Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra / Apple iPhone SE (3rd generation, 2022)

The Samsung Newsroom release is dated 23 January Korea time; the event was 22 January in US time.

Samsung notes memory options may vary by market and usable storage is lower because of preloaded software. There is no card slot.

Samsung quotes 40% NPU, 37% CPU and 30% GPU gains over the previous generation. This version is tuned for Galaxy with higher clocks than the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite.

The vapor chamber spreads heat from the chip into the body, helping clocks hold longer in extended gaming.

The viewable area is smaller than the diagonal because of rounded corners and the camera hole. Refresh that drops to 1 Hz saves power on static content; Vision Booster adjusts tone mapping in bright light.

Typical maximum brightness is 625 nits and typical contrast 1400:1. As an LCD, blacks are not as deep as on OLED and the screen runs at 60 Hz; the small size makes one-handed use easy but leaves little room for video and games.

Used on the front only. Corning says it survived drops of up to 2.2 m onto a concrete-like surface in internal lab tests; this is not a durability guarantee for any given phone.

Titanium is used only on the frame, excluding the volume and side keys.

Per Samsung, 3× and 5× are optical; 2× and 10× are “optical quality” zoom made by sensor cropping. OIS is optical image stabilisation.

Log records a flat profile for colour grading; results depend on the editing workflow. Audio Eraser can reduce layers such as voices, music, wind and crowd separately in videos.

The 45 W adapter is sold separately. Samsung quotes up to 31 hours of video playback. Wireless PowerShare charges earbuds or a watch from the back of the phone.

No adapter is in the box. MagSafe is not supported, but standard Qi chargers work. The port is Lightning, not USB-C.

According to Android Central’s one-year report, the phone received One UI 8 (Android 16) ahead of schedule.

5G/LTE availability depends on market and carrier.

The model on the UK page is A2783; supported 5G and LTE bands vary by model and country.

Water resistance is not permanent and may diminish over time.

Colour availability varies by country and carrier.

It is the same chip as in the iPhone 13 and 13 mini, which is the main reason it handles heavy tasks such as 4K video editing and keeps getting updates for a long time.

Storage cannot be expanded later; 64 GB can fill quickly if you shoot 4K 60 fps video.

Apple notes this resistance is not permanent and may decrease with normal wear.

There is a single rear camera with no ultra-wide or optical telephoto. Apple’s list does not include Night mode for photos, only Night mode time-lapse video.

There is no Face ID; the phone unlocks and approves Apple Pay payments with a fingerprint instead of face recognition.