Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Review: An Apple User's Honest Take

We’re an Apple-focused site. That’s literally our name — OnVerdict started as an Apple verdict platform. So when we review a Samsung phone, you should know upfront: we have biases, we know we have biases, and we’re going to try our hardest to set them aside.

After a month with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra as our only phone, here’s the honest truth: it’s a phenomenal device that made us question several things we assumed about the iPhone. It also reinforced why we keep coming back to Apple. Both of these things are true simultaneously.

First Impressions: The Hardware Is Stunning

The S25 Ultra is, aesthetically, the most refined Samsung phone ever made. The titanium frame borrows heavily from iPhone design language — flat edges, matte finish, precise machining — and it looks and feels premium. Samsung finally stopped trying to out-curve and out-glass the competition and instead opted for understated elegance. It works.

The 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display is magnificent. 3,120 x 1,440 resolution, 120Hz adaptive refresh, and a peak brightness of 2,600 nits that’s actually brighter than the iPhone 16 Pro Max. Colors are vivid without being oversaturated (in Natural mode), and the display is effortlessly readable in any lighting condition.

At 218 grams, it’s lighter than the iPhone 16 Pro Max (227g) despite having a larger display. This matters. A month of use confirmed that every gram counts in daily comfort.

The S Pen: What Apple Pencil Wishes It Could Be (On a Phone)

The integrated S Pen is the S25 Ultra’s most distinctive feature, and after a month, we understand why Samsung loyalists insist on it. Quick notes, screen annotations, document signatures, and precise selections are all genuinely useful in ways that fingers simply can’t replicate.

We found ourselves using the S Pen multiple times daily — clipping interesting passages from web articles, signing PDFs without printing them, and jotting quick notes during phone calls. None of these tasks require a stylus, but all of them are better with one.

Apple has nothing comparable on iPhone. The Apple Pencil works only with iPad. For users who want stylus input on their phone, Samsung is the only premium option. Period.

Camera: Where Things Get Interesting

The S25 Ultra’s camera system is excellent — a 200MP main sensor, 50MP 5x telephoto, 10MP 3x telephoto, and 12MP ultrawide. The sheer resolution of that 200MP sensor captures an absurd amount of detail in good lighting. Cropping into photos reveals textures and details that the iPhone’s 48MP sensor simply can’t match.

But — and this is important — we still preferred the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s processing in most scenarios. We compare them head-to-head in our Galaxy S25 Ultra vs iPhone 16 Pro Max article. Samsung’s processing tends toward higher contrast and more saturated colors, while Apple produces more natural, true-to-life images. Neither is objectively better, but our preference leans toward accuracy.

Low-light performance is a virtual tie. Both phones produce excellent nighttime photos with impressive noise reduction and detail preservation. We genuinely couldn’t pick a consistent winner across dozens of comparison shots.

Video is where the iPhone pulls ahead. The iPhone’s video stabilization, Dolby Vision HDR processing, and cinematic mode are still superior. Samsung has narrowed the gap significantly, but for video content creation, the iPhone remains the better tool.

Galaxy AI: Samsung’s Answer to Apple Intelligence

Samsung’s Galaxy AI suite is more mature than Apple Intelligence in several ways. Circle to Search — drawing a circle around anything on screen to search for it — is genuinely revolutionary. We used it dozens of times and it consistently produced useful results.

Live Translate during phone calls works remarkably well. Real-time transcription and translation during a call with a non-English speaker was functional, if slightly awkward due to processing delays.

Chat Assist and writing tools are comparable to Apple’s Writing Tools — both summarize, rewrite, and adjust tone effectively. Neither has a clear advantage.

Where Samsung lags is integration. Apple Intelligence feels woven into iOS at a system level. Galaxy AI often feels like a collection of features bolted onto the OS. The difference is subtle but affects the overall polish.

One UI 7: The Android Experience

One UI 7 is Samsung’s best software to date, and it’s where our iPhone biases were most challenged. The customization options are genuinely liberating. Home screen layouts, icon packs, default apps, file management, split-screen multitasking — Android gives you control that iOS simply doesn’t.

The notification system is better than iOS. There, we said it. The notification shade, quick settings, and notification grouping on Android are more logical and more useful than iOS’s implementation. Apple has improved, but Samsung’s notification management is genuinely superior.

What we missed from iOS: the consistency. Some Android apps don’t follow system design guidelines. Some third-party apps feel janky. The App Store’s curation, for all its controversies, does produce a more consistent quality baseline than the Play Store.

What Samsung Does Better Than Apple

Charging. 45W wired charging fills the S25 Ultra from 0 to 65% in 30 minutes. The iPhone maxes out at about 27W. This matters when you’re running late.

Display brightness. 2,600 nits versus 2,000 nits. The S25 Ultra is more readable in extreme sunlight.

Customization. Not even close. Android gives you control over your phone’s look and behavior that iOS fundamentally doesn’t allow.

Samsung DeX. Plugging the S25 Ultra into a monitor gives you a desktop-like interface. Apple has nothing comparable.

What Apple Does Better

Ecosystem integration. AirDrop, Handoff, Universal Clipboard, iMessage, FaceTime, Apple Watch — the Apple ecosystem is seamless in a way that Samsung’s ecosystem isn’t.

Long-term software support. While Samsung has improved dramatically, Apple still leads in OS update longevity and consistency.

Privacy. Apple’s on-device processing, App Tracking Transparency, and privacy-focused defaults are meaningfully ahead of Samsung’s approach.

Video recording. The iPhone produces better, more consistent video across all lighting conditions.

Who Should Consider Switching

iPhone users who feel constrained by iOS’s limitations. If you’ve ever wished your phone had a stylus, wished you could customize your home screen freely, or wished for better multitasking — the S25 Ultra delivers on all of those wishes.

But if you’re deep in the Apple ecosystem — Apple Watch, AirPods, Mac, iPad — switching to Samsung means losing integration benefits that are genuinely hard to replace. For a mid-range take on this rivalry, see our iPhone 16 vs Samsung Galaxy S25 comparison. The grass is greener, but your entire garden is on the other side.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra on Amazon (paid link) (paid link)

The Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is the best Android phone ever made, and it’s a legitimate alternative to the iPhone for anyone willing to leave the Apple ecosystem. It forced us to confront our assumptions and acknowledge that Samsung does several things better than Apple. The S Pen, the display, the charging speed, the customization — these are genuine advantages, not marketing fluff. Whether they outweigh Apple’s ecosystem and software polish depends entirely on what you value most.

OnVerdict Score: 8.5/10 — A worthy rival that made this Apple site question its assumptions.