the generative AI features new to the Galaxy S25 lineup.

However, Samsung is still using Bixby for certain things. It just isn’t focusing too much on which platform does what, preferring to lump everything under Galaxy AI. As an example, although Samsung’s new Audio Eraser tool looks and functions just like Google’s Audio Magic Eraser, it is not the same — that’s actually Samsung’s own development of a similar system. But for Samsung, this doesn’t matter, as it’s all Galaxy AI.

The one new feature that really took me by surprise is an AI-based settings assistant. This allows you to tell your phone in natural language what is wrong, and your phone can help you fix it. One example Samsung gave was a person saying, “My phone is hard to read right now,” and Galaxy AI responding by opening up the settings page where you can increase the font size, turn high-contrast mode on/off, etc. This is going to be a godsend for non-tech-savvy folks and their tech-savvy friends and family who constantly need to help them change phone settings.

Another cool new AI feature is cross-app actions. An example of this would be the user asking Gemini to find a vegan cafe that’s available for an upcoming meeting with your boss. Intelligently, Gemini can check Google Calendar for when and where this meeting will take place and then ping Google Maps to find a good vegan cafe nearby that’s open during those hours. This is going to save everyone a lot of time.

Galaxy AI will also help you find specific photos in the Gallery app through natural language prompts (“Show me photos from the vineyard in France,” for example). There’s a new AI Select tool that replaces the old Smart Select action (and does pretty much the same thing). There’s also a new daily tool called Now Brief that pings you in the morning, afternoon, and evening with weather updates, news briefs, health metrics, and more.

By far, the most notable change in the Galaxy S25 lineup is something you can’t see, which is that every phone across the world has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. This means there are no Exynos models anywhere, which will be terrific news for our friends who live outside the United States.

Samsung is also working hard to make its overall ecosystem more useful. For example, a Galaxy S25 with a Galaxy Watch connected to it can turn off your Samsung TV when it detects you’ve fallen asleep. The Galaxy S25 will also recommend the creation of Routines based on your usage. As an example, if your phone sees that you manually turn dark mode on at night and then off in the morning, it can create a Routine for you to automate that process. This will be great for people who have trouble thinking of and implementing Routines.

Although Samsung didn’t upgrade much hardware this year, it did make one notable move: the ultrawide lens on the Galaxy S25 Ultra is now a 50MP sensor. This should result in better ultrawide shots, naturally, but Samsung claims it will make for better macro shots, too. However, the ultrawide lenses on the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25 Plus do not get this upgrade.

Samsung is also rolling out a new feature called Galaxy Log. This makes it much easier for videographers to color-correct footage captured with a Galaxy smartphone. Hopefully, this will lessen the gap between video footage captured on an iPhone and footage from a Galaxy phone, as the iPhone has been winning the video war for years now.

A curious “upgrade” for the Galaxy S25 Ultra is the removal of Bluetooth support on the S Pen. It still has Wacom technology, so it’s not just a plastic stick, but features like air gestures and using the S Pen as a remote shutter button will not work with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. To make matters worse, even if you jump to the S Pen Pro (sold separately), you can’t bring Bluetooth functionality back. It simply doesn’t work.

Finally, the long-awaited change to seamless updates is officially here with the Galaxy S25 series. This will allow you to download and install your monthly software update in the background and then quickly restart your phone to apply it. Samsung has been the longest holdout for this change, so it’s nice to see that it’s finally on board.

Over the past two years, Samsung has been all about AI. The Galaxy S24 series launch focused almost entirely on Galaxy AI, and the company has only doubled down on that with the Galaxy S25 series.

Granted, these upgrades do make the phones better. There are plenty of new features here that I could see myself using daily, and I appreciate Samsung’s focus on trying to make our lives easier with generative AI.

The problem is that Samsung is so focused on this that it’s all but ignoring the physical elements of the phone. The Galaxy design is getting really tired at this point and there are literally no hardware upgrades at all for the Galaxy S25 Plus. It’s difficult to convince someone to upgrade their phone when the new phones are dead ringers for the one currently in their hands, both inside and out.

To make matters even tougher, the still-fully-capable Galaxy S24 series will undoubtedly go down in price after today. Why shell out for a Galaxy S25 Plus when you can buy the Galaxy S24 Plus ($1119.99 at Amazon) for far less and get basically the same hardware and know you’ll eventually get most (if not all) the Galaxy AI features?

Regardless, time will tell how this pans out for Samsung. While I am impressed with the Galaxy S25 series overall, I can’t help but feel that Samsung has gotten too comfortable. While it might not feel like hardware and design upgrades are necessary, most smartphone consumers certainly think so. Generative AI features might be helpful, but they aren’t going to have the same sexiness as a brand-new design or a significant camera upgrade, for example. Besides, many of the Galaxy AI features we see on the Galaxy S25 today will eventually trickle down to other phones, both in and out of the Galaxy ecosystem.

Despite all this, I enjoyed my time with the Galaxy S25 series. Samsung is still great at what it does. The question now is whether or not folks out there with a Galaxy S22 will see the need to upgrade, as that’s what truly matters.