Android gaming greatness but few other improvements

Samsung’s flagship phones have arrived for 2025, and once again, the brand has trained its focus on AI smarts rather than hardware upgrades. The new Ultra model received the biggest changes, including a fresh new look and a brand-new camera, but at a glance, the standard Samsung Galaxy S25 seems identical to its predecessor, and the one before that, for that matter.

Thankfully, that’s not entirely true. The state-of-the-art Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite now powers the Samsung Galaxy S25. The RAM has been upgraded to 12GB, and there’s an additional 512GB storage option. It’s all good news for gamers. The question is, is the Galaxy S25 worth your hard-earned cash? Or could you save a little and grab one of the older picks from our guide to the best gaming phones? I wanted to find out, and after living with it for the past week, here are my thoughts.

Price and availability

The Samsung Galaxy S25 is now available to order in most regions globally. There are three variants to choose from, all come with 12GB of RAM, but you can choose between 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB of storage.

The base model with 128GB storage retails for $799.99 / £799 / €900, and the 256GB version goes for $859.99 / £859 / €960. The 512GB doesn’t seem to have made its way to the States yet, but in the UK and Europe, you can expect to pay £959 / €1080. There are plenty of pre-order discounts and contract deals to keep an eye out for, and they vary significantly between regions, so it’s worth looking around to ensure you get the best deal.

Specs

Here are the Samsung Galaxy S25’s specs:

Performance and gaming

The Samsung Galaxy S25 utilizes Qualcomm’s best chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, and that’s the case globally, with no Exynos versions in sight. It also comes with 12GB of RAM, up from 8GB, which should help with multitasking and gaming performance.

Another big change is with the storage options. Last year, you could only get the S24 with either 128GB or 256GB of storage, at least in Europe. Now, there’s an additional 512GB option for the S25, which is great to see, as that’s more than enough space for all the best Android games. It seems Samsung has finally realized that liking a smaller phone doesn’t mean you want any less storage.

As you might expect, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite at its core, the Galaxy S25 is a serious performer. It’ll handle any title you can throw at it with ease, and it had no trouble with my usual test, running Genshin Impact at 60fps with maximum graphical settings for hours. That’s a pretty big deal, as performance of this quality is usually reserved for specialist gaming phones, not all-rounders like the S25.

The frame got warmer than I’d like during longer sessions, but the performance didn’t seem to drop off too much, which is impressive considering the compact size of this handset. I likely only noticed because I was using it without a case; it’ll be much more comfortable to hold with those aluminum side rails concealed.

There’s a game overlay built into One UI 7, but it’s about as basic as they come. You can access things like performance modes, touch sensitivity, and brightness locking, and you can also open other apps as floating windows. It’s useful stuff, but it’s a long way behind the likes of OnePlus, Honor, and Vivo.

Features and software

Booting up the S25, the software changes are immediately noticeable. Samsung has been hard at work refining the design of One UI, and its seventh iteration looks more polished than ever. In my experience, it’s the most responsive and speedy-feeling Android-based OS by some margin. Swiping around this OS feels lightning quick.

As we saw last year, Samsung is all-in on Galaxy AI, and you’ll now find AI-powered elements in just about every area of One UI. The global search bar now supports natural-language input, so rather than having to know a specific term or keyword, you can just type a question. For example, you can type “it’s too dim,” and the brightness settings will come up. It’s the kind of thing that will be very handy for less tech-savvy users.

Circle to Search debuted on last year’s S24 models, and this year, it’s back with extra capabilities. It can now search for audio, just like Shazam, so you can identify a song that’s playing or even just hum a tune you’re trying to find the title of. It’s really handy to have this all in one place. However, this update isn’t exclusive to Samsung devices, and it has already appeared on my Vivo, too.

There’s also a new tool called AI Select, which is exclusive to Samsung. This works similarly in that you select things by circling them on your screen, but it’s more for creation than web search. You can use it for simple things, like making a GIF or a screenshot, but you can also remove objects from these screenshots, add to them using Sketch to Image, or reimagine them entirely with Drawing Assist. It’s a fun novelty, but honestly, I can’t imagine using them all that much; Circle to Search will remain my go-to.

Now Brief is another big addition. It uses AI to summarize your day and give you key information at a glance. By default, Now Brief delivers updates to the notifications shade throughout the day, and there’s also a home screen widget for quick access.

I was interested in this feature, but the reality was slightly disappointing. My Brief would almost always just include weather info and whatever is in my calendar. It’s useful info, but nothing particularly new or exciting. Occasionally, there was a random Spotify playlist in there, but it wasn’t exactly personalized to my taste. For example, I always got things like ‘Sunday Afternoon Mix’ just because it was a Sunday afternoon. This feature has potential, but in its current state, it’s very underwhelming.

The phone has all the same AI-powered image editing tools as last year, and they seem to have improved over time, too. They’re definitely more reliable than Apple’s alternatives. This year’s big addition is Audio Eraser, which, as the name suggests, is very similar to the equivalent feature on iPhones and Pixel devices.

This feature uses AI to identify different sound sources in your videos and then gives you digital sliders to adjust the volume of each one. If you have a video clip with too much traffic noise in the background, you can increase the volume of your voice and turn down the level of traffic. It’s clever stuff, but the result sounds a little too artificial for my liking, so I’d only recommend using it in extreme circumstances.

Design

It’s easy to mistake the Galaxy S25 for the S24, or even the S23, for that matter. The design has barely changed, and the only major difference is the addition of some thicker black rings around the rear cameras. These rings don’t do anything; they’re just an aesthetic choice, but I think they look quite nice. They’re very similar to the ones on the Galaxy Z Fold 6, and they match the rest of the S25 lineup, too.

The S25 is slimmer than its predecessor, but it’s not something you’ll notice in the real world. Samsung has only managed to shave off 0.4 mm, which is less than the thickness of the average fingernail. It’s also lighter, but again, we’re only taking 6 grams, which is not enough to make much of an impact.

Of course, we also get some new color options. I have the Silver Shadow version for testing, but you can also choose from Navy, Mint, and Icyblue. I feel like these colors have a little more personality than the monochromatic S25 Ultra options, but they’re still on the classy side.

If you want something a little more vibrant, you’ll need to buy from Samsung.com and pick up the exclusive Coralred option. It’s definitely the standout option for those who like to turn heads. Also exclusive to Samsung.com are the Blueblack and Pinkgold options. They’re not quite as loud, but both look quite fetching in their own right.

The Galaxy S25 is still IP68 rated for dust and water resistance, and it has the same Gorilla Glass Victus 2 coating on the front. Neither the titanium-infused frame nor the anti-reflective glass of the Ultra has made an appearance on the smaller models, unfortunately, so we’d recommend still picking up a case.

Display and speakers

The display also has the exact same specifications as last year’s S24. It’s certainly not exciting, but it was already a very nice display, and it looks just as impressive a year later.

It has slim, symmetrical bezels on all sides, and it’s completely flat, which makes it look and feel a bit like an iPhone. The brightness peaks at 2,600 nits, which doesn’t sound like much, but it’s actually a very bright display. Manufacturers have all kinds of wacky ways to measure brightness, and I feel like Samsung is being a little more conservative with its figures. In any case, it’s more than bright enough to allow for playing any of the best mobile games in direct sunlight.

The only thing that’s new here is a software feature developed with Qualcomm called ProScaler. This feature uses AI to upscale content for a more crisp and high-resolution look. My only issue is that I can’t figure out when or how you activate this feature, and if I’m being completely honest, I haven’t noticed much of a difference.

The Galaxy S25 display always looks great, and whether we can attribute that to the ProScaler or not, expect stunning HDR content, slick and smooth gaming, and vibrant, accurate color reproduction. Samsung knows what it’s doing in the display department, and the S25 is as impressive as ever.

It’s the same story with the speakers. I’m not aware of any upgrades, but they were already great, and they sound just as good this time around. In fact, I think they’re better than the speakers on the S25 Ultra simply due to their positioning. I’m always muffling the speakers on the Ultra when I hold the phone in landscape, and thankfully, that doesn’t happen on the S25.

Samsung Galaxy S25’s cameras

The camera array is also unchanged on this model. This means you get a 50MP f/1.8 main snapper, a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide, and a 10MP f/2.4 3x telephoto. Around the front, there’s a 12MP f/2.2 selfie camera.

These are pretty underwhelming specifications in 2025; even mid-rangers are managing triple 50MP setups, if not higher. But, as we’ve seen many times before, the megapixel count isn’t everything, and low-resolution cameras can deliver some astonishingly good results.

To be honest, I was expecting the Galaxy S25 photos to look identical to the S24 photos. It’s the same hardware, after all. Thankfully, though, there are subtle improvements across the board. The main thing I noticed is that the color accuracy seems better, and skin tones seem much more lifelike than on previous Samsung flagships. The level of sharpening looks much more natural, too. It’s a small change, but it makes an impact.

I’m not sure if this is a software change (which would mean it could also apply to the S24) or if it’s down to the new ISP on the Snapdragon 8 Elite. In any case, photos and videos look much more impressive on this device. Of course, there’s only so much that image processing can do, and the drawbacks of the previous model are still present here. This phone didn’t get the upgraded ultrawide camera, which means there’s still no autofocus, and that makes it a much less versatile lens.

Except for the main camera, these relatively small sensors suffer in low light. You can expect very noisy and grainy images when the lighting scenario isn’t ideal. Although switching to the dedicated night mode does a decent job of cleaning things up.

There’s a big upgrade for budding filmmakers this year, and that’s the addition of a proper LOG recording mode. This means you can capture video that’s more suitable for color grading, just like you would on a professional cinema camera. It even works at 8K resolution, which even the iPhone 16 Pro Max can’t match.

Battery

The battery and charging specifications remain unchanged on the Galaxy S25. This means you only get a 4000 mAh cell and a sluggish 25W wired charging rate. These aren’t exactly flagship-grade figures in 2025, but despite that, I found the S25 easy to live with.

A combination of hardware and software optimization means that the battery lasts more than long enough for most people. I’m a relatively heavy user, and I still managed to get to bedtime with around 20% capacity remaining most days.

The same is true of the charging; 25W might sound woefully slow, but it was enough to take me from full-flat to 60% charged in about half an hour. It’s not much of a hassle. Just be aware that the final 30% takes much longer, and it’ll take well over an hour to get you from flat to 100% charged.

Samsung now offers official cases with Qi2-compatible magnets built in, but there are no magnets in the phone itself. This got my hopes up, as I expected faster wireless charging speeds to come along with it. Alas, we still only get 15W wireless charging, but it’s still better than nothing.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S25?

The Samsung Galaxy S25 is one of the most boring product launches in recent memory. It’s basically the same phone we saw last year, just with the new Qualcomm chip inside. There are a few extra goodies, like the increased RAM capacity and the 512GB option (in some regions), but otherwise, the hardware is exactly the same.

That said, if you’re looking for a flagship device with a smaller screen, you’re not exactly swimming in options. The S25 is one of the most powerful devices in this size range, and gamers with smaller hands are sure to adore it.

It’s impressive elsewhere, too. The cameras seem to perform slightly better than last year, the software is full of novel AI features, and it’s just a delight to live with. It may not have a head-turning spec sheet, but the daily experience of using it is hard to fault.

The biggest issue is its similarity to last year’s model. If you can find an S24 at a good price, it might be the more sensible option. Both the Exynos and Snapdragon versions are great for gaming, and most of the new AI features will arrive on the older model via firmware updates.

Alternatives

If you’re not sure that the Samsung Galaxy S25 is right for you, here are a couple of other compact flagships worth considering

Samsung Galaxy S24

As mentioned, the S24 has essentially the same hardware as the S25; the only real difference is that it has an Exynos 2400 or Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 rather than the new 8 Elite. These chips are still more than fast enough for most people, and you can still find the 2024 flagship via most retailers. So, you might consider saving some cash and grabbing the older version. For more information, read our Samsung Galaxy S24 review.

iPhone 16 Pro

If you’re not married to the idea of an Android phone, it’s worth considering Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro. It’s almost exactly the same size as the S25, but it has more impressive cameras and certain advantages for gaming, including the ability to run Genshin Impact at 120Hz. However, it’s also more expensive, and Apple Intelligence is still a long way behind Samsung’s AI features.

That’s our Samsung Galaxy S25 review. For more on the latest phones, be sure to check out our RedMagic 10 Pro review and Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro review. Or, if you want to see what fellow tech giant Apple has to offer, have a look at our guide to the best gaming iPhones.