WED, FEB 12
NimishAndAkriti
We keep seeing phones getting bigger than before (hell, even Apple now has one with a massive 6.9 inch display), so it warms our hearts to see a brand go out and put a small-ish phone in the market. And with very good specs too. Yep, we have the Samsung Galaxy S25 and here's a look at it.
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We are going to be totally honest - if you have seen the Galaxy S24, then you have pretty much seen the Galaxy S25. The S25 is almost the same height as the S25 but is slimmer, and has the same flat front and back, and a three camera array on the back, with the (in)famous rings on them. We got the white variant and well, it is elegantly plain, and at 146.9 mm in height and 162 grams in weight, pleasantly compact and light. Just for comparison, the iPhone 16 is 147 mm tall and weighs 199 grams.
It is a pretty tough phone, though - you get Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front and back, and the frame is Armour Aluminium. You also get IP68 dust and water resistance - this phone will actually survive even a dunk in the water!
There are some hefty hardware innards within that compact frame though. You get the top of the line Snapdragon 8 Elite processor (the same seen on the S25 Ultra), that 6.2 inch display in front is Dynamic AMOLED 2x with 2340 x 1080 resolution (which might seem a little low given the price) and 120 Hz refresh rate, although its peak brightness of 2600 nits is a little low compared to the 4500 nits we have seen on the OnePlus 13, and even the OnePlus 13R. RAM is 12 GB and storage options are 256 GB and 512 GB. Yes, this is pretty well stacked up. It is capable of handling everything you throw at it from Call of Duty to detailed video edits (you will have to squint at that smallish display, though).
The three cameras on the back are very similar to the ones we saw on the Galaxy S24 - 50 megapixel main with OIS, 10 megapixel telephoto with 3x optical zoom and OIS and 12 megapixel ultrawide. The selfie camera too remains a 12 megapixel one. We are sure there will be plenty of software improvements out there, but you know what? We expected something different and better. We mean, this is a flagship, right?
The phone comes with Android 15 out of the box, with lots and lots of AI goodies (Galaxy AI), and with an assurance of seven years of OS and security updates. The phone is also expected to get a new version of Samsung's OneUI shortly.
The phone comes with everything you would expect in a flagship - stereo speakers, NFC, Bluetooth 5.4, and so on. The compact form, however, means that the battery is a relatively small one - 4000 mAh, just as on the Galaxy S24. Charging remains painfully slow at 25W wired and 15W wireless and no, there is still no charger in the box.
You get all of this at rather steep prices - Rs 80,999 for the 12 GB/ 256 Gb variant and 12 GB/ 512 GB at Rs 92,999. That's well above the iPhone 16 which starts at around Rs 70,000 now and the Pixel 9 which is retailing for about Rs 74,999. Both are also compact phones, and deliver a fairly good experience in their own rights. And then there is the OnePlus 13, which is not compact at all, but has much better specs at a much lower price of Rs 69,999! Yes, the going is unlikely to be easy for the most compact GalaxyS25 of them all. But then this is a Samsung Galaxy S device - we are sure it will score in performance terms. Stay tuned for more, and feel free to send us your queries. We will do our best to answer them.