I’ve gone this far without mentioning the price: the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra starts at $1,299.99. Without doing any market research—beyond knowing the phones my friends and family have got—that means most people aren’t even going to consider the Galaxy S25 Ultra for their next phone upgrade. No matter how fantastic the handset is, it’s too expensive for many.
If you can afford the Galaxy S25 Ultra, you’re getting a pro-level phone with top-tier features. It’s the fastest and most powerful Samsung phone to date, it has a glorious display and offers a premium build, and it captures fantastic photos and videos too. Add in the software improvements, and its continued support for the S Pen accessory, it’s a mobile package that beats almost anything else at the moment.
The only marks against the Galaxy S25 Ultra are that it’s not a huge upgrade over the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and it offers a level of quality and performance that goes above and beyond what most of us really need from a phone. When you’ve got very capable phones available that cost significantly less—not least the standard Galaxy S25 and the Galaxy S25 Plus, by the way—then the question is why you’d spend any more. Even the iPhone 16 Pro Max comes in at $100 cheaper, and the Pixel 9 Pro XL is $200 cheaper.
This is the choice if you want the best smartphone on the market right now and you’re willing to pay whatever it takes. Everyone else can probably hold off, although there is one side benefit to opting for this phone now—given the hardware you’ve got under the hood here, it’s certainly going to last you a long time, which goes some way towards justifying that price.
