The most boring Ultra phone of 2025 crushed all its rivals in sales
It might be a snoozer, but the Galaxy S25 Ultra reigns supreme in terms of sales. Sorry, Vivo, Oppo, and Xiaomi!
This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
This year might as well be the year of the "Ultra" phone, given how great and exciting Android phones with the respectable "Ultra" suffix have been released in 2025.
*-all figures rumored and approximate
We got the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the Vivo X200 Ultra, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, and the Oppo Find X8 Ultra. What a respectable selection of heavy-hitters indeed! I've used or at least played around with each one of those phones, and all these phones are definitely up for contention for the "best phone of the year" title.
Yes, even with the Pixel 10 and iPhone 17 series unreleased, it's doubtful any of them would be able to match the Ultra phones, methinks.
The boring Ultra that won the race
One of these phones is arguably the most mundane and boring, and that's certainly the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It has a great camera, but the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, the Vivo X200 Ultra, and the Oppo Find X8 Ultra certainly beat it in terms of hardware.
Many of these phones have exceptional 1-inch main camera sensors, which certainly matters when it comes to raw optical image quality. Camera software features are also more intriguing on either one of the Galaxy S25 Ultra's rivals.
In terms of battery, the Samsung flagship takes another "L," dragging its feet at the back with its fairly minuscule 5,000 mAh battery when the norm is a 6,000 mAh Silicon-Carbon battery at the minimum.
There's also the financial aspect: the Galaxy S25 Ultra is slightly pricier than some of its Ultra rivals (except for the Xiaomi 15 Ultra).
Yet, a few weeks ago, famed tipster Ice Universe hinted that the Galaxy S25 Ultra has easily outsold all of its more exciting rivals at least eightfold. The tipster revealed Samsung had sold 8.4 million units by the end of June 2025. The competition wasn't doing as well, it seems. Any of the other flagships sold less: the Xiaomi 15 Ultra with a little over half a million units, the Vivo X200 Ultra some 219,000 units, and the Oppo Find X8 Ultra last with 210,000 units.
| Phone | Unit sales by end of June 2025 |
|---|---|
| Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra | 8,390,000 |
| Xiaomi 15 Ultra | 586,000 |
| Vivo X200 Ultra | 219,000 |
| Oppo Find X8 Ultra | 210,000 |
Total and utter dominance by the Samsung phone, which easily positions itself as the de facto choice for high-end "knock-it-out-of-the-park" Android flagships this year.
So, why does the Galaxy S25 Ultra sell so well when it's arguably the least exciting Ultra phone out there?
It's a Samsung, among other reasons
Yes, the reasons that the Galaxy S25 Ultra sells so well are numerous and immediately obvious. I think there are a few of them.
Firstly, it's the exceptionally strong brand name that Samsung holds pretty much everywhere across the world. After Apple, it's Samsung that holds the most brand power in the world of smartphones.
Secondly, it's the global availability that plays possibly the biggest role here. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is available in all global markets that matter. Its competitors? Sadly, it's only the Xiaomi 15 Ultra that sells in other global markets than China, while the Oppo and the Vivo are pretty much intended for the internal Chinese market only. They don't even have proper global software, making it a real pain to use anywhere outside the Middle Kingdom.
Next up, we have Samsung's reliability and pledge for long software support. Seven years? That's a whole eternity in the world of tech, and none of the other Ultra phones can boast a similar long support window.
The dependability of the software is yet another major reason why the Galaxy S25 Ultra is such a hit. In the early days of Android, there was a lot of variety in terms of manufacturers, devices, and Android interfaces. Yet, as the market matured and many of those dropped out of the race, it's Samsung that easily positioned itself as the undisputed leader of the Android world. In fact, for most people, One UI might as well be the face of Android.
So, at the end of the day, Samsung hit it out of the park. The arguably more interesting rivals of its Galaxy S25 Ultra superphone failed to beat it in the most important aspect for any business, the bottom line.
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