Why Samsung’s latest Ultra can claim to be the best android available right now

Every year, the Ultra variant of Samsung’s Galaxy S line is expressly designed to be the biggest, most powerful and most expensive device the company can muster. But this year, so much of what makes it remarkable isn’t in the display, the cameras or even the chip.

The S25 Ultra has all the usual hyper-premium hardware, but elevating it is Samsung’s most recent take on software, which is a smart and useful blend of overhauled design and Google AI integration.

With a relatively capable chatbot assistant, the ability to record and transcribe phone calls, natural language understanding that lets you sort through photos or set reminders without having to jump through hoops, and the ability to ask the phone about things you’re seeing on the screen, the S25 feels like a useful AI phone rather than one that can create bogus images and make your emails sound more professional.

If you were hoping for some big new revolutionary AI feature that’s exclusive to this phone, you’ll be disappointed; the best tricks are also going to appear on other devices. But the combination of Samsung’s hardware, refined software and fresh AI gives the S25 Ultra a credible claim to being the ultimate Android available right now.

A new look, but familiar guts

Looking at the specs, the S25 Ultra is a very similar device to the S24 Ultra from last year. The screen is the tiniest bit bigger but otherwise the same, the cameras are the same except for some tweaks on the ultra-wide lens, there’s a new version of the Snapdragon 8 chip at the heart of it all, and it’s still backed by a huge 5000 mAh battery.

But in this case, more of the same isn’t surprising or disappointing. The 2024 Ultra was already phenomenal for hardware, and there just isn’t that much room for growth within a year. The huge display is one of the best on a smartphone, the brilliant multi-day battery life is improved here thanks to a more efficient processor, and the overall performance is absolutely top-notch.

The Ultra still comes with a stylus, but it’s not quite as capable as usual.

Plus there’s the fact that the phone feels substantially refreshed because of a new rounded design; it looks much more like the standard S models now than like the old Note phones, and it’s comfier to hold as a result.

Sure, Samsung could have gone further. The included S-Pen stylus feels great but no longer has Bluetooth support, meaning it can’t be used as a remote shutter. The phone technically supports Qi 2 charging, but it doesn’t have any magnets in the back. There’s no justification for someone who bought an Ultra in the past few years to upgrade to this one, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is slightly better, and thus the best Samsung on the market.

The familiar camera set-up of a huge primary sensor and two zoom lenses, plus an ultra-wide that doubles as a macro, gives your mobile photography an impressive range. A 10x zoom shot is very sharp here, and though you’ll start seeing some AI upscaling artefacts by the time you’re at 20x or 30x, the phone will technically go to 100x. You can’t expect too much at that length in terms of legibility (the photos being a cleaned-up crop of a 50MP 5x exposure), but some outdoor shots can be surprisingly clean.

Meanwhile, the bright 120Hz screen paired with the overpowered chip makes for very smooth navigating and browsing, made all the better by the understated and less-cluttered approach to software Samsung has taken in OneUI 7. Overall, it finally feels like Samsung and Google are on the same page about how phones should work, and that follows through to the S25’s approach to AI.

AI gets closer to being genuinely useful

I was not overly impressed with the debut of Galaxy AI last year. Focused mainly on re-writing text and generating images, many of the features felt like complex and inaccurate answers to questions I was not asking. There’s still an element of that with the S25 — you can turn sketches into frankly unusable AI illustrations, or make videos sound eerie and robotic by removing noises — but there are also features I’ll actually get used to using.

Google’s Gemini has come a long way in the past year, and here it makes for a competent main assistant (you can bring back Bixby instead, if you choose). Hold the side button and ask your query out loud, or you can type it, and Gemini gets to work. There’s also the option to set Gemini to “live” mode, which will keep it open so you can have a two-way conversation. The chatbot will access various apps and services to accomplish a task; for example if you say “set an alarm for two hours before the party tonight”, or “when is PAX Melbourne this year? Add it to my calendar”, it will work out what you want.

Gemini’s ability to access your Google apps, Samsung apps, some third-party service’s and the web makes it a powerful assistant, though to be honest, it still isn’t reliable or consistent enough that you can fully trust it. Sometimes, it goes flawlessly but other times, it misses information you’d think would be obvious. In one instance, it acted as though I didn’t have a contact by the name I’d mentioned and offered some results from the web that appeared to be a mix of businesses and random personal email accounts. But in the best case, it will achieve in a few seconds what would usually require a Google search and an additional app open, and all you have to do is ask.

Give it a photo of a menu and Gemini can translate, do a web search, compare and give recommendations.

You can also ask Gemini about pictures, videos, URLs and music as you experience them on your phone. And Google’s “circle to search” allows you to selectively comb the web based on any part of your screen. Samsung has added a feature called “AI Select”, which is like a more context aware version of pressing and holding to select something. Instead of just offering to copy something, or open it in a new tab, AI Select might offer to turn a video into a GIF, set a large picture as a wallpaper, or open a photo directly for generative editing. Taken together, the AI suite still feels a bit disjointed, and there are confusingly multiple ways to achieve similar results, but it’s getting better.

Finally, Samsung has made a big deal of its Now Brief, which it sells as an AI-powered briefing that changes throughout the day. It does seem a bit regressive, since phones have done this sort of thing for a long time. But if you’re trying to avoid overusing your phone and just want it to check in three times a day, it works well.

You can put the brief on your home screen as a widget, or just wait for it to pop up periodically on your lock screen when there’s new info. It’s a bit like a mix between Google’s At a Glance and Apple’s Live Activities; serving up your calendar appointments, fitness data, news articles, weather forecast and more without you having to dig through multiple apps. Samsung says it will learn and change over time, for example surfacing relevant live sports scores to put on the lock screen. After a week of use, it seemed to have no idea what kind of news or music I liked, so mileage may vary when it comes to accessing non-Samsung platforms like Spotify. But if it generally gets better over time, I could see myself checking it as part of a morning routine.

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