Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra release date expectations, price estimates, and upgrades

Samsung's next big flagship, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, is expected to hit the shelves in early 2025. As a successor to one of the best Android phones currently available, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will have the tough job of recapturing the magic by surgically implementing improvements and upgrades to the established formula. 

Even though it is still early days for the Galaxy S25 Ultra, we have already got a handle on a few key details about the phone. And for the things we are not sure about, we can make some educated guesses based on past trends.

We are expecting the Galaxy S25 Ultra to feature a durable titanium build and Corning's glare-free glass for added toughness. While the design should mostly follow the flat look of its predecessor, the new Ultra model is likely to have rounded edges. It will probably include an integrated S Pen and maintain IP68 water and dust resistance.

The display might stick to 6.8 inches and will almost certainly keep rocking a Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel, with its super-smooth 1-120Hz refresh rate. Hopefully, Samsung will bump up the maximum brightness even further for better visibility outdoors.

It terms of performance, it is almost a given that we will find Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chip under the hood. There is always a chance this chip might be only in US units, leaving room for an Exynos version elsewhere in the world, but to be honest, that is pretty unlikely.

When it comes to the battery, we are hoping for better battery life with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. However, we are not expecting a much larger battery because of space constraints. Faster wired charging would be great, but it’s likely we'll see the return of 45W charging support.

We expect the Galaxy S25 Ultra to cost as much as the current model does. As a refresher, the Galaxy S24 Ultra starts at $1,300 for the 256GB version and goes up to $1,660 for the 1TB option. 

Now, let's delve deeper into all the expectations surrounding the upcoming Galaxy S25 Ultra. You can also take a look at all the available information about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S25.

Samsung typically releases its new smartphones about two weeks after the official announcement. Depending on the timing, the actual release date could easily spill over into February.

With the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Samsung could go one or two ways: either make it pricier or leave the price tag unchanged. Seeing how the current Galaxy Ultra model scored a $100 price increase this year we find it a bit difficult to believe that Samsung will go for another price increase for a second year in a row.

However, a recent report indicated that the Galaxy S25 Ultra could come with a higher price tag unless Samsung Foundry boosts its 3nm production yields, but we’ll have to wait and see how that plays out.

If previous Galaxy launches are anything to go by, there could be multiple ways to save on the upcoming Galaxy S25 Ultra. For example by trading-in a device or pre-ordering the phone. US carriers typically also offer deals and bonuses on new Samsung flagships. 

So, what kind of pricing and deals should we expect for the Galaxy S25 Ultra from Samsung and the major carriers?

For starters, when the Galaxy S24 Ultra launched, Samsung offered trade-in programs with credits of up to $750. For the Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can likely expect a similar trade-in deal, so if you’ve got an eligible device to trade in, you could save a significant amount on your upgrade.

If you go with a carrier plan, the deals get even sweeter for the current model and should be similar for the next one. For instance, Verizon's Device Payment Program offers $800 off if you pick the Unlimited Ultimate plan before ordering your new device and trading in any Samsung smartphone.

At T-Mobile, you can snag up to $600 off through 24 monthly bill credits when you add a new voice line on a qualifying ONE, Magenta, or Go5G plan. AT&T has some fantastic offers, too. For instance, with the current model, you can get up to $1,000 off with a suitable unlimited plan and an eligible trade-in device valued at just $95 or more.

So, as you can see, there are plenty of ways to grab a flagship Galaxy smartphone at a lower price, and similar deals will likely be available for the Galaxy S25 Ultra, too.

When it comes to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, it's safe to assume that AI will have an even bigger part to play in mobile photography and videography. This year, Samsung went all in on artificial intelligence and machine learning to step up its photography game with its top-notch "cameraphone".

And as if that weren't enough, we can also expect the usual software tweaks and image-processing algorithm upgrades that come around every year. This means that we can expect better low-light performance, upgraded image stabilization and, hopefully, even better portrait capture capabilities. Oh, and maybe even 100x Space Zoom, even without the 10X periscope camera!

The Galaxy S25 Ultra could be the first phone to feature Samsung's UFS 4.04-lane storage chip, which could theoretically support nearly 8GB/sec. This means nearly double the 4GB/s of the UFS 4.0 standard that's currently used on most phones. 

According to an existing Samsung roadmap, the faster storage is expected to be available in 2025. In our opinion, that would definitely amp up the device's performance and it could also be a big boost for Samsung's on-device Galaxy AI.

We anticipate the base version of the Galaxy S25 Ultra to offer 256GB of storage, with options for 512GB and 1TB also likely available. There are also rumors suggesting a higher-end model with 16GB of RAM alongside the base configuration with 12GB of RAM.

Display brightness is the new megapixel war with manufacturers constantly trying to outshine each other. With this trend showing no signs of slowing down, it's reasonable to expect Samsung to equip the Galaxy S25 Ultra with an even brighter display than its predecessor.

A recent report suggests that the Galaxy S25 Ultra will retain the same battery size and charging speed as its predecessor. Mainly due to space constraints, we expect Samsung to put a 5,000mAh battery inside the Galaxy S25 Ultra. 

Yet, if the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 proves to be efficient enough, we might still see an improvement in battery life. Additionally, a new rumor suggests that Samsung might introduce a feature called Battery AI. This feature is said to provide an additional 5% to 10% of runtime to the phone.

We hope Galaxy S25 Ultra features faster charging than the 45W wired one of its predecessors. While neither the Galaxy S24 Ultra nor the Galaxy S23 Ultra charged slowly (both are capable of topping up in roughly about an hour), there's always room for improvement. 

Hopefully Samsung will consider adding faster wireless charging to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, too. Currently, the top Samsung flagship phone charges at up to 15W with an official charger. 

We don't expect to see a charger in the Galaxy S25 Ultra box and historical data suggest that neither should you. 

By the time Galaxy S25 Ultra arrives, we should have witnessed the arrival of both Android 15 and the derived from it One UI 7. We might even see One UI 7.1 on the upcoming flagship phone. Details about either of these are scarce, but they should deepen the software's reliance on generative AI and machine-learning. 

Galaxy AI, which debuted with the Galaxy S24 series, is certainly coming back with the Galaxy S25 too.The S25 Ultra will undoubtedly be the best way to experience Samsung's planned enhancements to generative on-device and cloud-based artificial intelligence. 
Galaxy AI is one of our favorite new features of this year's Galaxy lineup. We hope that Galaxy AI not only sticks, but also blooms to future Galaxy phones, such as the S25 Ultra.

Thanks to Samsung's new seven-year software support policy, we certainly know that the upcoming phone will be supported for at least seven years. This means the Galaxy S25 Ultra could be supported until 2032. This includes both major Android updates as well as security patches. 

As mentioned earlier, we are mostly certain the Galaxy S25 Ultra will come with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chip. Built by TSMC, we expect the chip to become announced later in 2024. It may very well turn out to be Qualcomm's first 3nm chip, matching the Apple A17 Pro in this coveted metric.

Currently rolling under the "Tongzi" moniker, this chip will swap ARM's Cortex cores for Qualcomm's new CPU cores. As per the rumors and leaks, we might not see any efficiency cores on the chip, which will instead consist of two performance Phoenix CPU cores and six medium-performance CPU cores. 

The two performance cores on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 might be clocked as high as 4GHz. That would be a serious upgrade over the 3.3GHz of the Cortex-X4 of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. 

Additionally, a leaked GeekBench 6 benchmarking test claims that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 has achieved 2845 points in GeekBench's single-core test and 10628 points in the multi-core one. These results are higher than the 7249 score of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the 7281 result that the A17 Pro chip of the iPhone 15 Pro Max has scored. 

While Samsung typically equips its flagships with either Snapdragon or Exynos chips depending on the region, such a split has never occurred with its Ultra models. So, we think an Exynos-powered Galaxy S25 Ultra is just a mirage.

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