Galaxy S25 Ultra vs Galaxy S22 Ultra differences explained:
| Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra | Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra |
|---|---|
| Titanium design with rounded corners, flat panels | Aluminum frame, straight corners, curved panels |
| More compact (8.2mm and 218gr) | Slightly thicker, taller, wider, and heavier (229gr) |
| 6.9-inch AMOLED with QHD+ resolution and 1-120Hz refresh rate, 2600-nit peak brightness, anti-reflection coating and an AI content upscaler, Gorilla Armor 2 | A 6.8-inch AMOLED with QHD+resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, but lower maximum brightness, Gorilla Glass Victus+ |
| 200MP main camera, 50MP 5X telephoto, 50MP ultrawide, 12MP selfie | 108MP main camera, 10MP 10X periscope, 12MP ultrawide, 40MP selfie camera |
| The fastest Qualcomm chip –– the 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy | Aging Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (4nm) with inferior performance |
| 12GB RAM in the 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB versions | 8GB RAM in the 128GB version, 12GB RAM in the 256GB, 512GB, 1TB |
| Wi-Fi 7 | Wi-Fi 6 |
| 45W wired, 15W wireless charging | 45W wired, 15W wireless charging |
Table of Contents:
Design and Size
Surprisingly few changes
This change eliminates one of the few unique design features that all Galaxy Ultra phones with an S Pen have had since their inception. While beauty usually lies in the eye of the beholder, there’s no denying the new phone looks great, but so does the older one.
Aside from the shape change, the Galaxy S25 Ultra comes with flat Gorilla Glass Armor 2 panels at the front and back, the beloved S Pen Stylus, IP68 water- and dust-resistance, as well as the titanium frame that was introduced last year.
From a size perspective, the new phone is more compact: shorter, narrower, thinner, and lighter than the Galaxy S22 Ultra. A decisive win, no matter how you look at it. However, when you hold each phone in your hand, the older Galaxy feels more ergonomic and sits more conveniently in the hand. It doesn’t cave into the palm of your hand as much, which makes it feel like a more compact phone, despite the larger overall size.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S22 Ultra was the first Galaxy Ultra phone with an S Pen. It also debuted the straight corners at the top and bottom that are about to go mostly extinct, as well as the curved front and back display panels, an echo from a bygone smartphone era. It also was an IP68-rated device with pretty decent resistance against the elements. The frame was made of aluminum.
But in the grand scheme of things, the two devices are similar and share a ton of common Galaxy DNA.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra comes in Titanium Silverblue, Titanium Whitesilver, Titanium Black, and Titanium Gray; we expect some exclusive colors on Samsung.com, too. The Galaxy S22 Ultra was available in Phantom Black, White, Burgundy, and Green. Not a terribly exciting selection, that’s for sure.
Display Differences
The Galaxy S25 Ultra comes along with very narrow bezels and a slightly larger 6.9-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, with super-smooth 1-120Hz dynamic refresh rate, HDR, and a new ProScaler feature intelligently upscales on-screen content with 40% reduction in undesirable artifacts. There’s some positive difference, but nothing too groundbreaking, so definitely a nice-to-have, especially if you love watching older 480p/720p YouTube videos.
There’s also an improved anti-reflection coating on the screen, which minimizes reflections and passively boosts the legibility. The peak brightness here is 2,600 nits, just as high on the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S22 Ultra employs a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED display, with a QHD+ resolution, 120Hz maximum refresh rate, and HDR support. The peak brightness wasn’t very high here. Of course, the Galaxy S22 Ultra screen is slightly curved, so you have slightly less actually usable area.
Well, based on our in-house benchmark tests, the Galaxy S25 Ultra achieves a significantly higher peak brightness in comparison with the Galaxy S22 Ultra. The minimum brightness of the older phone is also way less impressive, so the screen won’t go down to the same levels as the Galaxy S25 Ultra. In terms of color accuracy, however, the older phone has a slight edge when it comes to gamma and the RGB color chart, where it hits more of the targets.
Both phones share a common biometric loadout: they have ultrasonic fingerprint scanners embedded into the displays, which will enable quick and effortless biometric authentication. Face unlock is also present, but not as secure.
Performance
Welcome, 3nm!
The Galaxy S25 Ultra uses Qualcomm’s newest top chipset, the 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite, easily among the best ones available to Android manufacturers at the moment. It’s not the garden-variety Snapdragon, though, but in a similar fashion to previous years, it’s an overclocked and tuned-up Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, a custom chip with some goodies, like the ProVisual Engine for the camera.
The same chip is used on all Galaxy S25 units regardless of the region, which will deliver uniform performance and features.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite brings major gains in performance and efficiency. Samsung says the Galaxy S25 Ultra delivers 37% faster CPU processing, 30% better graphics-processing, including faster ray tracing and better Vulkan performance, as well as 40% faster NPU for all on-device AI needs.
But managing heat could be a problem, especially since 3nm chips seem to produce a lot of heat, which doesn’t really play well with the limited cooling capabilities of smartphones. Samsung has also brought a 40% larger vapor chamber, which will likely help curtail the excessive temperatures generated by the chip inside the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but it seems that the thermal efficiency isn’t that great, with the phone easily throttling with intensive use.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy S22 Ultra comes with the aging Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which was fast for its time, but is now definitely aging and lagging behind the majority of newer chipsets. The phone also came with 8GB of RAM on the entry-level 128GB version, but you also get 12GB RAM in the 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB versions. The Galaxy S25 Ultra ships with 12GB of RAM for all configurations.
Software
The Galaxy S25 Ultra introduces some intriguing new Galaxy AI features, like the Gemini-powered cross-app actions, which allow the assistant to execute complex tasks between different apps with a single natural-language command.
For example, you can ask it to retrieve your favorite sports team’s schedule and automatically add each game to your calendar. This capability extends to all apps installed on your phone, both native and third-party, drawing comparisons to Apple’s upcoming Siri enhancements.
Another addition is the Now Brief, which provides a summary of your daily activities tailored to the time of day and other factors. Complementing this is the Now Bar, located at the bottom of the lock screen, which offers quick access to live activities, charging stats, media controls, and mini widgets.
Google’s Gemini also powers the enhanced Circle to Search feature, which now provides relevant options based on what you interact with—for instance, quickly dialing a phone number or navigating to an address via Google Maps if you circle a phone number or an address.
When it comes to software support, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will receive seven years of major Android updates and security updates, so until 2032. The Galaxy S22 Ultra, however, was only promised four years of support, so it will stop receiving updates as soon as early 2026 and may go obsolete soon afterward.
Camera
Pretty different camera setups
Samsung says it has improved macro and low-light videos, as well as vastly enhanced the image-processing algorithms. The latter is courtesy of a new ProVisual Engine, integrated straight into the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. According to Samsung, it greatly helps reduce noise and motion blur while improving overall sharpness in photos, which is always welcome.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra now also supports 10-bit HDR video capture, a step up from 8-bit HDR, providing richer colors and greater dynamic range. Additionally, the device can record in Galaxy Log format, giving users more flexibility for detailed editing and color grading in post-production.
A new Audio Eraser feature leverages on-device AI to isolate or enhance up to six distinct audio types in videos. Samsung has also refined its generative edits and object eraser tools, ensuring cleaner results without unwanted artifacts.
In our custom camera test, it’s the Galaxy S25 Ultra that unsurprisingly takes the cake, but it not only beats the Galaxy S22 Ultra, it positions itself as the most capable cameraphone available right now in early 2025, which is a pretty impressive feat.
Main Camera
The main difference between the two phones are the details and colors. With the older Galaxy S22 Ultra, we get significant oversharpening and colors that are a bit too-oversaturated, while the Galaxy S25 Ultra gives a significantly more natural photos.
At night, the oversharpening is easily noticeable on the Galaxy S22 Ultra, and while that may seem decent to layman eyes, it’s not. The Galaxy S25 Ultra gives you a more natural low-light photo.
Zoom Quality
At 3X, we get significantly better dynamic range and significantly better-defined detail with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The Galaxy S22 Ultra delivers tends to overexpose the scene a bit, and detail is inferior.
At 5X, the Galaxy S25 Ultra employs its 50MP periscope lens, so detail is perfect, while the Galaxy S22 Ultra struggles a bit.
Finally, at 10X, which is native for the Galaxy S22 Ultra periscope, the situation is just about even when it comes to overall sharpness.
Ultrawide Camera
On top of them being slightly more detailed, Galaxy S25 Ultra photos also boast a much more accurate color temperature, while the Galaxy S22 Ultra applies a greenish tint.
In low-light, the Galaxy S22 Ultra does a very decent job with slightly better dynamics and is sharper.
Selfies
The Galaxy S22 Ultra front camera tends to apply a yellowish tint to the selfies taken with the phone, while the Galaxy S25 Ultra is much more balanced when it comes to the overall color temperature. Detail is also too soft on the older device, while the latest Galaxy delivers significantly more appealing selfies.
More Camera Samples
Battery Life and Charging
So many years, yet so little has changed
If you’ve been hoping that Samsung will deliver anything apart from a 5,000mAh battery, you’re in for a rude awakening. Just as all devices from the Galaxy S20 Ultra to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, we are getting a standard 5,000mAh battery inside the new Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Is that bad? Well, no, but seeing how some phones these days feature large 6,000mAh lithium-silicon batteries in smaller bodies, we have a slightly sour aftertaste with Samsung’s consistent use of a 5,000mAh battery pack.
Even though the battery size of the Galaxy S25 Ultra matches the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the battery life on the newer phone is significantly better. That’s mostly thanks to the efficient Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, but multiple other optimizations have also made that possible.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra achieves excellent results in our custom battery tests, which are all conducted at 200 nits of brightness. In our browsing test, the Galaxy S25 Ultra achieves nearly 21 hours of usage, while the Galaxy S22 Ultra trails behind at 13 hours and 17 minutes.
Meanwhile, in our custom video battery test, the Galaxy S25 Ultra almost reaches 9 hours, while the Galaxy S22 Ultra isn’t that much behind at 7 hours and a half. The most significant difference between the two phones, however, is in our gaming test, where the Galaxy S25 Ultra reaches 14 hours and 21 minutes, while the Galaxy S22 Ultra reaches a little over 7 hours
PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:
We also get 45W wired and 15W wireless charging on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which still matches the Galaxy S22 Ultra. Both phones take a little over an hour to charge fully to 100%.
Specs Comparison
| Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra | Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra | |
|---|---|---|
| Size, weight | 162.8 × 77.6 × 8.2mm, 218gr | 163.3 x 77.9 x 8.9mm, 229gr |
| Screen | 6.9″ Dynamic 2X AMOLED 2600 nits peak brightness 1-120Hz Anti-reflective coating |
6.8″ Dynamic 2X AMOLED 1-120Hz dynamic 1,750 nits |
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, 3nm | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 for Galaxy, 4nm |
| RAM, Storage | 12GB/256GB 12GB/256GB 12GB/1TB LPDDR5 |
8GB/256GB 12GB/256GB 12GB/512GB 12GB/1TB LPDDR5 |
| Cameras | 200MP main 50MP ultrawide 10MP 3X telephoto 50MP 5X periscope 12MP front |
108MP main 12MP ultra 10MP 3X telephoto 10MP 10X periscope 40MP front |
| Battery | 5,000mAh | 5,000mAh |
| Charging | USB-C 45W wired 15W wireless |
USB-C 45W wired 15W wireless |
Summary
The Galaxy S25 Ultra introduces several meaningful upgrades over the Galaxy S22 Ultra, making it a strong contender for those considering an upgrade.
The new flagship features a sleeker titanium design, a larger and brighter 6.9-inch AMOLED display with AI upscaling, and the powerful 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, delivering significant improvements in performance and efficiency.
Camera advancements between the two phones include a 200MP main sensor, a 50MP ultrawide, and enhanced video capabilities like 10-bit HDR and LOG capture, alongside a new AI-powered Audio Eraser. The Galaxy S25 Ultra has a significantly better camera, as well as much better battery life.
Should Galaxy S22 Ultra users upgrade? It appears that, yes, the new Galaxy S25 Ultra is a compelling choice for those seeking a flagship that feels truly next-gen.
While the S22 Ultra remains a solid device, the S25 Ultra’s advancements in design, performance, and functionality definitely make it hard to resist the benefits of a potential upgrade.
