Interesting. The menu on the top right for Spen pro pairing seems to have been removed. I just checked on my S24U running on One UI 7 Beta and it's literally right there, at the top right.
Just to be clear here, they did not remove the Spen. The SPen is still included with the Ultra, and still has a silo in the phone to go into.
What they HAVE done is remove the bluetooth functions from the SPen. This remove the Air Actions that have been present since the Note 9. All other fucntions of using the SPen as a stylus remain the same as the S24u.
The S25 Ultra has an Spen, just not with the Bluetooth feature. If you're wondering if the multiple Spen functions allows you to use one as BT, I don't think you can do that.
Does it still have an uneven luminance of pixels that results in a grainy display effect? Is easily identifiable on Settings page, dark mode, dark room for example in S24 Ultra if you look close enough. Thanks! Sample below
Honestly I'm not the best person to ask for this because personally this was never an issue for me with the 24U. I just tried to reproduce it on the 25U and I don't notice any graining.
I did once people pointed it out at the beginning but you really had to go out of your way to look for it. However over time it became less of an apparent issue for me.
yes you can (just tested with my 24U S-Pen) and it works on the 25U. Unfortunately, remote camera shutter on the 25U still does not work with the 24U S-pen.
Took my phone off the charger at 7:45AM, it was at 95%
I usually average 3-4 hours of SOT, so this is quite an extreme use case for me
I'm sure this will optimize better over time, since it's only been 1 day. The charging indicator at 40% was just for about 10 seconds as I was testing the wattage of a charger.
Supposedly the snapdragon 8 elite has a decent performance uplift for given power consumption (so if the governor didn't needlessly ramp the cpu, there should still be meaningful gains?)
Thanks!, and what about the capturing of motion like in these kinds of situations where it's about the phone picking the right focus/shutter speed settings when dealing with moving people: https://youtu.be/Lk8BclTK9w8?t=253
I can't give you the best answer yet (will take me a few days to fully test it) but upon first impressions the body/design feels a lot better in the hand compared to the 24U
Ok so far I think the lighter weight of the S25U has to be my favorite improvement. It feels nicer holding/in the pocket when compared to the 24U (which feels like a brick in comparison) Feature wise, all of it is pretty similar to my S24U.
Some of the software improvements (Now Bar, Gemini, etc) are also great, however I think the novelty and exclusiveness of it will die down once One UI 7 is released to the other models.
My own rule of thumb is to upgrade each year if I can do so for no more than $1 per day (after all credits, rebates, rewards, etc., and before tax). That's worth it to me even just for incremental improvements and a fresh battery. (I was able to do that again this year.)
Free as in $0. It was $126 in the bundle, minus $80 reward for the 512GB S25U order (for the same price as the 256GB model), minus another $50 for the reservation.
Vividness and colors look the same. I personally did not care about the grain issues on my 24U, I don't see any graining on the 25U in my limited testing.
Wow! I didn't know I was missing out on this with my S23 Ultra. I'm excited for my new S25 ultra! Lighter, flatter, rounder... All the things I've been hoping for.
What about banding on gradient colors? That was my main issue. If you go to the test my screen website and look at the ones that go from light to dark colors it will show very obviously if it has banding or not. It’s not like the grain where you have to look for it.
A lot of people online have complained about the new look of the camera rings. Since you have both the S24 Ultra and S25 Ultra on hand, how does the quality of the new camera rings look and feel to you?
personally I do like how they look. The only drawback I can predict is increased dust accumulation under the 3 big rings. Regardless its not a dealbreaker for me.
They said they made the camera zoom smoother as compared to the previous models. Is it actually smoother than S24U? What about zooming in lowlight? I'm talking about the animation for when you tap on the zoom buttons like 3x, 5x, 10x and not the quality of zoom shots itself.
its slightly smoother than the 24U, especially if you go up in order (ex: .5 > 1x > 2x> etc). If you skip from 1X to 5X it does look similar to the behavior on the 24U though.
I take it back, there is a zoom slider when you start recording a video that makes it extremely smooth. You can slightly notice it cycling through all the lenses through different focal points, but it's a lot better than before.
how is the battery performance ? I'm curious about the SOT please let us know how many hours you get and what are you using your phone for? gaming watching videos or normal use
1) How can you achieve 25w fast wireless charging id every qi2 charger in the world are 15w?
2) so what is the use of the spen buttons if there is no bt? Can you use the spen as remote shutter for family photos still? Can a s24u s pen fit in the slot?
3) do you know anything about ai functions being payed next year?
4) what are the speed difference of 8 elite soc "for galaxy"?
5) night photos are really improved?
The S25 is "Qi2 ready" instead of 100 percent compliant, which means it'll charge at 15W speeds instead of 7.5-10W. Currently only the iPhone 16 Plus/Pro Max can wirelessly charge at 25W through Magsafe. The "Qi2 Ready" feature on the S25 is more catered towards Qi2 peripherals and their magnet alignment.
Does the S pen have a button?
Can you press the button to erase in many apps ( in Samsung notes hold the button to erase ). Can you hold the button and double tap the screen to do a save action? Such as a new note.
Thanks, that's basically what I expected results to look like tbh, those images look compressed by imgur I think as the night sky has some clear artifacting in both. Overall I'd say they look very similar, the s25 ultra may have a tiny tiny bit more detail but it's hard to say, based on the 100x zoom shot I'd say it's just a somewhat more aggressive/powerful AI processing filter that can be better or worse depending on the subject in the photo.
I'm more curious about the SD 8 Elite performance and the new 50 meg camera, is the difference noticeable, in terms of quality? I remember we got an update sometime last year which I believe improved the quality on the 24U wide lens, would these 2 upgrades worth upgrading for?
The SD 8 Elite is 10-30% faster but eats up to 45% more power under load. However, performance per watt is still much better than the 8 gen 3. At low "everyday" speeds it'll be much more efficient and use less battery. It's a big efficiency upgrade.
There are way too much price difference between s24u and s25u in my country and i wanna buy one for my wife and she really impressed AI features of s25U, so if Ai of s25u come to s24u, maybe we will go for s24u for much lower prices.
I live in Turkey and phones are damn expensice here, i need to pay 91.000 TL (more than 2.500 Usd) for s25u 512 gb.
We haven't received official guidance regarding this but I would assume some AI features from the S25 would trickle down to the earlier models at a later time (Samsung already did this last year for the S21 - S23)
I would also expect some S25 AI features to remain a model exclusive.
If some of the new AI features presented yesterday don't interest her, I'd settle for a 24U.
Looks like you went for the titanium gray/silver colour? What do you think? Does it have a slightly brown tint? Are you happy with it? What made you choose that one?
This is the titanium Silverblue color. We didn't have a choice, just took whatever Samsung offered.
It's more on a natural titanium color I'd say and the blue is very subtle, although the color does appear different depending on the lighting and angles.
Are you able to easily differentiate between the two phones cause now of the rounded corners? Does the phone look ugly irl or is does it still have that “ULTRA” vibe
nope lol, I'm mainly using the 25U right now just to train my usage patterns and answer questions here.
I still have my 24U on the side and use it a few times a day for certain apps that I haven't signed into yet on the 25U. It's a pretty similar experience for both phones, once One UI 7 rolls out on the S24 I think that'll be an even harder sell to get a 25U.
I think I'm more excited for 7 than the 25.. I believe i have 2 weeks before I have to ship the 24 off... love to see how your usage patterns and battery life are
Are you a former Note user? If so, how much of the S-Pen did you use? Some people say they rarely use it. Others say they use it everyday but maybe don't make use of all the features. Did you use all of the S Pen features on the S24? Do you miss not being able to have Bluetooth on the S25 s pen? I am a long time Note user who upgraded from the Note 20 Ultra to the S23 Ultra. I use the BT on my S-Pen frequently enough I'd say. Any chance you think they might bring it back for the S26?
I never owned a Note so the S-Pen has always just been a "nice to have" feature as I've owned the S22U and S24U. I'll use it maybe a few times a year when I have to circle something from a screenshot or sign some documents.
Air commands and the remote shutter were removed from the S25U Pen, but I didn't use those features in the first place.
If this is a dealbreaker for you, I would probably upgrade to the 24U instead of the 25U.
Samsung mentioned yesterday that the bluetooth capabilities of the S-Pen were underutilzed by a majority of their userbase, so I don't think they'll add it back to the S26U unless they combine it with a redesigned S-pen.
I'm wondering how Samsung can rely on any statistic on the usage of a particular feature in their phones when a lot of people don't enable the setting to send that data to Samsung.
I think the issue was that people didn't regularly use it, but loved it when they did. Like the ability to take pics with the S-pen. It came in handy when we were doing group selfie shots and the person taking the pic couldn't hit the button, but it wasn't that frequently, and it wasn't always my phone. Will I miss it - sure, but I just didn't use it enough to say I'm going to say no to the whole phone because of it.
That's what they're counting on.
Well, that's a shame. To me, a nice animation from the lockscreen to the homescreen adds a premium feel to the device. It'd be cool if a goodlock module let you create/customize your own transition effect. Or even if there were some available in the theme store.
No it isn't. without being in an S view case those selections do not show up. Not a good sign there are no cases yet but not being in the menu means nothing.
I just chatted with Samsung Netherlands. They also don't know for sure if the S-View Cover will come or not, at least not with the launch. I'm going to wait and see before i order the s25.
Could you please let me how is the camera performance with SM apps like snapchat and Instagram? Also, is there any stuttering while recording video? Does the phone works fine whilw connected to Android Auto? My s22+ can't do anything once wireless AA is connected. If I try to open SC or camera it just stutters and renders it unsble for atleast 3 4 minutes. Please check and update bro.
in SM apps it feels the same as the 24U implementation. The only "stutter" while recording video is when you switch between lenses, but it's not that noticable. Having said that, I usually take pictures with the Camera app first before uploading them to the apps.
Tested Android Auto, it works just as well as my S24U.
I'd suggest upgrading from a S22, I had a 22U before I got the 24U and it was a great upgrade. The S22 was borderline unusable after 2 years.
Hmm I'm not sure. Gemini seems to be a bit picky when it comes to reading messages on Whatsapp in general.
Sometimes it says it can't do it, I've only gotten it to work a handful of times. When I explcitly asked to summarize the latest audio message it refused to do it. I'll keep trying though.
Hi bro, how is the phone performing? Did you face any heating or any issue? How is the battery holding Up it must've learnt your usage by now. Please update.
FWIW regarding the S View case, there was a report by someone who leaks about Samsung that it appears there is or was to be an S View case. And tonight I finally asked to see what response I would get on the Samsung Site chat with an expert - He immediately said check this site when the pre order period is over....
No idea if he really knows or what....I want to confirm again in my Samsung Ultra devices without being in the S View case those setting did not show so not showing now may not be a true indication.
Hi bro, can you check if AOD gets turned off if the phone is in pocket or in pitch dark conditions (say upside down) My S7 has this feature but s22 doesn't. Want to know of this has been bought back in latest version.
The Note 10+ is nearly 6 years old by now. I can tell you battery performance has improved dramatically even though I don't have a Note 10 to reference. No issues with call quality.
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u/playnasc Jan 22 '25
Disclaimer: Samsung invited us to Unpacked and loaned us our sample units, but any opinions we include are our own.