صاحب‌خبر - The Ultra is Samsung’s largest and greatest phone and is packed to the gills with the very latest technology, which means more artificial intelligence than ever before. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is at the front of the line of a new wave of Android phones that promise to basically do everything for you. It combines Google’s advanced AI assistance with numerous Samsung tools for writing, drawing, photography and chatting. But the reality of the £1,249 (€1,449/$1,299.99/A$2,149) superphone is slightly less than the sci-fi dream. While at times the AI tools can be thoroughly impressive, on other occasions they can be dumbfounded by the simplest thing. View image in fullscreen The S25 Ultra is a monolithic slab of glass wrapped in a titanium band. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian The outside of the Ultra has been slimmed down and is 14g lighter than its predecessor, with new flat sides and tiny bezels around its gigantic, fantastic screen. It is about as close as you can get to being a slab of glass with a display. Inside it has a souped-up Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which is even faster in tests than the version in the recent OnePlus 13. It was difficult to really trouble the performance of the chip, so it should handle anything most people want to do with a phone. The battery lasts a good two days between charges while actively being used for 7.5 hours across a range of daily tasks, photos and media on a mix of wifi and 5G – making it one of the longest lasting on the market. Specifications Main screen: 6.9in QHD+ Dynamic Amoled 2X (500ppi) 120Hz Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy RAM: 12GB Storage: 256, 512GB or 1TB Operating system: One UI 7 (Android 15) Camera: 200MP + 50MP 0.6x + 10MP 3x + 50MP 5x; 12MP front-facing Connectivity: 5G, USB-C, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 5.4, UWB and GNSS Water resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 mins) Dimensions: 162.8 x 77.6 x 8.2mm Weight: 218g Sustainability View image in fullscreen Samsung says the S25 Ultra is the most durable to date, but will likely still need a case to survive drops. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian Samsung does not provide an expected lifespan for the battery but it should last in excess of 500 full charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity. The phone is generally repairable. Screen repairs cost £204 by authorised service centres and include a battery replacement. Samsung also offers a self-repair programme. The phone scored five out of 10 for repairability with the specialists iFixit. It contains multiple recycled materials including aluminium, cobalt, copper, glass, gold, plastic, rare earth elements and steel. Samsung offers trade-in and recycling schemes for old devices. The company publishes annual sustainability reports and impact assessments for some individual products. More AI in more places View image in fullscreen Some of the new AI tools are useful while others are a bit gimmicky or unreliable. The drawing assist tool turns crude sketches into various styles of art (left). Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian Samsung has built on the numerous “Galaxy AI” tools added last year, including new drawing features and a fresh AI select tool. This allows you to simply tap on images, text, icons and other items on your screen to see what you can do with them – such as drawing, editing or searching. The “Now” bar at the bottom of the lock screen shows a stack of widgets such as live sports scores from Google, currently playing music, timers, reminders for flights and other timely things. It is a cross between Google’s At a Glance and Apple’s Dynamic Island on iPhones, and is useful. Live notifications, such as scores, can also show in the status bar. It also produces an AI-curated snapshot of your day featuring local weather, calendar events, photos you’ve taken, reminders, health information, Spotify playlists and other bits. It once told me to be careful using my phone while walking as apparently I had used it for 42 minutes out of three hours of walking. I didn’t find that particularly useful. View image in fullscreen The S Pen stylus remains for drawing on the screen, but its magic wand and remote features that have been one of key selling points since the days of the Galaxy Note series have been removed. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian The star addition is the next generation of Google’s Gemini assistant, which has the ability to perform multiple tasks at once using apps on your phone and the web. For example, it can pull times and dates from the web to set a reminder for you or send the info to friends. It promises a lot, and when it works properly it can be thoroughly impressive. But it also trips up on trivial things, such as failing to send a WhatsApp to a friend because they spell their name “Paterson” with one “t” not two. Or confidently adding a reminder for the next Fantasy Premier League transfer deadline, but getting the date and time wrong. Fundamentally it can’t be trusted to just get on with things without you needing to check it for accuracy, which is a problem for all AI tools at the moment. The rest of the One UI 7 software experience, the latest version of the operating system, is pretty slick. Parts of it are more like Apple’s iOS than ever, but it has enough customisation options to make the phone look and behave how you want. Samsung will support the S25 Ultra with software and security updates for seven years from release, which matches the best from Google and Apple. Camera View image in fullscreen The camera app is fairly simple to operate despite being packed with capabilities. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian The S25 Ultra has a very similar camera system on the back as its recent predecessors, including the main 200MP camera, a 10MP 3x telephoto and a 50MP 5x telephoto camera capable of optically zooming to 10x magnification, or beyond with digital zoom. New for this year is a much improved 50MP ultra wide camera, which has much better low-light performance producing crisper and better detailed images indoors and in other dim environments. The camera app is also packed with plenty of fun and useful modes, including its best-in-class portrait mode, full manual control and various advanced tools. But as with its predecessors, the S25 Ultra’s best feature is simply the adaptability of having four cameras with multiple different magnifications available. Price The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra costs from £1,249 (€1,449/$1,299.99/A$2,149) with 256GB of storage. For comparison, the Galaxy S25 costs £799, the S25+ costs £999, the Z Fold 6 costs £1,519, the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL costs £1,099 and the iPhone 16 Pro Max costs £1,199. Verdict The Galaxy S25 Ultra kicks off the year as the most powerful and adaptable of mainstream slab Android phones. The camera is great with more lens choices than others. It has the most powerful Android chip going, long battery life, plenty of storage, a huge screen and a stylus. But Samsung hasn’t added much to the formula that made the model such a killer device several years ago. The design feels like an endpoint for the high-end smartphone. It’s not obvious where you go from here to meaningfully change the experience on a hardware level. That leaves its AI features to offer something new. Some of them are great, many are gimmicky and some features, such as the upgraded Gemini assistant, are very hit and miss. Sometimes it can be fabulous, while being annoyingly dumb or simply untrustworthy in other moments. The Ultra is a great phone that will go the distance. Just don’t buy it for the overhyped AI features. Pros: massive 120Hz screen, highly capable camera with 3x and 10x optical zoom, good software with seven years’ support, top Android chip, long battery life, access to the latest AI features. Cons: huge, extremely expensive, S Pen lacks a little magic of previous versions, doesn’t meaningfully improve on formula of predecessors, AI capabilities overhyped for now. View image in fullscreen The matt glass back has a similar monolithic and imposing look to the screen on the front. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian∎​