The Galaxy S25 lineup will likely launch in January 2025. The S24 lineup came out just a month ago, and it’s the latest and greatest from Samsung. While there weren’t many hardware changes, the software was the event’s highlight.
More specifically, Samsung stole the show with Galaxy AI and its features. While some will make it to the S23 lineup with One UI 6.1, you must get an S24 to use its full potential.
While the launch of the S25 is nearly a year away, there are already plenty of leaks about the S25 series. We’ll mostly get a performance boost, and Samsung will go all-in on optimizing their 200MP HP2 sensor. Hopefully, the S25 and S25 Plus also get some long-overdue camera hardware changes.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Series Latest News
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April 3: Earlier reports suggested a shift to all-Exynos for the upcoming Galaxy S25 lineup. However, a fresh report from DigiTimes reveals Samsung will stick with its traditional approach. That means we will see both Snapdragon and Exynos chipsets for the S25 and S25+ (depending on the region). The Galaxy S25 Ultra will arrive with the “Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 for Galaxy” globally.
March 20: Samsung plans to release UFS 4.0 4-lane storage, the fastest yet, which will double data transfer speeds to 8GB/s. The Galaxy S25 series is expected to be the first phone to feature this storage.
March 18: Rumors suggest the upcoming Galaxy S25 will have a slightly larger display than the Galaxy S24. The base model is expected to move to a 6.36-inch display (from 6.2-inch).
March 15: The upcoming Galaxy S25 could be the first smartphone to boast next-generation LPDDR6 RAM. We can expect significant performance improvements over the current LPDDR5 standard.
March 2: Rumors suggest that Samsung could ditch Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors entirely in favor of its Exynos chips.
January 26: According to leaks from WCFTech, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 for Galaxy chipset will have a peak clock speed of a whopping 4 GHz. The 8 Gen 3 on the current S24 models has a peak clock speed of 3.3 GHz. The increase in performance pushes this over the M1 in terms of performance, which is impressive.
Samsung recently made a deal with Qualcomm to obtain more flagship Snapdragon chips for Samsung over the coming years. The battery will improve if the 8 Gen 4 uses 3nm TSMC with all big cores.
December 30: Hubert H Lee might finally contribute to the design of the S25 lineup. We’re not expecting major design changes, but a refresh to the camera module would be great.
December 3: The S25 Ultra will mostly get a new sensor for the 3X telephoto since that’s the only extremely weak sensor in the lot, at 10MP and 1/3.52″. It’s noisy in low light and requires a lot of heavy lifting via software. We might get a new ultra-wide, too. Since Samsung is upgrading one sensor yearly, we expect at least one hardware change on the Ultra.
According to some rumors, Samsung might finally stop using the dreaded GN3/ GN5 sensors on the base and the Plus models. However, others say that Samsung might continue using that GN3 sensor. At this price, there are stacked sensors from Sony that OnePlus uses and the dual-layer transistor 1/1.56″ stacked sensor on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.
Galaxy S25 Ultra’s expected features
The main improvement is in performance. The 8 Gen 4 will allegedly break the 10,000 mark on Geekbench 6- which annihilates Apple’s 7500 of the A17 Pro. It does this while consuming 8W of power and with no efficiency cores. The GPU is also respectably good.
There are suggestions on social media and the forums to improve the S25 Ultra even further. Adding more languages to the AI features, like live translation via calls and text, is expected, with better translation. The current PWM dimming rate of the screen is at just 240-480Hz max, which causes eye strain and headaches for those sensitive to low PWM. A better finish for the S Pen with better durability is also expected.
Samsung used Grade 2 Titanium on the S24 Ultra to cut costs, but the Grade 5 Titanium that the iPhone uses is more expensive and durable. We expect the S25 Ultra to move to that. We also expect new AI features for the S25 Ultra and improvements to the existing ones.
Galaxy S25 Ultra’s expected price
- We expect the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s starting price to be around $1299 in the US, which is similar to the starting price of the S24 Ultra.
However, early leaks talk about the phone’s pricing and speculate that the S25 Ultra might be slightly more expensive due to potential component upgrades. The 8 Gen 4 will probably result in a price bump from Samsung since Qualcomm will charge a higher price per chipset from their end. The S24 Ultra already got a price bump to $1299. The S25 and S25+ could start at $100 more than their $799 and $999 price tags.
The S25 still starts at 8GB RAM+128GB in some regions, which is disappointing. We expect at least 12GB RAM and 256GB at that price and 16GB RAM for the Ultra model. 8GB+128GB at the base is severely underwhelming for $799.
Galaxy S25 Ultra expected release window
We expect the S25 Ultra to launch in January 2025 at the first Galaxy Unpacked event of 2025. This is one year after the 2024 Galaxy Unpacked event. Since Samsung mostly rushed the launch this time, which is apparent from the number of issues, we hope they figure out Quality Control and stability for the 2025 launch.
Should you wait for the S25 Ultra?
Recommending waiting nearly one year for someone to shop for a phone right now isn’t generally advisable. We recommend getting the S24 Ultra if your phone is due for an upgrade and no longer gets software updates or has battery trouble. However, if your phone isn’t that old and you can wait one year, you may wait for the S25 Ultra. We don’t expect breakthrough changes, but minor evolutions go a long way.
Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is still nearly a year away from launching, but there are already exciting rumors about upgrades it may bring. The S25 Ultra is shaping up to be an iterative hardware upgrade throughout the lineup, with more software features and a better, more refined overall experience.
