Samsung Galaxy S25 review: why vanilla is 2025’s best Galaxy flavour

If you were in any doubt as to whether on-device AI was the new smartphone battleground, the Galaxy S25 all but confirms it. Samsung’s latest mainstream hero has seen the bare minimum of hardware upgrades from the previous generation but goes huge on Galaxy AI.

Sitting under the range-topping Galaxy S25 Ultra and the big-screen, big-battery S25+, the $799/£799 Galaxy S25 has all the same software smarts in a much more compact package. Its natural rival is the iPhone 16, but the Google Pixel 9 also has small-yet-mighty status – and came with significant updates over its Galaxy S24 predecessor.

Can Samsung’s iterative update keep ahead of the circling competition?

Design & build: minute refinements

The 6.2in Galaxy S25 looks dinky next to almost every other high-end Android phone, which have near-universally decided bigger is better. Being the compact class leader by default lets it get away with minimal changes between generations, so aside from those black bezels around the camera lenses, there’s basically nothing to tell the S25 apart from last year’s model.

It’s marginally thinner (7.2mm instead of 7.6mm) and 6g lighter (162g instead of 168g), but sticks with the same flat display, flat rear glass, and flat metal frame. I do appreciate Samsung stepping up on sustainability, with at least 20% of the Armor Aluminium frame made from recycled materials now. It keeps the same IP68 water and dust resistance.

Samsung hasn’t been too experimental with colour this year, largely sticking with soft pastel hues like Mint and Icyblue. The Samsung web store online exclusives aren’t that much jazzier. Navy is the exception: this dark blue beauty is easily my pick of the bunch.

Anyone who prefers smaller phones will instantly gravitate to the S25. It fit so snugly in my hand compared to the larger alternatives, and I didn’t find the onscreen keyboard all that cramped either. It even undercuts the Google Pixel 9, which is hardly huge. An iPhone 16 is actually a tiny bit wider, despite having a smaller screen, but general usability is basically as wash.

Screen & sound: unchanged melody

I can’t really blame Samsung for sticking with the same AMOLED screen as last year’s Galaxy S24. It was a stunner back then and still impresses twelve months later. The bezels are slender and symmetrical, the FHD+ resolution perfectly sharp given its modest 6.2in size, and the 1-120Hz dynamic refresh rate striking a great balance between smooth motion and energy savings.

You don’t get the Proscaler content upscaling tech found in the S25 Ultra, but that’s not a big deal seeing how there aren’t nearly as many pixels to fill here. Brightness hasn’t increased a jot from last year, either; a peak 2600 nits is very respectable, and I was able to see the screen clearly enough on the brightest of the UK’s January days, but it still falls short of class leaders.

The S25 also makes do with the same Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection as the outgoing S24, so can’t cope nearly as well with light reflections as the S25 Ultra’s Gorilla Armor 2 can. It’ll still survive most scrapes and scratches, but it’s a shame Samsung hasn’t made this standard across the board yet.

Colour, contrast, and black levels are still among the best around, of course, so photos and videos look outstanding. HDR content takes this up a notch further, with excellent separation of highlights and shadows. As small screens go, there’s little else like it.

Sound is largely unchanged too, with one down-firing speaker and one front-facing earpiece. Expect good amounts of volume and mid-range clarity, but little to no bass and a slightly sharp high-end when you crank things.

Cameras: no hardware changes from before

I hope you weren’t expecting any camera hardware upgrades, because the Samsung Galaxy S25’s three rear snappers have been carried over wholesale from the S24. That means the 50MP lead lens, 12MP ultrawide and 10MP, 3x zoom telephoto are essentially four years old now.

The lead camera still has an f/1.8 aperture lens, dual pixel autofocus, and optical image stabilisation; the f/2.4 telephoto retains PDAF and OIS; and the ultrawide (which still doesn’t have a macro mode) sticks with f/2.2 glass.

Admittedly you won’t find a dedicated telephoto lens on either the iPhone 16 or Pixel 9, which both make do with sensor cropping only. Samsung has them both beat between 3x and 10x, with more fine detail, crisper edges, and a cleaner overall presentation. Apple and Google’s computational photography smarts mean there’s less in it than you might think, though. The Galaxy’s digital zoom goes up to 30x but quality drops off enough that I rarely wanted to use it.

Consistency between lenses is something all three brands do very well. Colours, contrast and exposure are well judged across all three of the Galaxy S25’s rear cams, and Samsung fans will love the HDR-heavy, vivid shots they produce. Dynamic range is on par with its rivals, with only slightly different approaches to white balance and colour treatment separating them.

For the money, you’re getting a capable set of shooters, though the lead lens is still the best choice for overall clarity. Samsung still hasn’t quite nailed freezing fast-moving subjects in place like Google and Apple have, though. It’s better than last year, but not by enough.

Low light sees noise levels creep up and shadow definition dip, until you engage Night mode and the image processing really amps up both sharpening and noise reduction. It also takes that little bit longer than the competition to save each snap. I still got serviceable results, and software improvements give it the edge over last year’s model, but the gains aren’t huge – and don’t show a huge boost over rivals, either.

Samsung hasn’t skimped on video, with 8K/30p and 4K/60P HDR recording, 1080P/240 slow motion, and for the first time, Log recording. That’s great if you’re all about colour grading but might be a little lost on those who just upload straight to social media. The smooth zoom slider has wider appeal, making the transition between different lenses a lot less jarring than before.

A respectable performance overall, if not a class-leading one. If you want that, be prepared to spend considerably more cash.

And let’s not forget the S25’s comprehensive suite of generative AI editing tools. You can convincingly expand tightly cropped images, remove unwanted reflections and delete unwanted distractions. Sketch to image is more hit-and-miss, sometimes turning my (admittedly basic) doodles into completely different objects.

Performance: a decent bump

Qualcomm has kept up tradition by fettling its top-tier chipset exclusively for Samsung. The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy runs a little faster from the factory and is also more power efficient than last year’s effort. There’s no Exynos version either, which is fantastic news to Brits and Europeans that felt let down by the S24’s second-tier performance and battery life.

Officially you’re looking at 37% better CPU performance, 30% better graphics and a 40% uplift in neural engine (NPU) performance, which sound like major gains – only that didn’t quite translate to real-world speed in my testing. Synthetic benchmarks weren’t leaps and bounds ahead of stock Snapdragon 8 Elite phones, though 3136 and 9788 in the Geekbench 6 single- and multi-core tests are still fantastic results.

Heat probably plays a big part. This is a very compact phone, after all, and it doesn’t have the S25 Ultra’s bigger vapor chamber to keep the silicon cool. It got rather warm after only ten minutes of demanding loads, and it was similar when gaming. The S25 can cope with the best-looking titles in the Play Store, though, with Diablo Immortal running very smoothly once I’d cranked all the detail settings, including ray tracing.

For daily duties, though? The Samsung Galaxy S25 is overkill, with flawless performance in more basic apps. 12GB of RAM helps with multitasking, too. It’s a welcome step up from the 8GB found on the Galaxy S24 and means there’s one less point of difference between this and the larger S25+.

That 128GB is still the storage starting point stings a bit, though, as many rivals now make 256GB the norm at this price. Then again, when Google and Apple are sticking with 128GB, I understand why Samsung does the same.

Battery life: that familiar feeling

Given some Samsung execs probably still wake up in a cold sweat reliving the Galaxy Note 7 battery fiasco, I can sort of understand why the firm hasn’t embraced the silicon-carbon tech that’s helping rivals squeeze huge capacities into their latest handsets. However, it does mean the Galaxy S25 feels behind the times.

It makes do with the same 4000mAh cell as last year’s S24, and charging speeds continue to max out at a paltry 25W over USB-C. You’re still not getting Qi2 wireless charging either – or at least not without a third-party case.

The chipset might be more efficient, but in my experience that hasn’t made a massive difference over the outgoing phone. The Galaxy S25 will last a day of use, or less if you push it with demanding games and 4K video recording. That’s nowhere near class-leading any more.

Software: extra AI improvements

Samsung gets top marks for not gating off the best of its Galaxy AI additions on the flagship S25 Ultra. All three Galaxy phones get the same set of tools as part of One UI 7, sitting on top of Android 15.

Circle to Search returns from the S24 series and Gemini is now the default voice assistant, including the Gemini Live natural language voice chat first seen on Google’s Pixel 9 phones. Bixby has been relegated to a more behind-the-scenes role, dealing with device settings and Samsung’s own apps, but it works very well: saying “my screen is really dim” took me straight to the display brightness setting.

I’m more mixed on Now Brief, which summarises info from your other apps on a single screen, and Now Bar, which puts the same on your lock screen. Sports scores, weather reports, and sleep info pulled from my Galaxy Watch were neat, but right now it relies on you being fully on board with Samsung’s app ecosystem. Maybe it’ll be more useful once third-party support improves.

The best addition is AI Select. Easily accessed through the pop-out Edge panel, it lets you circle or highlight anything onscreen and get shown Galaxy AI’s best bits, from generative article summaries and foreign translation to rewriting text in a more casual or professional tone. You had to hunt around for these before – or rely on Samsung’s stock apps – but now they’re much easier to call into action.

It’s great to see Samsung finally get on board with Android’s Seamless Updates, too. You’ll be able to keep using your phone while they install, instead of making you stare at a progress bar. That’ll make the promised seven years of new Android versions and security patches less of a hassle when they land.

More generally One UI 7, will feel familiar to anyone with an older Samsung phone. A light lick of paint and a redesigned Quick Settings screen are the biggest differences. I do think Samsung could do a better job at dialling down the permissions bombardment from its various apps that greet you when first setting up the phone, though.

Samsung Galaxy S25 verdict

Let’s make no bones about it: you won’t be upgrading to this phone if you have a Galaxy S24, or maybe even a Galaxy S23. The S25’s iterative nature means it’ll only appeal to Samsung shoppers with older handsets.

Sure, it’s slimmer, and the new chipset and memory boost are welcome, but there’s not a lot else here to shout about – and 2026 is a long time to wait for a genuine next-gen device. But that was true of the S25 Ultra, too; so why does this earn an extra star?

Simply put, the Samsung Galaxy S25 is still the best Android option in its class. While its bigger brother has plenty of competition, this remains the de facto compact phone champ, with more power than a Pixel 9 and very similar camera quality. Want a small yet mighty hero handset that takes a very fine photo, packs lots of AI-enhanced apps, and is available for sensible money? This should be your first choice by a mile – even if it feels very much like an inbetweener.

Samsung Galaxy S25 technical specifications

Screen	6.2in, FHD+, 1-120Hz, 2600 nits
CPU	Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy
Memory	12GB
Cameras	50MP + 10MP +12MP rear 12MP front
Storage	128/256/512GB
Battery	4000mAh
Charge speed	25W wired, 5W wireless
Durability	IP68
Dimensions	147x71x7.2mm, 162g

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