I won’t bury the lede with this review of the Samsung Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus: these phones are incredibly similar to every Galaxy S phone Samsung has released since the Galaxy S22 and S22 Plus in 2022. The design has barely changed and the cameras are literally the same, meaning if you are looking to upgrade your Android phone, there isn’t a lot here that’s new – on paper, at least.

That’s not to say these aren’t two excellent phones, because they are. The smaller 6.1-inch screen S25 is about as compact as high-end Android phones get, and it’s the model I prefer and recommend out of the two. The 6.7-inch S25 Plus is substantially larger, which gets you a higher resolution screen and a bigger battery, therefore slightly better battery life. But in a world of enormous phones, the regular S25 is a breath of fresh air.

One of the best things about both phones is Samsung’s updated One UI 7 software, based on the latest Android 15 version. It’s easy to use and easier to customise (if you know how) to make these phones feel like your own, a flexibility offered by Android that’s harder to get on the platform’s main smartphone competitor, the iPhone.

But at £799 and £999, the S25 and S25 are expensive devices for what they offer, which are very incremental upgrades over the S24 and S24 Plus. If you want to spend less, those year-old phones can be found much cheaper and have practically identical specs and features, and will soon receive free software updates that give them the same One UI 7 software and, most likely, all of the Galaxy AI tools the S25 phones launched with.

The Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus are available to buy now directly from Samsung, as well as via every UK major retailer: EE, O2, Vodafone and Three.

Comparisons with older Samsung phones aside, the S25 and S25 Plus are very pleasing phones to use daily. They’re easy to set up and you can transfer all your data (texts, photos, apps and more) from your existing Android or iPhone device using a cable or wirelessly. There are a few quality of life changes to make out of the box; for example the phones oddly do not display notifications on the lock screen by default. This is a little jarring but can be remedied in the Settings app.

The ultrasonic fingerprint sensor underneath the OLED screen works excellently for quick unlocking and app verification, and performance is among the best on any phone thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, an upgraded version of Qualcomm’s latest processor also found in the OnePlus 13 and Honor Magic 7 Pro I recently reviewed. Gaming, multi-tasking, video calls – any phone activity runs without a hitch and should do for years to come.

The OnePlus 13 costs £899, putting it in between the S25 and S25 Plus price-wise, and it offers vastly better battery life and superlative cameras, though the allure of the Samsung brand is strong. Samsung also offers an industry-best seven years of software support, even if you are unlikely to still be using an S25 in 2031 as the hardware slows down and battery life degrades.

The regular S25’s charging speeds are stuck at a measly 25W, which is slow by modern standards.Thankfully the Plus gets 45W. There’s no charger in either box, just like with any iPhone and OnePlus 13, though the OnePlus device can charge at zippy 100W speeds. The S25s also have wireless charging compatibility.

For the price, I’d hoped for improved camera systems on the S25s. There are three lenses here but none are best in class. The 50MP main, 10MP 3x telephoto and 12MP ultra-wide will take great shots in daylight that most people will be happy with for family memories and social media posting, but you can get better main camera shots from the OnePlus 13. Samsung also boosts night time shots to look like they were taken in the day, which is far from realistic, and the main sensor failed to accurately capture the pink hue on clouds at sunset. That said, the portrait mode on both phones is truly excellent.

Samsung insists on boosting reds, blues and greens to artificial levels, but images are generally well produced with good detail. Yet these cameras don’t represent significant Samsung upgrades. With practically the same camera hardware as 2022’s S22 series, Samsung needs to offer more if it’s continuing to charge these prices. The £1,099 Oppo Find X8 Pro has an incredible 6x telephoto zoom and better main lens and costs just £100 more than the S25 Plus.

I also prefer the overall photos from the £999 Google Pixel 9 Pro, which has subtler image processing and better clarity, but results are very close.

Despite the nitpicking, Samsung should be praised for including an optical telephoto zoom lens on both phones. The £799 iPhone 16 and £799 Google Pixel 9 don’t have one, so their zooming is achieved by cropping images from the main sensor, with worse results than on the S25s.

Samsung might argue those who want the best camera from its range should opt for the Galaxy S25 Ultra with its quad-camera setup and 200MP main lens, but the majority of buyers won’t want to splash out £1,249 for a phone that is one of the largest on the market and has features such as a stylus that they may not ever use.

Samsung knows it has basically put out the same phone for the fourth year in a row, so it has upped the marketing push for its Galaxy AI features included on the S25s. You can use the built-in tech to rewrite your texts or emails in a different tone of voice, summarise or bullet point text or audio recordings, erase people or objects from photos, create an artistic drawing from a sketch done with your finger, or get live translated transcriptions from conversation with someone speaking another language.

The object eraser tool can work eerily well when it gets it right (see below image) but the Portrait Studio option to turn people into cartoons, sketches and other styles is quite bad.

In isolation you might find these tools fun, helpful even. But they don’t amount to a solid reason to upgrade to the S25. The image generation is gimmicky and pointless, as is the new Now brief, a widget that appears on the lockscreen. Tap on it and the phone is meant to collate useful information from your apps, but it mostly just says hello and shows you the weather forecast. In my time with the phones, it didn’t pull in anything useful other than a few calendar items, and it requires you to use Samsung’s own calendar app for that to work.

The Now Bar, a different widget, can show you things such as your Uber’s arrival time, a timer or the current or final score of your selected favourite sports teams, a little like the iPhone’s Dynamic Island. I like the scores option, but had to work out how to get it to appear, which is to delve into the widget’s settings to toggle your team on. The fact this appears to be a Google-run feature suggests it will come to other Android phones in future but again, it’s not a reason to get the S25 if you’re happy with your current phone. It’s also worth noting Samsung has said its AI features will only be free until the end of 2025. Though the firm hasn’t indicated how much it might charge customers, or for which features, it seems as though Galaxy AI will turn to a subscription model in the future.

None of this changes the fact that the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus are still very good smartphones, and ones you should consider if your phone is ageing and you have about £800 to spend on an Android phone. You should be able to find more affordable two- or three-year contract deals in the UK too, and if you can wait, the price to buy the handsets outright should fall, as Samsung phones tend to get heavily discounted a few months after launch.

If you’re coming from a Galaxy S21 or another phone from 2021 or older, the S25s represent big upgrades in build quality, battery life, camera performance and software perks. It’s just that they do so little new compared to the Galaxy S phones Samsung has released in recent years, which makes me prefer the latest devices from OnePlus or a company such as Nothing, whose Phone 2a skimps on comparative build and camera quality but costs just £319. I’m not convinced Samsung has done enough with the S25 and S25 Plus to justify the price premium.

You’ll get just as much phone from the £499 Pixel 8a if you don’t mind sacrificing the telephoto lens and screen quality – a phone that is on sale for £349 at the time of writing.

But if you live in Samsung land, the S25 is the one to go for. The S25 Plus nets you a larger screen and marginally better battery life, but I don’t think that should command the extra £200 Samsung is charging.