Samsung Galaxy S25 Review

The Galaxy S25 is finally here, and I’ve got mine in the stunning Ice Blue color. This year, the base model comes with 12GB of RAM, which is absolutely awesome. The phone looks incredibly beautiful even with the pre-applied screen protector on top.

Design and Durability

The design of the Galaxy S25 is both functional and premium. On the bottom, you’ll find the dual SIM card slot, a USB Type-C charging port, a speaker, and what appears to be a microphone. The right side houses the power button and volume controls, while the top likely includes additional microphone ports and another speaker, delivering excellent stereo sound quality.

While the S25’s design closely resembles last year’s S24, it still feels incredibly premium. Holding the phone in your hand is a delight it’s smooth, solid, and exudes quality. The compact size is standout features, especially compared to larger Samsung models. It’s easy to use with one hand making it far more practical than bulkier phones and Its pocket-friendly form factor and comfortable grip.

Display

We get a 120Hz AMOLED display on regular Galaxy S25, the bezels are pretty much non-existent. When we compare the display quality and also the colors on it, with Google Pixel 9 Pro, S25 actually completely destroys Pixel 9 Pro, which is kind of ridiculous.

These panels on the Samsung phones always have been like top-notch, essentially. We again get the 120Hz panel, which is actually totally adaptive as well. This can actually save you some battery if needed, and again, it actually feels super, super fluid, and everything is buttery smooth. Also, the brightness on this panel is actually totally crazy. We can crank it up to the maximum 2,600 nits, so again, if you want to use this phone outdoors in very bright sunlight, you will pretty much have zero problems whatsoever with the display.

Also, the screen-to-body ratio is absolutely crazy on this phone. So essentially, as you see, there’s pretty much zero bezels. If there are any, then they are barely even noticeable. So definitely, the display is one of the best things about it.

Also, for display protection, we get Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front and also on the back. Yep, the back of the phone is also glass. What’s really good about the back of this phone is that it actually doesn’t attract any fingerprints whatsoever. As you can see, it’s kind of like a matte, non-reflective surface, and yeah, it still feels super premium. But again, you do not really have any fingerprint mark issues, unlike on other glass phones.

Performance

The Galaxy S25 actually has the most powerful CPU in the world at the moment, so it really has the same CPU as the Ultra model, which obviously costs like $600 more. Also, we actually get 12GB of RAM. Previously, on the S24, we only had 8GB of RAM.

For example, these are the scores for Geekbench. Again, if I check, compared to the past S24, as you can see, it’s crazy different. It completely destroys even the past S24. If you check the AnTuTu scores, it’s essentially around 60% faster than the past Galaxy S24.

By the way, I actually see all the big YouTubers are focusing on the Ultra version of this phone and aren’t really paying attention to this smaller guy. But I think the biggest upgrade is actually on this small guy this year. On the Ultra version, as they say, there aren’t really that many upgrades. Again, they also had better CPUs in the past year as well, and also they had 12GB of RAM last year as well.

When we compare the performance of the S24 Ultra versus the S25 Ultra, there really isn’t much performance improvement. Of course, there is some, as the CPU is still better, but when we compare the smaller S25 versus the S24, there’s actually a massive difference when it comes to performance. Overall, if you’re a true power user, you will absolutely love this phone. It really has the most powerful CPU in the world at the moment, coupled with a huge amount of RAM.

Everything runs buttery smooth on this phone. You can open and play any latest game at the highest settings. Also, this phone obviously has an 8K camera as well. The thing is, with these higher resolutions, when you film at them, if you compare the S25 versus my Pixel 9 Pro, I have huge problems when recording videos with the Pixel 9 because it constantly overheats. Also, I can’t really do much else in the background.

For example, if I make a video for YouTube and upload it at the same time using 5G, it really struggles, lags, and stuff like that. But this phone completely flies through everything. Again, when we compare the performance, for example, the S25 versus probably its biggest competitor, the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro, the CPU performance is essentially 2.5 times higher on the S25.

The Pixel 9 had an AnTuTu score of a bit over 1 million, so the S25 is actually 2.5 times more powerful than the closest competitor, the Pixel 9. Absolutely insane.

Battery life

The battery life also gets an extremely good improvement when it comes to battery capacity. We actually get the same 4,000 mAh battery capacity that we had on the S24, but due to this new CPU, the battery life is around 20 to 25% better on the S25. So it’s due to that new CPU only. Again, same battery capacity, and we also have the same charging speed as well.

But this year, we also get G2 wireless charging, which is again a good improvement. From my experience with all phones, I think Samsung phones usually have one of the most solid batteries, and they also have very good standby times. Personally, I would have preferred if they had included a 5,000 mAh battery in this phone. Of course, that would have been really nice but it is what it is.

By the way, they actually decreased the thickness of this phone even further, so it’s 7.2 mm at the moment. It’s really cool that we have such thin phones, but again, personally, I would have preferred if they had simply inserted a bigger battery and maybe left the same thickness as the S24.

Still, a 20 to 25% battery improvement is actually really decent. Other YouTubers aren’t really mentioning that it has much better battery life than the S24. They only mention that it has the same battery capacity, which is true but when it comes to actual performance, it’s much better.

Cameras

The S25 phone has the same camera hardware as the previous S24, with three rear cameras and a front-facing camera. However, there is a noticeable improvement in camera performance, particularly in video recording. The camera now records in HDR, with the same 8K resolution and 30 frames per second maximum as the S24. Portrait mode also sees a slight improvement.

The phone also offers various filters in photo mode, similar to the iPhone 16 system. Users can customize their camera appearance and make these filters permanent. Pro Video mode is the most exciting feature, as it allows users to shoot 90% of their videos using a phone camera instead of a real camera. This workflow is ten times better than on a real camera.

The phone app offers all the features of a decent camera, including setting adjustments, monitors, volume adjustment, and connecting external microphones. The camera can be controlled using voice, allowing users to take pictures or do whatever they want without having free hands. Other modes include RAW, Night mode, slow motion, and dual recording.

In terms of camera performance, the S25 is 95% as good as a decent camera, with a slight improvement in photos but not significantly so for video. The phone also supports RAW, Night mode, slow motion, and dual recording, allowing users to choose which lens to record from. A full camera and video sample video will be released soon, along with comparisons against other phones.

Software And AI Features

We get One UI 7 on regular S25 and also this phone actually gets a bunch of new AI features. First, if you actually pull down from your phone from this side, you can see you have these settings and widgets. But if you actually pull down from this side, you actually get your notifications. So, this is actually a very similar system to what iPhones have. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of this, so I will probably disable it and get back to the old style. I do not think this is actually good, and on iPhones, I absolutely hate this.

Also, the settings overall are slightly changed, and I think they actually look really nice. So overall, the design is, yeah, it’s super good. Also, now if we go into the settings, we can ask it some things as well. So again, if you are not very familiar with this phone, you can simply, literally ask it.

Also, we actually get a bunch of really decent-looking new widgets here as well, so those are actually pretty cool. And also, again, if we press the power button, we can launch Gemini and ask it questions.

Overall, when it comes to the assistant’s performance, I think it’s actually better than on Google Pixel phones. So, I think how it basically can control the phone itself is actually much better. Because Pixels actually have absolute trouble at the moment controlling basic tasks on the phone itself.

So, it can do online tasks just fine and other tasks, but really, they struggle a lot when you simply need to do a basic task on the phone itself, such as maybe setting an alarm or changing some settings using the assistant. So again, overall, I think the assistant is actually really decent.

Also, what’s really cool is that we can actually create AI wallpapers as well. So, this is actually really decent. You can pretty much change these things and ask it to generate some new wallpaper for you.

So yeah, I think from all these AI gimmicks, this is probably the coolest one. Also, we have this brief function over here. So, I guess this AI can actually brief your email summaries and stuff like that and give you all the stuff that you need to catch up on in one place.

And here are more features. For example, we have this Call Assist, which can translate pretty much most languages. So, you can see what kind of languages this can translate. And yeah, basically, if someone calls you and you can’t understand them, you can actually translate, so that’s actually pretty cool.

Again, Audio Eraser is actually pretty cool. So, if you simply record videos and maybe have some very disturbing background noise, this can actually remove that background noise and improve your audio for videos. So, I think this is actually really decent after I tried it.

Conclusion

Overall, is the regular Galaxy S25 actually worth it, and should you get it? Well, absolutely! Yes, this is an absolutely amazing phone. We get the most powerful CPU in the world on this phone, in a very nice, compact form factor, with an extremely nice display, much-improved RAM performance, and much-improved battery life. Also, really decent cameras as well.