Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra In-Depth Review: A Perfect Blend of Lightweight Design and AI Experience

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra In-Depth Review: A Perfect Blend of Lightweight Design and AI ExperienceWhile not a mainstream player in the Chinese market, Samsung's Galaxy S series consistently holds a significant position in the flagship smartphone arena. Its advantages are particularly pronounced in specific application scenarios, such as concert phone rentals, where it remains unmatched

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra In-Depth Review: A Perfect Blend of Lightweight Design and AI Experience

While not a mainstream player in the Chinese market, Samsung's Galaxy S series consistently holds a significant position in the flagship smartphone arena. Its advantages are particularly pronounced in specific application scenarios, such as concert phone rentals, where it remains unmatched. This month's release of the Chinese version of the Samsung Galaxy S25 series continues to prioritize AI experience. This review will focus on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, delving into the features and characteristics of this next-generation flagship phone.

I. Design: Subtle Refinements, Significant Weight Reduction

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra maintains the minimalist design language established since the Galaxy S22 Ultra, incorporating subtle adjustments to enhance its distinctiveness. Without increasing the body size, the S25 Ultra shrinks the screen bezels, boosting the screen size from 6.8 inches to 6.9 inches. The screen retains its flat design, but the edge curvature is now more rounded, closer to the S24+s rounded corners than the sharper transitions of the S24 Ultra. Importantly, Samsung has exercised restraint in the R-corner radius, avoiding the excessive roundness seen in the S25+.

The rear camera arrangement remains unchanged, but the metal protective ring is thicker, with a noticeably wider bezel, enhancing the visual sense of security, although it appears slightly robust, resembling the top of a pipe in the Mario game. Compared to the S24 series, the S25 series has a slightly more pronounced camera bump. Maintaining the previous lens design might have allowed for further weight reduction. The back features a flat design, echoing the flat front screen. The frame is made of titanium and offers three standard colors and four exclusive colors available through the online store. The more rounded edge curvature slightly encroaches on the S Pen space, with part of the pen extending outside the body. However, testing shows that this doesn't lead to accidental S Pen ejection.

Samsung has achieved remarkable weight reduction, dropping the overall weight from 232 grams to 218 grams, resulting in a noticeably lighter feel in hand. The S25 and S25+ also experienced weight reductions, highlighting Samsung's commitment to lightweight design. This weight reduction doesn't compromise quality; the front boasts Armor 2 glass, combined with a titanium body, offering scratch resistance, drop protection, and waterproofing. In summary, while retaining its family design language, Samsung uses detail adjustments to give each generation a unique identity and maintains its leading position in lightweight design. However, allocating some of the saved weight to enhance infrared functionality or battery capacity might better cater to the needs of Chinese consumers. Ultimately, the Ultra series remains a legacy of the Note series.

II. Performance and Configuration: Smooth Gaming, Slightly Improved Battery Life, Significantly Faster Charging

The entire Samsung Galaxy S25 lineup utilizes the custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy processor, with the super-core frequency boosted to 4.47GHz, resulting in enhanced performance. To fully leverage the processor's capabilities, Samsung has increased the VC heat dissipation area by 40% compared to its predecessor. In terms of storage, Samsung finally offers a 16GB RAM option (limited to the 1TB version), addressing user demand for larger memory and effectively mitigating the issue of background app termination.

Comprehensive upgrades in configuration and cooling enhance the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's performance, with excellent short-term performance output. However, long-term benchmarking is not Samsung's strength. The gaming experience has seen significant improvements; the Game Booster provides quick access buttons hidden in a horizontal bar on the left side of the full-screen game, eliminating the need to pull down the notification bar. Game functions are presented with intuitive icon buttons, resulting in a more convenient user experience. In real-world testing with Genshin Impact, the average frame rate reached 60.02fps over 30 minutes, demonstrating stable performance. In terms of heat dissipation, the front temperature reached 43.8 degrees Celsius, the back 44.1 degrees Celsius, with an average power consumption of 4.95W. Objectively, among devices equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy processor, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra exhibits slightly higher power consumption and heat generation than other models, but its overall performance is sufficient for most users.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra incorporates satellite communication functionality, collaborating with China Telecom using the BeiDou satellite system, supporting satellite calls and text messaging. However, a China Telecom SIM card is required; otherwise, only satellite search and connection establishment are possible, without actual communication. It's worth noting that Samsung's satellite search interface is visually appealing, requiring only the alignment of the crosshairs with the satellite.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra retains a 5000mAh battery and 45W fast charging, consistent with its predecessor. In a 3-hour usage test, 59% battery remained, slightly higher than the 58% of the previous generation. Although the specifications haven't changed, the charging experience has improved significantly. In 15 minutes, the battery reached 43% charge; in 30 minutes, 74%; and a full 100% charge was achieved in 55 minutes, with trickle charging completing at 63 minutes. In contrast, the S24 Ultra took 64 minutes for a full charge and 86 minutes for complete charging. This demonstrates Samsung's optimization of the charging algorithm, resulting in a marked improvement in charging speed.

III. System: Significantly Enhanced AI Functionality, Notable Changes in One UI 7.0

The Samsung Galaxy S25 series utilizes One UI 7.0, showcasing significant changes in icons, interface, and the addition of numerous AI features, leading to a refreshed user experience. The system icons remain rounded but are no longer flat, incorporating more color for a more three-dimensional appearance, rivaling the aesthetics of third-party app icons. The desktop layout changes from 4x5 to 4x6, allowing more icons per screen and improving efficiency, saving at least one screen for users with hundreds of apps.

The settings page further enhances its card-style design, with cards indented at the edges for a more prominent visual effect. The notification pull-down has also undergone significant changes; One UI 7.0 recognizes different swipe locations on the left and right. Swiping down from the left displays all notifications, while swiping down from the right accesses the new control center, allowing convenient access to various functions without a second swipe.

One UI 7.0 introduces numerous AI features. Compared to the Galaxy AI features of the S24 series, it adds a meeting assistant, AI search, smart copywriting assistant, instant briefing, audio eraser, and upgrades existing writing functions.

The smart copywriting assistant can automatically generate text based on selected images, allowing users to send it directly or modify it before sending. The drawing assistant retains handwriting, text-to-image, and image-to-image functions and supports modifying images based on text prompts, gradually achieving the user's desired outcome. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's S Pen provides a significant advantage in handwriting compared to other Samsung phones.

Instant briefing is a personalized feature that pushes content based on user habits, displaying a real-time window at the bottom of the lock screen, such as game results, schedules, weather alerts, countdowns, health status, music playback status, and charging status, and supporting control of local content.

The audio eraser can identify human voices, wind noise, vehicle noise, etc., in videos and adjust their volume, making it a useful video editing feature. The global search is also more intelligent, understanding the user's actual search intent. Bixby can recognize user intent; for example, copying an address automatically brings up a map app button for convenient one-click navigation. Dragging an image to the sidebar matches corresponding social apps for easy sharing.

While Samsung hasn't yet integrated the DeepSeek large language model, this isn't a problem, as users can install DeepSeek themselves. Samsung will also launch the "Voice Chat World" feature, expected in March.

IV. Imaging: Minor Layout Adjustments, Powerful Features Remain, Solidified Status as a Concert Essential

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's rear quad-camera system is largely the same as its predecessor, including a 200-megapixel main camera, a 3x telephoto lens, and a 5x periscope telephoto lens. The ultra-wide-angle lens has been upgraded to 50 megapixels, using the Samsung JN3 sensor, which, like the previous generation's IMX564, is 1/2.55 inches, but offers significantly improved resolution. The camera interface has been tweaked, duplicating the function bar at the top and bottom; clicking the "four-dot" icon displays it, making function selection more convenient for one-handed vertical shooting.

Samsung has consistently maintained its advantage in imaging, with its excellent telephoto capabilities making it a coveted "concert essential." While the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's lens specifications haven't changed, improvements in AI algorithms deliver better results. Samsung uses real-time semantic segmentation to optimize algorithms for identified elements, significantly reducing noise and improving clarity in low-light conditions.

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