Samsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra isn't a bad phone, but it fails to best the competition from practically every angle

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is shaping out to be a beast after we’ve put it through some testing. Not only does it have the brightest screen we’ve tested in a Samsung phone to date, but it just achieved a record-setting mark for battery life among Samsung phones we’ve tested — and all other phone releases this year can’t afford to come up short.

All this to say the Galaxy S25 ($800), Galaxy S25+ ($1,000), and Galaxy S25 Ultra ($1,300) are powerful, reliable, and well-equipped smartphones. They're excellent upgrades if you're coming from a three or four-year-old device. They're just not otherwise interesting or exciting.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is expensive, but it's also good at everything, even if its cameras and battery life can't quite beat some of the best alternatives

The S25, S25 Plus and S25 Ultra feature modest upgrades, but are they enough to justify a big purchase? Here's how the phones stack up against each other, as well as previous Galaxy devices.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra builds on the solid Galaxy AI foundation from the S24 Ultra, which introduced handy features like Circle to Search and Live Translate. Samsung’s goal with its improved Galaxy AI? Introduce AI agents that can do stuff on your behalf, integrate the AI more deeply into the software and make it more personal.