Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra / Google Pixel 9 Pro XL

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.

Storage is chosen at purchase and cannot be expanded; there is no memory 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.

LTPO lets the panel drop as low as 1 Hz with static content to save battery and rise to 120 Hz when scrolling; Google notes 120 Hz is not available in every app. The 2000-nit HDR figure is measured with the whole screen lit, the 3000-nit peak with 5% of the screen lit.

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.

Google lists 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 5x and 10x as optical-quality zoom; the range up to 30x is software-assisted digital zoom. The wide and telephoto cameras have optical + electronic stabilisation, and there is a multi-zone laser autofocus sensor.

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.

Video Boost processes footage on Google’s cloud servers to improve night and 8K recordings, so the processed result is not instant and needs an internet connection.

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 charger is included; the box has a USB 2.0 USB-C cable. Google notes Battery Share noticeably reduces the phone’s own battery life.

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.

Wi-Fi 7 gives higher speed and lower latency on the 6 GHz band with a compatible router; the Indian version supports only Wi-Fi 6 (2.4/5 GHz). The USB-C port runs at USB 3.2 speed, but the bundled cable is USB 2.0.

Water resistance is not permanent and may diminish over time.

Colour availability varies by country and carrier.

IP68 is the dust and water resistance class under IEC 60529; Google notes the protection is not permanent and can weaken with wear, repair or damage.

Titan M2 is a security chip that handles sensitive operations such as passcode and lock-screen verification separately from the main processor.

Dual-band satellite positioning helps reduce errors from signals reflected between tall buildings.

Satellite SOS is offered only in the US and is free for the first two years; Car Crash Detection is not available in every country or language.