Gadgets With John Davidson

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra is a perfect phone, with four slip-ups

Did the company fail to add magnets to its new handset just to be annoying? Maybe not. It could signal a broader trend we like to call “peak phone”.

John DavidsonColumnist

Feb 17, 2025 – 2.49pm

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Four times now, I’ve placed Samsung’s new Galaxy S25 Ultra smartphone on one of the many magnetic charging stands littering the Digital Life Labs, and four times now I’ve had to catch it as it slipped off the stand and clattered towards the floor.

It’s not that I’m expecting something to have magically changed about this otherwise perfect phone between each of those four attempts. I’m not expecting the phone to have become magnetic, like an iPhone is magnetic, allowing it to stick to the charge stands.

John Davidson is an award-winning columnist, reviewer, and senior writer based in Sydney and in the Digital Life Laboratories, from where he writes about personal technology.