Samsung took the wraps off its latest premium phone, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, at its Unpacked event on Wednesday. The $1,300 handset represents the pinnacle of what the South Korean company has to offer in a smartphone in 2025 from its top-of-the-line processor, ultra-bright display, and sharp cameras.
While new AI features understandably generated a lot of buzz, the new software upgrade policy is probably one of the most compelling changes. Samsung promises seven years of Android updates and security patches across the Galaxy S25 lineup. This enables Galaxy S25 phone owners to hang on to their devices going into 2032 and is a significant step up from the four years of software updates pledged for the Galaxy S24 Ultra, Galaxy S22 Ultra, and Galaxy S21 Ultra. However, Samsung has bumped up the price of the Galaxy S25 Ultra by $100 after the last few years of steady pricing.
This story is part of Samsung Event, ‘s collection of news, tips and advice around Samsung’s most popular products.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra has a brighter screen than its predecessor.
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Another notable improvement to the S25 Ultra is (you guessed it) AI, or Galaxy AI — as Samsung likes to call it. The Galaxy S25 Ultra will ship with helpful, AI-based features (a lot of which are being powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 8 chip). Those include a real-time live translate feature in 13 languages; Search to Circle, which lets you literally circle any image to launch a Google search for that item; and generative AI features that let you make reality-bending edits to your photos akin to Google Pixel 8’s Magic Editor.
These AI tools are slated to make their way to last year’s Galaxy S24 Ultra via an software update, but don’t expect it to arrive to Ultra models released before then.
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The camera system is another major selling point of the Galaxy Ultra lineup. The S25 boasts four rear cameras, taking the form of a 200-megapixel wide-angle camera, 12-megapixel ultrawide camera, 10-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom lens, and a 50-megapixel camera with a 5x optical zoom lens. On paper at least, it appears that there has been a downgrade to a 5x telephoto lens from a 10x telephoto camera on its predecessors. But the newer sensor and its higher resolution might have some nifty zoom tricks up its sleeve that don’t reveal themselves in specs. We’ll update this article once we have conducted a camera comparison between the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
For the rest of the differences between Samsung’s Galaxy Ultra lineup over the years, take a look at our specs chart for a side-by-side comparison. If you want more insights into what it’s like to use the Galaxy S25 Ultra, read our hand-on coverage of the fanciest phone in Samsung’s new lineup.