Samsung Galaxy S25 review: Pocket-sized powerhouse

The smallest model in Samsung’s Galaxy S flagship lineup has gone from strength to strength and been the best compact top-of-the-line smartphone money can buy these last few years.

This year’s model, the Galaxy S25, isn’t much different from its predecessor, with the primary upgrade being the bonkers Snapdragon 8 Elite ‘For Galaxy’ chip. It also has a thinner and lighter design and newer versions of Android and One UI out of the box.

Photos captured in daylight with the 50MP main camera are great, with excellent detail and dynamic range and pretty accurate color reproduction. Photos are less impressive at night, with a lack of fine detail even though the phone doesn’t aggressively reduce noise (stronger noise reduction results in less detail).

And a few shots from the zoom camera at various zoom levels (3x, 10x, 20x, 30x):

If you like taking portrait photos, you will like the ability to capture those at any manual zoom level between 1x and 5x. That’s a first for a Samsung phone. On older devices, you could only zoom to 1x, 2x, 3x, and 5x in portrait mode, which could feel a bit limiting, especially if you were coming from an iPhone.

Samsung continues to keep features like autofocus support on the ultrawide camera and long-range zoom exclusive to the Ultra model. However, when it comes to the camera’s software features, you don’t miss out on much.

The Galaxy S25 series phones shoot at 10-bit HDR by default, and you can turn on HDR10+ recording for even better colors and contrast using Samsung’s Camera Assistant app. There’s also the option to shoot in the log format, which captures more information from the camera sensor and lets you adjust the colors and tone of the video in post-production.

The selfie camera will satisfy most users. When the lighting is right, selfies have good detail, and the S25 more accurately captures skin tones. However, when things get dark, selfies are soft. They are also prone to shake if the camera activates Night mode and uses the screen flash.