what's going on guys my name is Wade with tech daily and in this video we are checking out the new Samsung Galaxy s25 Ultra out of the three s25 this is the one everyone seems to be talking about it's pretty much the case every year but this year especially still the biggest the most expensive the highest spec with all the features but it's been met with a tiny bit of controversy this year thanks to a change some people may even call it a downgrade to the S Pen this phone's key feature I'm of course going to touch on that and everything else you need to know but first things first let's just quickly unbox this phone and then we can get into all the dirty details so sliding off the lid you're immediately greeted by the phone itself this color here is the titanium blue gray which is one of the four standard color options this year there's also titanium white silver titanium regular gray I guess and titanium black which are all pretty subtle muted metallic finishes if you want something slightly more interesting there's three other samsung.com exclusives titanium jade green titanium Pink gold and titanium jet black as far as what else comes inside the Box well not much of course hiding in the lid there you'll find the usual packet of things the Sim ejector tool a fat stack of paperwork and instructions and your lonely USBC to USBC cable for charging here is the s25 ultra once again and as we get it fully unwrapped and powered on I want to talk about pricing because there's still ways you can save a lot of money if you're buying this phone which I'd imagine you'd want to do considering its price point on the bright side Samsung didn't increase the price of any of the s25 this year but this s25 Ultra still starts at a whopping $1,300 and that's for the 256 GB model mind you now Samsung is still offering a free storage upgrade which I highly recommend you opt for it's sort of a no-brainer and you'll still get some Samsung credit to use towards cases and other discounted accessories Honestly though I'd probably just recommend some third party accessories instead more on that in a moment and if you have your old smartphone Samsung will also give you a little more money for it if you trade it in towards the s25 ultra so using their convoluted discounts and tradein promotions you could theoretically get a 512 GB s25 Ultra for as low as 399 bucks if you have last year's s24 Ultra to trade in and you can still spend $8 free on something from the Samsung store perhaps this minions Galaxy buds case and a spare charging set I'll leave some links Down Below in the video description if you want to shop around or see if you can come up with your own deal for this phone but it seems like this year Samsung is really pushing these pre-order promotions pretty hard and to be honest what they're offering isn't too bad at all if
you do wind up getting this phone I have two accessories from ESR this video is sponsor that I'd highly recommend you get as well the first is their new Halo lock classic hybrid case I have both the clear and the Frosted black and not only are these more affordable than Samsung's cases but they're better in a few important ways they fully protect the phone all the way around an extra Corner cushion to absorb the impact of a drop a 1.2 mm raised edge around the screen to help keep it protected from scratches and a camera guard to ensure those all important camera lenses are safe too best of all there's a super strong mag safe style magnetic ring on the back that you can pair with esrs entire lineup of charging accessories like this one their ch2 certified 15w magsafe car mount charger with cryoboost you have two ways to mount this in your car either clipped onto an air vent like I have or by sticking this ball joint attachment to your dashboard the charging stand can be tilted and turned in almost any direction so you can set your phone to the perfect angle and most importantly it can juice up the s25 ultra at its highest supported speeds 15 watts thanks to not just its ch2 certification but also its cryoboost technology a built-in phone cooling fan that ensures safer cooler and more reliable charging at those fastest speeds and oh yeah when you're on the road this big old phone isn't falling off the case and charger magnets combined with 1,600 G of force so it's holding in place no matter how awful of a driver you are these accessories are honestly a lot better than what Samsung wants you to buy from them so click the links in the video description below to check out all of esrs new s25 Ultra offerings so what what's new with the
s25 ultra well it's bigger couldn't you tell at least the screen is slightly so it's now 6.9 in nice but the form factor isn't really any larger in fact Samsung slimmed down the bezels ever so slightly to get most of that extra 10th of an inch of screen increase and they also rounded off the phone's Corners to more closely resemble the other two S2s it's a less sharp less unique looking Ultra this year but I think there's still plenty of other ways you can tell that this is Samsung's top tier phone the front and back are now covered in an allnew gorilla glass armor 2 material I hope I don't ever have to test out its strength but it should be stronger and the screen should show a little less glare the sides are also still titanium a grade five now whatever that means and these materials are still reserved only for the ultra so you still get a more premium build with new fancy materials compared to the cheaper regular s25 taking a quick look around at everything else nothing on the left side besides the 5G antenna on the right the same power buttons and volume buttons as always up top a couple little microphone holes and at the bottom the S Pen of course the main loudspeaker the USBC port and the SIM card tray aside from moving that pin hole away from one of the microphone holes thankfully the physical SIM card slot remains unchanged no expandable storage which means I'm stuck with just 256 gigabyt of space on my phone unless I want to utilize some cloud storage that Samsung is heavily pushing I I feel like storage space is more and more valuable nowadays especially since Android takes up a bunch UPF front and Samsung pre-installs like 20 different apps now so definitely opt for that free storage upgrade I talked about earlier if you still can the in display fingerprint sensor is still the same just as fast and speaking of the display aside from that new glass that's covering it Samsung kept the exact same screen set up from last year the tiny bit of extra size I guess is a change if you want to call it that but the TPO AMOLED panel is the same the Adaptive 120 HZ refresh rate is the same and the 1440 QHD resolution you can select in settings is the same too Samsung also didn't opt for increasing the brightness either 2600 nits just like last year so the display I guess wasn't a focus or of any real concern this time around on the one hand I can understand that I mean I think this is the best smartphone display on the market it's big it's colorful it's bright and even though I can't see the quad HD resolution with the naked eye I'm glad I have it because this is an Ultra phone the Ultra phone and it's supposed to have Ultra over-the-top specs across the board whether I use them or understand them or not with that being said and I talked about this in my regular s25 unboxing but keeping something the same as the previous year tells me that Samsung also thinks this is the best display for at least 2 years now that could be the case I guess but they could also bump the refresh rate to 144 Hertz they could crank up the brightness even more arguably they could probably make the screen even bigger still I'm not saying all these are necessary but other phones have a couple higher screen specs here and there and again whether people use them or need them or understand them I think being the Ultra phone should mean that no other phone outpec this one in any way just some food for thought okay so let's talk Espen now obvious viously the s25 ultra still has its built-in S Pen and it's very similar in Form and Function to last year's and all the previous years really it's a great stylus experience for writing drawing and tapping through the phone it's a great set of apps and features that pair with it it's one of the most unique smartphone features and sort of the defining feature for this phone at this point I mean without this S Pen I don't think there'd be any real reason to have three different s25 but Samsung removed bluetooth support from the s pen and thus also removed air gestures an S Pen feature they say less than 1% of customers actually used and with that alleged data I can understand where they're coming from if it cuts costs or allows for them to add something else instead so be it but Samsung seemingly didn't add anything in place of air gestures the stylus doesn't have any other new physical features or apps or other add-ons and it obviously didn't bring the price of the phone down any on top of all that in recent tear down videos it seems like some of the old Spen related hardware parts for Bluetooth and charging are still inside the s25 ultra so they just made the S Pen itself cheaper with less Tech and used old smartphone parts from previous years it's a strange situation and seems like an unnecessary change when there are probably plenty of other features that 1% of users use like 8K recording or the new log video format now I realized that most of what I've talked about with the s25 ultra isn't really anything new just subtle changes here and there and that's because most of what's actually new that Samsung has been talking about with the entire s25 lineup has to do with software Ai and the overall performance inside these s25 are now powered by a special Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip that's specifically optimized for Samsung the performance numbers are really up there and the Speed and Performance increases that Qualcomm has been stating are huge promises for sure the supposed speed boosts likely won't be felt while you're scrolling through social media but the s25 ultra for me the last few days has felt quite fast most of that excess performance capability is intended for all the new one ui7 and Galaxy AI features that Samsung is all in on Galaxy AI is now even more Incorporated with an Android 15 and not just being utilized by Samsung's apps but also some Google Apps and other thirdparty apps too Gemini is also a lot smarter and can complete multi-step tasks across different apps and there are admittedly some very useful new AI features like updated Circle to search which now works with songs you hear playing AI select as a whole has a lot of new powerful features object eraser has been getting a lot of attention as being better than Apples and best face is fun to use when you have a group of yahoos who blink in every picture so all this stuff is where you'll experience what's truly new with the s25 series and that's great if you're a software fiend but I would guess that most if not all of this stuff is probably coming to the s24 and likely some other Galaxy devices this year so that sort of just leaves the potential performance as an actual Hardware upgrade and is it an upgrade maybe if you're a top 1% mobile gamer you'll feel it most but we already talked about that whole 1% of users thing so I'll just let that lie for now as far as battery and charging well this really wasn't changed either the 5,000 mAh battery is the same size and it's getting the same 45 wat wired charging speeds as last year with 15w wireless charging as an option as well and when it comes to the cameras well surprisingly these didn't get much of an upgrade either around back Samsung stuck with the same 200 megapix Main lens and 50 megapix Periscope telephoto lens but they did introduce an allnew 50 megapixel ultrawide lens to this phone the selfie camera seems seems to be the same 12 megap shooter up front and inside the camera app well we'll have to test out that new ultrawide lens for sure and Samsung says they put a big emphasis on improving low light and nighttime video by reducing noise and enhancing detail so again TBD on that there is that new log video format for filmmakers that 1% of users will you know what never mind that's new via the expert raw download and Samsung added an audio eraser add-on so you can cancel out background noise or wind noise in your videos which honestly is probably the most useful camera addition to them all I'm of course looking forward to putting this camera to the test in the coming weeks to see how it Stacks up I guess I'm just surprised to see that Samsung seems to have peaked when it comes to camera hardware and features it was a Fast and Furious race to the top in recent years but I suppose we've stalled out for now the s25 ultra I think is probably not meant for s24 users I mean Samsung has said that themselves they don't expect people to upgrade every single year so I feel like I shouldn't even ask if you're upgrading from an s24 device but if you have something older is this s25 Ultra enticing enough for you to finally get something new or are you waiting for some more substantial Hardware or design changes or maybe some features or add-ons they still haven't gotten to let me know in the comments down below I'd love to hear your thoughts of course hopefully you guys did enjoy this video though be sure to follow Tech daily on Twitter and subscribe to the tech daily YouTube channel if you haven't already and I'll see you guys later
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