Galaxy S25 Ultra Review: What Nobody Tells You After 3 Months (2025)

 The S25 Ultra has been in my pocket for three months now, and the experience is quite different from those flashy first-week reviews everyone posts.

Beyond the initial "wow factor" of that gorgeous 6.9-inch display and titanium frame, living with a $1299 flagship reveals its true character. After extensive daily use, some features have become indispensable, while others feel surprisingly unnecessary. In fact, the AI capabilities Samsung heavily marketed show inconsistent real-world benefits that no early reviewer could honestly evaluate. The camera system remains impressive, however, battery performance tells a more complex story than the specs suggest.

This review cuts through the hype to share what actually matters after 90 days with Samsung's premium flagship. Whether you're considering an upgrade or just curious about how the S25 Ultra holds up over time, I'll break down what you'll love, what you might regret, and whether this device truly justifies its premium price tag.

Galaxy S25 Ultra After 3 Months: What’s Still Impressive

After spending three months with the S25 Ultra, certain aspects continue to stand out day after day. Beyond the initial unboxing excitement, these features maintain their appeal through consistent daily use.

Display: 6.9-inch QHD+ AMOLED with Gorilla Armor 2

The 6.9-inch QHD+ AMOLED display remains the crown jewel of the S25 Ultra experience. Even after months of use, the 120Hz refresh rate delivers buttery-smooth scrolling that makes every interaction feel responsive. The peak brightness of 2,600 nits proves genuinely useful rather than just impressive on paper—text remains readable even in direct sunlight during outdoor summer activities.

What's particularly noteworthy is how the Gorilla Armor 2 coating has performed over time. Despite not using a screen protector, my display shows no micro-scratches after three months of regular use and occasional pocket storage with keys. The anti-reflective properties also continue to impress, reducing glare by approximately 75% compared to previous models when using the phone outdoors or under bright office lighting.

The display's color accuracy deserves special mention too. The S25 Ultra maintains consistent color reproduction across varying brightness levels—something many competitors still struggle with at lower brightness settings. Furthermore, the 3088 x 1440 resolution makes small text in documents and websites perfectly legible without zooming, a subtle yet significant benefit for daily productivity.

Build Quality: Titanium frame and flat edges

The shift to a titanium frame has proven more than a marketing gimmick. After 90 days of use, the structural integrity remains flawless despite several accidental drops onto hard surfaces. The flat edges, initially a point of contention among Samsung fans, now feel natural and provide substantially better grip than the curved designs of previous generations.

A particularly impressive aspect is how the titanium frame resists fingerprints and microscratches. Unlike the S24 Ultra's aluminum frame, the S25's titanium maintains its pristine appearance with minimal maintenance. The flat design also creates a more stable platform when placed on surfaces—especially valuable when using the device for video calls or watching content.

The weight distribution deserves recognition as well. Despite housing a massive battery and powerful components, the S25 Ultra never feels top-heavy or uncomfortable during extended use. The premium feel hasn't diminished whatsoever since day one—a testament to Samsung's material choices and engineering.

Performance: Snapdragon 8 Elite and 12GB RAM

Perhaps most impressive over the long term is the S25 Ultra's sustained performance. The Snapdragon 8 Elite processor paired with 12GB RAM continues to handle everything from intensive gaming to multitasking without noticeable slowdowns or thermal throttling.

Unlike previous flagships that gradually show performance degradation, the S25 Ultra maintains consistent benchmark scores even after months of use. Resource-intensive games like Genshin Impact and Diablo Immortal run at steady frame rates even during extended gaming sessions. Additionally, the vapor chamber cooling system effectively dissipates heat, keeping the device comfortable to hold even under heavy loads.

Multitasking capabilities remain equally robust. Switching between multiple apps—including RAM-intensive ones like video editors and 3D rendering applications—happens instantly without reloads. The system manages memory so efficiently that I rarely encounter apps being killed in the background, even when pushing the device to its limits.

Most notably, the Snapdragon 8 Elite's efficiency allows for this impressive performance without sacrificing battery life—a rare combination in today's flagship landscape.

AI Features in Daily Use: Useful or Gimmick?

Samsung has heavily marketed the S25 Ultra's AI capabilities, yet the question remains: how do these features hold up in everyday use? Beyond the initial demonstrations, three months of daily interaction reveals which AI functions deliver genuine value and which fall short of expectations.

Cross-App Actions: Real-world examples

Cross-App Actions represent one of the more practical AI implementations, allowing completion of multi-step tasks with single voice commands. Pressing the side button activates Google Gemini, enabling commands like "Find pet-friendly Italian restaurants with outdoor seating nearby, and text them to [contact]". The system then searches for information and drafts a message without requiring app switching.

For straightforward requests involving two apps, this feature performs admirably. Finding a location and sending it via text works almost flawlessly, as does searching for information and adding it to your calendar. Nevertheless, more complex three-app commands often fail to execute properly. Although Samsung promotes "natural conversation," specific phrasing sometimes becomes necessary to achieve desired results.

The feature currently supports Google apps, Samsung's native apps, plus third-party services like Spotify and WhatsApp. Yet notable limitations exist—unable to send emails or share notes, which significantly restricts its practical utility.

Now Brief and Now Bar: Are they helpful?

The Now Brief widget and Now Bar represent Samsung's attempt at contextual information delivery. Now Brief functions as an information hub, offering tailored updates based on time of day—morning weather reports, commute details, evening music recommendations, and schedule reminders.

Meanwhile, the Now Bar appears on the lock screen, displaying real-time notifications from background apps like Google Maps directions, music controls, and sports scores. Both features rely on learning user behavior over time to improve recommendations.

After extended use, these features show mixed value. The Now Bar proves genuinely useful for quick information access without unlocking the device. Conversely, Now Brief often displays generic content rather than truly personalized information, even after weeks of use. Furthermore, both features work primarily with Samsung's own apps, limiting integration with preferred third-party alternatives.

Circle to Search and AI Select: Practicality over time

Circle to Search emerges as perhaps the most consistently useful AI feature. By holding the home button and circling any on-screen item, the system instantly searches for that object, text, or image. This eliminates the need to switch apps or manually type search queries, functioning across most applications including the camera.

The feature excels at identifying products, translating text, and finding similar items online. Its utility remains consistent across three months of use, particularly for shopping, research, and travel. The related AI Select tool allows extraction of specific video segments, text portions, and even QR codes by circling the desired content.

Generative AI Editing: Accuracy and ethical concerns

Generative Edit stands out as the most powerful—and potentially problematic—AI feature. This tool can remove objects from photos, resize subjects, and fill backgrounds with AI-generated content. The S25 Ultra's implementation demonstrates significantly improved context awareness compared to previous models, preserving details like wooden textures, shadows, and architectural elements when editing.

What's concerning, though, is the lack of ethical boundaries. Unlike competitors that restrict editing human faces, Samsung's AI willingly generates facial features with surprising accuracy. This capability raises legitimate questions about photo manipulation ethics and potential misuse.

The Sketch to Image function complements these editing tools, transforming hand-drawn doodles into photorealistic elements that blend seamlessly with existing images. While impressive technically, these features blur the line between documentation and creation—a distinction worth considering as AI editing becomes increasingly mainstream.

Camera System: Real-World Results After 90 Days

Shooting thousands of photos and videos with the S25 Ultra over 90 days reveals how its camera system performs beyond those carefully controlled press samples. The real test comes from daily use across varying conditions, showing which camera features truly deliver in practice.

50MP Ultra-Wide: Daylight and low-light performance

The upgrade from 12MP to 50MP ultra-wide marks one of the few hardware changes in this generation. With an F1.9 aperture that gathers more light than its predecessor, this sensor performs admirably in challenging situations. In bright daylight, the ultra-wide maintains excellent corner sharpness with minimal distortion across its 120-degree field of view.

More importantly, low-light performance has improved substantially. The noise management is better and less intrusive compared to the S24 Ultra, especially when shooting indoors or in dim environments. Evening photos retain natural colors without shifting toward the red or blue hues that plagued earlier models.

200MP Main Sensor: Detail and dynamic range

The main 200MP F1.7 camera continues to be the S25 Ultra's strongest asset. After months of testing, it consistently delivers excellent dynamic range and HDR processing without the excessive sharpening seen in previous Samsung flagships. The natural detail preservation stands out in complex scenes, striking an ideal balance between realistic and vibrant colors.

Low-light photos from the main sensor capture appropriate darkness rather than artificially brightening night scenes, while still maintaining shadow detail. Though occasional delays between pressing the shutter and capturing images remain, the S25 Ultra proves more responsive than its predecessor for fast-moving subjects.

Telephoto Lenses: 3x vs 5x in real use

The dual telephoto system (10MP 3x and 50MP 5x) offers remarkable versatility. For portrait shots at 3x, the shallow depth of field creates pleasant background blur, though group photos occasionally suffer from some faces falling out of focus. The 5x lens excels at longer distances, delivering impressive detail even at 10x hybrid zoom.

For zoom lengths beyond 10x, results remain usable up to about 30x in good lighting before quality significantly degrades. The 100x "Space Zoom" remains primarily a marketing feature, producing images with limited practical use.

Video Recording: Log format and Audio Eraser

Two standout video features emerge after extended testing: Log format recording and Audio Eraser. The new Log mode captures videos with flat color profiles, allowing for professional-grade color grading in post-production. Though the files are significantly larger (a 10-second clip can exceed 120MB), the enhanced dynamic range justifies the storage cost for serious creators.

Audio Eraser proves genuinely impressive for real-world recording situations. The feature analyzes video audio and identifies up to six different sound types including voices, wind, crowd, music, nature and noise. Subsequently, you can adjust or completely eliminate specific sounds without affecting others. Beyond simple noise reduction, Audio Eraser effectively removes background distractions like traffic noise or wind while preserving clear dialog, outperforming similar features from Apple and Google.

Battery Life and Charging: Long-Term Endurance Test

Battery performance remains a crucial factor in evaluating flagships, and after rigorous testing over three months, the S25 Ultra reveals some interesting patterns.

Daily Usage Patterns: Screen-on time and standby

In extensive testing, the S25 Ultra clocked an impressive 17 hours and 15 minutes of battery life, making it the longest-lasting Samsung phone to date. This represents a modest 30-minute improvement (roughly 3%) over the S24 Ultra with the identical 5,000mAh capacity. Interestingly, when setting the display to standard 60Hz mode instead of adaptive refresh, battery life jumps to 18 hours and 35 minutes—nearly a 15% improvement over its predecessor.

Some users report even more impressive results, with one claiming over 12 hours of screen-on time plus an additional 18 hours of standby, primarily during streaming activities. Yet, compared to other Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered devices, the S25 Ultra falls short—the OnePlus 13 reaches almost 20 hours, whereas the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro exceeds 20.5 hours.

Charging Speed: 45W wired vs competitors

Despite maintaining the same 45W charging specification as last year, the S25 Ultra actually charges slightly faster than its predecessor. Using Samsung's official adapter, the phone reaches 71% capacity within 30 minutes, with a full charge taking approximately 59 minutes. Accordingly, this places it ahead of both the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Pixel 9 Pro XL in charging speed.

The improved efficiency comes from the S25 Ultra's charging profile—it supports 15V/3A alongside 9V/2.77A configurations. The higher voltage reduces power loss during transmission, enabling consistent 40W+ charging for several minutes. Moreover, the phone manages heat exceptionally well, reaching a peak temperature of only 40.3°C before dropping to around 33°C after half an hour of charging.

Qi2 Support: Limitations and case dependency

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the S25 Ultra's charging capabilities lies in its incomplete Qi2 implementation. Samsung markets the device as "Qi2 ready" rather than fully Qi2 compliant. The phone supports 15W wireless charging but lacks the crucial built-in magnets required for the Magnetic Power Profile.

To utilize Qi2 accessories, users must purchase a special case with integrated magnets. Without such a case, the magnetic functionality—which enables precise alignment and secure attachment of charging accessories—remains unavailable. Furthermore, even with a compatible case, wireless charging speeds remain capped at 15W rather than the faster speeds Qi2 potentially offers.

This half-measure implementation certainly complicates what should be a straightforward feature, forcing case-free users to forgo magnetic charging entirely.

What You Might Regret or Overlook

Beyond the impressive features, several potential drawbacks become apparent after extended use of the S25 Ultra. These limitations might influence your purchasing decision, depending on your priorities.

S Pen Without Bluetooth: Real impact

The S25 Ultra's S Pen has lost its Bluetooth functionality entirely. This change eliminates Air Actions and remote camera control that previous models offered. Samsung justified this decision based on data showing less than 1% of users actively utilized these features. Consequently, you can no longer use the S Pen for remote photography, presentation control, or media playback functions. The core writing capabilities with 4,096 pressure levels remain unchanged, yet power users who relied on these convenience features will feel the downgrade.

AI Inconsistencies: When it fails

Galaxy AI occasionally stumbles in practical scenarios. The content moderation system shows peculiar inconsistencies, flagging phrases like "my skin is black" as inappropriate content while allowing "my skin is white". Multi-step voice commands through Gemini often break down when complexity increases, sometimes sending incomplete information to contacts. These failures highlight the experimental nature of many AI features, making them unreliable for critical tasks.

Price vs Value: Is $1299 still justified?

At $1299, the S25 Ultra maintains the same premium price as its predecessor. Yet considering the S25 Plus offers identical processing power and RAM for $300 less, the value proposition becomes questionable. The primary advantages justifying the premium remain the camera system, display resolution, and S Pen functionality. Given the S Pen's reduced capabilities, users must determine if these differences merit the substantial price gap.

Comparison to S24 Ultra and S25 Plus

Ironically, the S24 Ultra offers more comprehensive S Pen functionality due to its Bluetooth capabilities. The S25 Plus, meanwhile, features the same Snapdragon 8 Elite processor and 12GB RAM, making performance virtually identical. Unless you specifically need the upgraded cameras and S Pen integration, the S25 Plus represents better value. Furthermore, software support commitments remain identical across all models, ensuring the same long-term usability regardless of which device you choose.

Conclusion

After three months with the S25 Ultra, this flagship clearly delivers a mixed experience that differs significantly from those early reviews. The stunning display continues to impress daily, while the titanium frame has proven its durability beyond mere marketing claims. Equally important, the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor maintains consistent performance without the gradual slowdown that plagues many premium devices.

Nevertheless, Samsung's AI features tell a more complicated story. Circle to Search stands out as genuinely useful, whereas features like Now Brief often feel underwhelming despite months of supposed learning. The camera system remains the true star, particularly the main 200MP sensor and the impressive Audio Eraser function that outperforms competitors.

Battery life, though solid, falls short of other Snapdragon 8 Elite devices. The charging improvements are welcome but undercut by the half-baked Qi2 implementation requiring special cases. Perhaps most disappointing, the S Pen's removal of Bluetooth functionality eliminates remote capabilities that power users appreciated.

The question ultimately becomes whether these premium features justify the $1299 price tag. Considering the S25 Plus offers identical processing power for $300 less, this Ultra model makes sense primarily for photography enthusiasts and S Pen devotees. Still, even these users might question whether the improvements warrant an upgrade from last year's model.

Samsung has undoubtedly created an excellent phone, albeit one with clear compromises. The S25 Ultra excels as a photography powerhouse with exceptional build quality, yet falls short of being the comprehensive upgrade many hoped for. Your decision should depend on which features matter most to your daily use - not the marketing hype that surrounds every flagship launch.