Samsung Galaxy S25 review: the smallest top-tier Android left

Compact phone has flagship chip and buckets of AI, but hasn’t changed much from predecessors. The smallest and cheapest of Samsung’s new Galaxy S25 line might be the one to buy, offering top performance and the very latest AI features for less and proving that smaller-sized Androids can still be great.

Unlike previous generations of Samsung’s smaller models sold in the UK and Europe, the regular S25 has the same top-flight chip as the enormous and pricey Ultra model, offering a lot of performance while costing £799 (€919/$800/A$1,399). The rest of the S25 hasn’t changed materially since last year. It still has a great 6.2in screen, three cameras on the back, flat aluminium sides and glass front and back. That makes it the most compact of high-end Android phones available, competing with Apple’s iPhone on size where others including Google’s Pixel 9 have grown steadily larger.

With its small size comes a smaller battery than most modern Androids, although Samsung does well to squeeze a solid 37 hours out of the S25. In general use on a mix of 5G and wifi, and actively using the screen for more than six hours, I had to charge the phone every other day. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip makes the S25 one of the fastest phones available and is great for games, but playing them significantly dents the battery life.

The big changes for the S25 are all software and AI-based. It runs the same latest version of One UI 7 (Android 15) as the S25 Ultra, including various new AI tools that expand on writing, summarisation and drawing tools introduced last year. Most of the new tools are designed to either anticipate what you want to do to find information you might need ahead of time or to perform multiple complex tasks on your phone via text or voice commands.

Google’s next-generation Gemini assistant is the biggest upgrade, able to interact with information from the web and apps on your phone to get things done without you having to manually tap buttons. Ask it to put the date into your calendar from a party invitation flyer that has been texted to you and it can do so. It can find restaurant recommendations and send them to a friend as a suggestion for dinner with a simple voice command. It can also understand what is on your screen from text, photos and videos to answer questions, find out more information or perform actions.

It can be almost magical when it works. But it can’t be relied on to get things right every time. Sometimes it trips up on trivial things such as different spellings of names, and it can confidently hallucinate information that looks good on first glance but is in fact totally wrong. Neither Google nor Samsung has solved these fundamental problems that plague all AI bots at the moment.

Samsung’s new “Now” bar at the bottom of the lock screen is more successful as a useful place where timely information widgets, timers, media-playing controls and other handy bits appear. You can swipe through a stack of them to see what’s happening or quickly change track.

Samsung will support the S25 with software and security updates for seven years from release, which matches the best from Google and Apple. Main screen: 6.2in FHD+ Dynamic Amoled 2X 120Hz. Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. RAM: 12GB. Storage: 128, 256 or 512GB.

Operating system: One UI 7 (Android 15). Camera: 50MP + 12MP 0.6x + 10MP 3x; 12MP front-facing. Connectivity: 5G, USB-C, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 5.4, UWB and GNSS. Water resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 mins). Dimensions: 146.9 x 70.5 x 7.2mm. Weight: 162g. Samsung does not provide an expected lifespan for the battery but it should last in excess of 500 full charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity.

The phone is generally repairable. Screen repairs cost £149 by authorised service centres and include a battery replacement. Samsung also offers a self-repair programme. The phone contains multiple recycled materials including aluminium, cobalt, copper, glass, gold, plastic, rare earth elements and steel. Samsung offers trade-in and recycling schemes for old devices. The company publishes annual sustainability reports and impact assessments for some individual products.

Sign up to TechScape. A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives. after newsletter promotion. The S25 has a triple camera setup on the back with a 50-megapixel main, 12MP ultrawide and 10MP 3x telephoto, which is a combination that hasn’t really changed since the S22 in 2022 and is exactly the same as last year’s model.

That means it shoots generally very good photos across the three cameras. The main is the best and can produce some great shots, although it has a tendency to over-brighten some scenes, causing highlights to be blown out, such as bright direct light washing out shots of people. The 2x zoom is improved on the S24 with slightly more detail, while the 3x zoom is solid, although short on reach compared with the 5x cameras common on slightly more expensive rivals. The ultrawide is equally solid and rounds out a good but not groundbreaking package.