Samsung S25: Everything You Need to Know Before Release

The release of yet another generation of Samsung S series phones is upon us. This year, Samsung has a lot to prove and improve on in their upcoming phones as the competition has only gotten stronger. Will Samsung prove all its doubters wrong? Or will the competition remain ahead? Well, we’ll have to wait and see. But in the meantime, we can kill time by discussing everything we know about the upcoming Samsung S25 model. So here’s everything we know about the Samsung S25: release date, price, design, etc.

Samsung S25 Release Date & Availability

Samsung has officially confirmed that the Galaxy S25 series will be released on January 22nd. You can reserve the S25 now at no cost and will get $50 Samsung credit if you end up making the purchase. Pre-orders are expected to start immediately after the launch as usual. As for availability, there’s no concrete info yet, but rumors say that February 7th is the date pre orders get delivered and the device becomes physically available.

Display

There’s been a lot of talk lately on what improvements Samsung will make on the display of the upcoming Samsung S25. Samsung has some feature changes they could easily add to differentiate the base model S25 from the competition. Speaking of changes, there’s also talk about the screen itself getting a bit bigger.

Screen Size Increase, 6.2 to 6.36

The base S phone (the S25) is rumored to see yet another screen size change, making this the 3rd year in a row if true. The leak comes from South Korean leaker yeak1122, who said the Samsung Galaxy S25’s screen size will increase from 6.2 inches (on the S24) to 6.36 inches. As of the time of writing this article, we’ve not gotten any confirmation of this leak, nor has any other credible leaker backed up the statement.

Smaller Bezels

The base Samsung Galaxy S25 is expected to see trimmed bezels. Based on what we’ve seen from Samsung in the past as well as hands-on leaks of the Galaxy S25 Ultra showing its significantly thinned bezels, it’s reasonable to expect the S25 will also feature reduced bezels, albeit to a lesser extent than the Ultra.

Screen Brightness

Industry insider and reliable leaker Ross Young confirmed that the S25 series will not adopt the newer M14 display currently used on the Pixel 9 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, which ironically is manufactured by Samsung Display, but instead will go with the older M13 display to save costs.

On the other hand, information from Ice Universe and Android Authority says the S25 Ultra’s display is brighter, even hitting 3000 lux. All three credible sources have a good track record of being correct, so we’ll have to wait till the S25 series releases by Jan 22nd to see who’s right. Another perspective on this is that Samsung somehow managed to squeeze out an extra 400 nits from the older M13 screen. Again, we’ll have to wait until Jan 22nd to get official confirmation.

As for the Galaxy S25, it is unlikely that its 2600 peak brightness rating will change.

Gorilla Armor Panel

Now this will be a golden feature; the base Samsung S25 could be getting the S24 Ultra’s Anti-reflective display courtesy of the Gen 1 Gorilla Armor screen. Our image below speaks for itself, clearly showing the difference between a normal and an anti-glare screen. While there isn’t explicit news, leaks, or confirmation regarding the Samsung S25 getting this upgrade, what we do know for sure is that the Samsung S25 Ultra is getting Corning’s second-gen Gorilla Armor panel. In cases like this, Samsung usually passes the last-gen Ultra tech to the new base and plus model. However, we’ll wait to see if that happens again this year.

Samsung’s Anti Glare Screen Resolution and Refresh Rate

Unfortunately, it seems the screen resolution of the Galaxy S25 will stay the same (1080 x 2340 pixels). It’s funny how the 5-year-old Galaxy S20 resolution (1440 x 3200 pixels) will be sharper than the latest and greatest Samsung Galaxy S25.

Same story for the refresh rate, although it’s okay here because the current base S24 already offers the same adaptive 1-120Hz as the Ultra models, which means that’s the best Samsung has to offer currently.

Design

There’s really not much to say, because not much has changed here. Nevertheless, here’s what you need to know about the design of the Samsung S25.

Same Old Design?

All signs point to Samsung using a similar design it used on the S24 and S23 on the S25. Making this the third year in a row, it seems like they have settled into this type of design for now.

New Colors

The new colors for the full lineup got leaked by Ross Young a while back, and it’s pretty much been confirmed by other credible leakers. So here are the new colors coming to the Samsung S25:

Moon Night Blue
Silver Shadow
Sparking Blue
Sparkling Green

Samsung Exclusive Colors:

Coral Red
Pink Gold
Blue/Black

Camera

So far, we’ve got little information; to make matters more complicated, the little information that managed to leak out contradicts each other. We’ve gotten reports that say the Samsung S25 will retain the exact same camera system and sensors; another says that telephoto sensor has been upgraded another says Samsung ditched its own Isocell sensor for a Sony lens, and another that says Samsung will use one of its newly released 50mp Isocell GN sensors. Nothing’s been confirmed yet, so we’ll have to wait until the Samsung S25 release date to find out.

Battery Life and Charging

Battery Capacity

Reports indicate that the Samsung Galaxy S25 retains the same 4000mAh power cell as its predecessor, but that doesn’t mean the S25 won’t have better battery life than its predecessor. As we’ve seen before, Samsung knows how to optimize their device to use less power. With the power-efficient 8 Elite, it won’t be a shock for the S25 to significantly outlast its predecessor.

Charging Speed

It seems Samsung is still feeling the aftereffects of the Note 7 incident because there’s no other plausible reason why, for six generations, their flagship base phone has used the same 25W fast charging. In other words, YES, the Samsung S25 will still use 25W fast charging even when competitors have upgraded their fast charging.

Qi2 Wireless Charging

We do have some positive news about the Samsung S25’s wireless charging. A few months back, leaked renders of the S25 showed the device in a transparent case with a MagSafe-like ring on the rear, and now, a recently published press release from the Wireless Power Consortium (the organization in charge of the Qi wireless charging standard) announced that Samsung devices released in 2025 will support Qi2, the latest wireless charging standard. This means better efficiency, and above all, the Samsung S25 can use MagSafe accessories.

Software & Features

There’s a lot happening on the software side of things, and here is everything that we know so far.

ONE UI 7

One UI 7 is currently undergoing public beta testing, and from what we’ve seen, One UI is getting a massive overhaul. Several key app icons, like Camera, Calculator, Gallery, etc., have been changed. Also, animations and fluidity of the whole system have been greatly improved. According to Samsung, the official stable One UI 7 version will launch alongside the Galaxy S25 series. Here are some of the cool confirmed features we’ve seen in the ONE UI 7 beta:

The Samsung Now Bar allows users to receive important notifications without unlocking their devices.
Improved Writing Tools which can now be used without switching between applications.
Separate notification panel and quick settings panel

Crash Detection

Leaked firmware codes seem to say Samsung is working on a car crash detection feature, similar to what we see on the iPhone.

Gemini Advanced

Samsung S25 users could get free access to Google’s latest and most advanced AI model, Gemini Advanced. This leak comes from an APK teardown by Android Authority; they found code in Google Beta that suggests Galaxy S25 users will get free access.

Galaxy AI

Currently, we only know a few things about Galaxy AI on the Samsung S25. First and seemingly the biggest, Bixby is getting significantly improved, in fact Ice Universe says it will be the selling point of the S25. Thanks to some timely leaks from reliable leaker @AhmedQwaider888 on X we got info on some of the new Galaxy AI features:

LOG Video allows you to take any video in raw colors, and you can add colors & control them later.
Now while filming, you can move between cameras without cutting or lagging due to the increase in frames
With Auto Eraser you can now remove annoying sound in the video

Ice Universe has confirmed we will get more exciting Galaxy AI features, so that’s another thing we’ll have to wait for the official Samsung S25 release date to see.

Performance and Hardware

The Samsung S25 has been confirmed to pack a lot of new and improved internal hardware, so let’s unpack it. (See what I did there?)

Weight

Another leak from Ice Universe lets us know that the Samsung S25 will weigh just 162 grams. That’s 5 to 6 grams lighter than its predecessor, the S24 which was about 168 grams.

Upgraded Storage

Samsung has finally increased the base storage capacity of the base Samsung S25. Now the base storage capacity of this S series phone is 256GB ROM and 12GB RAM. Even more significantly, the base Galaxy S25 now features UFS 4.1 storage, delivering noticeably faster performance for everything from launching apps to transferring files while also consuming less power.

Processor

The Samsung Galaxy S25 is adopting the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite and should even get a customized Galaxy-only version. This cutting-edge processor significantly outperforms the 8 Gen 3 with a 45% CPU boost from its new Oryon architecture, a more efficient 3nm process, a 40% faster Adreno 830 GPU, and enhanced AI processing allowing the chip to run many AI tasks locally. If you’re curious about how smartphone processors like the Snapdragon 8 Elite work read our article about how smartphone processors work.

We haven’t seen any benchmark scores from the base Galaxy S25 yet, but S25 Ultra’s high score gives us a glimpse of what to expect. The S25 Ultra scores 3,011/9,706 (single/multi-core) compared to the S24 Ultra’s 2,412/6,693. While the iPhone 16 Pro Max still leads in single-core performance at -3,386, its multi-core score of 8,306 is lower than the S25 Ultra’s.

Availability

As for availability, multiple reports from credible leakers like Ice Universe say Exynos isn’t in the picture this year, and its Snapdragon on every S25 series phone, but a recent benchmark test of the S25 Plus powered by the Exynos 2500 suggests Samsung still has plans for their in-house chip in the S25 series. In case you’re wondering, the Exynos 2500 performs up to 37% below the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

One of the reasons Samsung adopted the dual chip system is to save costs, and with more reports saying that’s not going to be the case this year, it could spell a phrase everyone needs a break from but can’t seem to get.

Price

There are many speculations flying around about the Samsung S25 price. While we don’t have anything concrete, a credible tipster claimed the Samsung S25 512GB variant would cost $1,099 (€1,079), which means the S25 could indeed get a price increase.

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy S25 brings exciting upgrades like the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qi2 wireless charging, and One UI 7, while retaining some familiar elements like its design, and battery. However, the lack of improvements in resolution, charging speed, and more may disappoint some users, especially with rumors of a price hike.

With the official launch of the Samsung S25 on January 22nd, the device promises a mix of refinement and innovation. Whether it meets expectations or falls short remains to be seen, but it’s certainly one to watch.

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