Samsung Galaxy S25+ review: Nails the big phone basics

Over the past few years, Samsung has put most of its efforts into its Ultra phones, equipping them with the latest and greatest hardware. In comparison, the vanilla and Plus variants of Galaxy S series phones have seen minimal hardware upgrades. However, they still remain some of the most refined high-end smartphones that are available globally.

The Galaxy S25+ is, as expected, Samsung's middle child this year. It gets very few hardware upgrades. It has a newer processor, improved connectivity (Bluetooth 5.4 and Wi-Fi 7), and slight camera processing improvements.

Are those upgrades enough, or is it better to buy last year's Galaxy S24+ and save some money?

The Galaxy S25+ looks extremely similar to the Galaxy S24+, which means it has flat Armor Aluminum sides, flat glass on the front and the rear, and rounded corners. The phone is lighter (by 6g) and slimmer (by 0.4mm), but it is likely that you won't be able to notice those slight changes.

The only thing that you can notice is the slightly raised ring design around the rear cameras. Samsung says the new ring design offers a floating design look.

As usual, the phone has an IP68 rating for resistance against dust and water. The Gorilla Glass Victus 2 offers protection against scratches, but I would advise you to use a high-quality case for protection against drops.

Despite its big screen and battery, the phone feels extremely lightweight and comfortable to carry around and use.

Since the entire Galaxy S24 lineup received major display improvements last year, Samsung didn't bring anything new on that front to the Galaxy S25 series.

Similar to its predecessor, the Galaxy S25+ has a 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2x screen with QHD+ resolution, a 120Hz variable refresh rate, 2,600 nits peak brightness, and HDR10+ compatibility. The display is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2, similar to the Galaxy S24+. Since it is a flat screen, finding a good, well-priced tempered glass screen protector and applying it would be a breeze.

The only thing that's new is the thinner bezel around the screen, which makes the phone feel more futuristic. The screen is bright, fluid, and has more accurate colors compared to the previous generations.

Samsung has opted for a more natural color profile, but you can amp up color vividness and adjust white balance settings from the settings menu. You can also enable Adaptive Color Tone for automatic white balance correction based on ambient lighting conditions and Eye Comfort Shield to limit blue light emission.

I expected Samsung to bring the Galaxy S24 Ultra's groundbreaking anti-reflective panel, Gorilla Glass Armor, to the Galaxy S25 and the Galaxy S25+, but that didn't happen. I hope to see the feature on the Galaxy S26+ next year.

The stereo speakers on the Galaxy S25+ sound really good. They are louder and clearer, and there is enough depth in the audio. There's also a slight improvement in bass (lower audio frequencies).

It features Dolby Atmos with four presets—Auto, Movie, Music, and Voice—and six audio equalizer presets: Balanced, Bass Boost, Clear, Dynamic, Treble Boost, and Smooth. You can create a custom equalizer by choosing the Custom option.

The phone also offers two more audio-related features: Boost Dialog (boosts vocals) and Loudness Normalization (keeps volume stable), but they are turned off by default.

The camera specifications on the Galaxy S25+ haven't changed. Similar to the Galaxy S24+, the phone has a 50MP primary camera with OIS, a 12MP ultrawide camera, and a 10MP telephoto camera with OIS and 3x optical zoom. Thankfully, it has the same 12MP selfie camera as the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

In the image gallery below, camera samples are arranged from left to right in this order: 0.6x, 1x, 2x, and 3x.

By default, the phone can now capture 10-bit HDR videos from all its cameras. The primary rear camera can record up to 8K 30fps videos, while the rest of the cameras can go as high as 4K 60fps. All cameras and resolutions support electronic image stabilization (EIS).

Ideally, Samsung should have offered upgraded camera sensor for the telephoto camera and equipped the ultrawide camera with autofocus, as that is what the competitors are offering. The iPhone 16 Pro, which is priced similar to the Galaxy S25+, has a bigger primary camera, a telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom, and a higher resolution ultrawide camera with autofocus.

In the image gallery below, camera samples are arranged from left to right in this order: 0.6x, 1x, and 3x. Second row has images captured in the Portrait mode.

The overall picture quality is pretty good but not outstanding. Images captured in daylight have good details and a wide dynamic range. Colors are more neutral (but still somewhat punchy) compared to the previous years, and there is a sense of depth and realism in them. In low-light conditions, the image quality is decent but the noise creeps in.

The ultrawide camera offers decent details and captures neutral colors outdoors. The dynamic range is also pretty impressive. In indoor conditions with less than ideal lighting conditions and in the night, there is a drop in details and the noise is higher.

In the image gallery below, camera samples captured in the night are arranged from left to right in this order: 0.6x, 1x, 2x, and 3x.

The telephoto camera performs good in daylight, offering good details and a wide dynamic range. You can even go up to 5x zoom for optical-quality shots in outdoor conditions with good lighting. Images captured in the night (or in unideal conditions) contain more noise.

The competition offers much better camera hardware, resulting in higher details and lower noise. On a positive note, the color reproduction and dynamic range are similar between all three rear cameras.

In the image gallery below, you can find selfies in Photo and Portrait modes. The images in the second row are captured in the night (low-light conditions).

The 12MP selfie camera is great. It's better than most high-end phones out there, thanks to autofocus and slightly bigger pixels. It captures plenty of details and images with likeable colors and a wide dynamic range. Noise is low for a front-facing camera. Skin tones in the selfies look natural.

Videos recorded using all four cameras have solid details and likable colors in daylight conditions. The dynamic range is also very wide. Video stabilization across all four cameras is class-leading, as is switching between the cameras while recording the videos.

Even in low-light conditions, the primary and telephoto cameras surprisingly record good videos, albeit with slightly more noise than in daylight conditions. The ultrawide camera offers soft videos with more noise. The front-facing camera has among the best performance in the current generation of smartphones.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite offers a sizeable jump in both CPU and GPU performance. To add to that, Samsung has done exemplary work in improving the fluidity of animations and transitions with One UI 7.0, which comes pre-installed on the Galaxy S25 series.

The vapor chamber cooling system's size has also increased compared to the Galaxy S24+, helping the phone tame the new 3nm chip.

With 12GB of base RAM and 256GB storage, the Galaxy S25+ has enough processing performance to stay fast and fluid, no matter the task at hand. It does perform better and for a longer period than the Galaxy S25 due to its beefier heat dissipation system.

I never saw the phone fumble or stutter. I think a large part of that smoothness can be attributed to One UI 7 more than the Snapdragon 8 Elite. All flagship chips released over the past few years are powerful enough to offer a smooth experience.

The Galaxy S25+ runs Android 15-based One UI 7.0 out of the box. It is the smoothest software Samsung has ever offered. While it brings lots of new features, its smoothness alone is enough to make you happy.

However, Samsung, being Samsung, has introduced dozens of new features, including some new Galaxy AI features, with One UI 7.0.

In our video below, you can look at those features and read about Galaxy AI features in our Galaxy S25 Ultra review.

It has also given One UI a massive redesign, featuring a vertical app drawer, a simplified grid layout for the home screen, and two separate pages for Quick Panel and notifications. It also has newer and smoother animations and transitions. One UI 7.0 also has blur effects in several areas. The battery icon and charging animations have improved as well.

Notifications have a more rounded design, and multiple notifications from the same app are stacked on top of one another. All of the Quick Panel’s modules can be placed as per your preferences. The Quick Panel also gets a dedicated volume slider.

All the stock app icons have a refreshed design. Widgets have improved greatly, as they now have a new design language and more customization options (including shape and custom backgrounds).

The Now Bar displays ongoing activities, like the music player or timer. Lock screen has more clock widget styling and other customization options. There are more lock screen widgets and lock screen shortcuts.

You can read the full list of changes and improvements that One UI 7.0 brings here. In my opinion, there is nothing better than One UI 7.0 right now if you want a mix of customization, features, fluidity, uniqueness, and performance.

The 4,900mAh battery inside the Galaxy S25+ lasts even longer than on the Galaxy S24+. I am not sure whether it is due to the more power efficient chip or a more optimized software or a combination of both.

I consistently got more than 6 hours of screen time in a day and around 20% charge left after 24 hours of usage. That's more than enough for my usage. On days when I used the camera heavily, the phone still lasted a whole day.

Thanks to 45W fast charging, a 0-100% charge takes around an hour. While it is slower than many high-end smartphones from Chinese brands, it is not bad at all. It takes just 15 minutes to reach 40% charge and 30 minutes to reach 75% charge.

Moreover, Samsung has made some changes to the charging mechanism, which makes it possible for 45W fast charging to work with the bundled USB C cable. Earlier, you had to buy a 5A cable (which is usually thicker) to make 45W fast charging work.

The Galaxy S25 series is compatible with Qi2 Ready cases that come with built-in magnets for magnetic alignment. I used one such Qi2 Ready case from Elago for the Galaxy S25+. It offered ease in placing the phone on the Qi2 wireless charger at my desk.

The Galaxy S25+ is a very good, well-rounded phone. It suits people who want a big screen that is not too heavy. Since the Galaxy S25+ has no S Pen or a huge camera bump, it is comfortable to carry and use. It has an excellent display, a good set of cameras, great performance, and long battery life. But you might have to look elsewhere if you are after class-leading image quality and zoom performance.

For existing Galaxy S24+ or even Galaxy S23+ users, the Galaxy S25+ isn’t a good upgrade, as most things are similar between both phones. Yes, there are improvements in performance, but you will likely not notice it unless you have both phones side by side.

The Galaxy S25+ is a great upgrade for anyone currently using a mid-range phone or older high-end phones like the Galaxy S22+. It brings a brighter screen, more consistent camera performance in varied lighting conditions, new Galaxy AI features, longer software update support (up to Android 22), and longer battery life.