Now it’s time to talk about the Galaxy S25+. This phone… if you haven’t already know, looks basically identical to the S24+ that I’ve been using for the past year – but there are quite a lot of changes under the hood – particularly changing from the Exynos 2400 to the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The question is – how much of a difference does it make?
For today, we’re going to review the S25+, and also have a bit of a comparison between the S24+ with Exynos 2400 and the S25+ Snapdragon 8 Elite.
Design
Looking at the phone, the S25+ basically has the exact same dimensions and shape of the S24+. Literally, it looks the same, feels the same, and weighs the same too. There are new colors, and I do think that they look great. I do think most of the colors look great, particularly this grey color, which changes color when the angle of reflection changes. The Mint, Navy, and especially the Coralred colors look exceptionally great – and I really hope for these colors to come to the Ultra too.
The only other change is the camera rings – which is now slightly larger than before and there is a black ring around them. But we’ll talk about them later.
Screen
Now, when we look at the front of the phone, the S25+ also looks basically identical to the S24+. That’s because… they kinda are. The same screen size, the resolution, and also the refresh rate.
Looking at all of our data and comparing it with the S24+, the display yields basically the same maximum auto brightness of around 1340 nits brightness too.
The color accuracy though, is the same story as the Ultra. The new S25+ seems to have a slight reduction of the DCI-P3 color gamut coverage across all the vividness levels alongside improved ΔE numbers for all vividness levels. With a slightly lowered DCI-P3 color gamut coverage means that the colors are not as vivid, by the way.
Either way, this is a great display. It still looks very sleek from the front and the bezels are very tiny. I really wish that the S25+ had the antireflective screen though. That would’ve been a really nice upgrade.
Performance
The performance side of things is going to be interesting here since Samsung decided to change from the Exynos 2400 to Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy.
As shown in our gaming test, the Galaxy S25+ performs basically the same as the S25 Ultra despite having a smaller cooling system compared to the Ultra. I honestly don’t think the cooling is the bottleneck here as the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s GPU is constantly pegged at 100% in games like Zenless Zone Zero at this render resolution with the highest settings.
While it is indeed better than the Exynos 2400, the performance gap is to be expected from a generational leap in terms of technology.
Battery life
But, we have to talk about the battery life of the Galaxy S25+. It’s still using the same 4,900mAh battery – the same one as last year. Using our standardized battery life test, the new Galaxy S25+ can last about 15 hours and 9 minutes in 1440p mode and 16 hours and 1 minute in 1080p mode.
If we compare this with last year’s Galaxy S24+ with the Exynos 2400, it basically lasts about 1 to 1.5 hours longer – but if we normalize it and put it into percentages, the difference is not really that drastic. In 1440p mode, it’s nearly 10% better, and at 1080p it’s only 7.18% more efficient. This is nowhere near whatever percentage Qualcomm threw on their website.
Charging speed
As for the charging speed, it’s the same as before too. 45W is what Samsung states on their spec sheet and from our test, it can take in around 41W at most.
It takes around 64 minutes to charge from 15% to completion – and the charging speed is indeed thermal throttled. The red line is the temperature and corresponds to the right y-axis, and we can see that the thermal limit for the battery while charging is at around 40.5°C. When it hits that temperature, the charging speed slows down for the battery to cool down, then ramps back up again and repeats the cycle until it reaches 75% charge and slows down the charging speed before completing the charging cycle.
Software
Now, the software. One UI 7 is a very big change compared to what we had before – but I think that we’ll talk about it in another video. The Now Brief is something that I find very useful but it’s rather difficult for me to show you its full potential now because I only use it for testing purposes.
It’s a big topic to talk about – since One UI 7 has a lot of differences and new features compared to what we had before.
Just know that even with a UI redesign, the features that I care about the most – Samsung Wallet, Modes and Routines, and the newly upgraded Edge Panel are still here.
Camera
Alright – time for the cameras. The hardware is basically the exact same as the S24+. However, since the chipset has changed, the image signal processor – ISP – has changed too.
To have a look at all the pictures taken with the Samsung Galaxy S25+, watch our video at the top of this review.
A few more things to mention
Back to the Galaxy S25+, it still has a USB 3 port at the bottom, still has Samsung DeX with display output via that USB-C port, and for our region – we have a dual SIM card slot.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S25+
So, at the end of the review – should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S25+? Well, I do think that I’m in a unique position to talk about this because I am using the S24+ with Exynos 2400 for the past year. And I do think that it’s just not worth upgrading whether if you’re using the the S24+ with the Exynos or Snapdragon version. The improvement is just not that much.
However, if you are coming from the S23+ or older, then yes – it’s a good time to upgrade. Remember, the S24+ is the generation that got a “redesign” with a bigger battery, better screen with tiny bezels, and also a high-resolution 1440p resolution.
And that’s all that we have to share with you in today’s video about the Galaxy S25+ and also sort of a comparison with the S24+ with the Exynos 2400. While this is most definitely a hot take – I am quite disappointed that the Exynos 2500 is not available this for the S25+. It would’ve been great to see what kind of improvements that Samsung had been cooking.
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