4 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Features We Want To See In Other Phones

Samsung has been on a roll in the recent few years, with its top-end Galaxy smartphones becoming crowd favorites. The Galaxy S25 Ultra brings meaningful improvements in the form of a spec bump and ever so slightly improved optics over its predecessor. Despite a few controversies surrounding the device, it's safe to say that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra will remain one of the best smartphones you can buy in 2025. After all, the phone earned a score of 9/10 in our Galaxy S25 Ultra review — with our only notable complaints revolving around the downgraded S Pen and the familiar yet dated design.

The giant display and the assortment of cameras are great to have, but not everyone wishes to blow close to $1,300 on a phone. Fortunately, the smartphone market has a variety of options at every price point — especially across Android offerings. There are phones as big as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and ones that bring flagship-level performance while costing several hundred dollars cheaper. Yet, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is in a class of its own thanks to the several goodies that Samsung has packed in it. 

There are smartphones being released left, right, and center, with improvements in design, performance, and battery life. With the latest from Samsung often becoming a point of comparison, here are a couple of features we hope make their way into other phones.

Samsung went from offering one of the most complained about Android skins, TouchWiz, to a version of Android that now evokes envy among other smartphone users. One UI has been getting increasingly more user-friendly, with the addition of useful new features in every release. Samsung's take on Android is vastly different from the vanilla experience that you get with a Pixel or Moto smartphone. The latest version of One UI is much cleaner and doesn't shy away from allowing users to customize every nook and cranny of the software experience.

Good Lock is one of the best Samsung Galaxy features and offers a way to switch up your device's look and feel. With the app installed on a Samsung phone, you can add lock screen widgets, mess around with the system theme colors, change the navigation bar icons and layout, and much more. Inspired by the customization features in iOS 18, you can reorder the quick toggles in One UI. While a few other Android skins let you do this as well, we would love for every smartphone to offer this convenience.

Samsung's flagship series also benefits from timely software updates and longevity. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is promised to receive seven years of software updates and security patches, which is tied with the latest Google Pixel smartphones. Software support like this on every other Android phone would be incredible to have. 

Nearly a decade and a half ago, in 2011, we saw the first Galaxy Note — and the stylus that came with it. The S Pen has since appeared in every generation of Samsung's top-end model, despite the discontinuation of the Note series. The Galaxy S25 Ultra continues to offer a built-in stylus, and while the device received much-deserved criticism for dropping Bluetooth support for its S Pen, Samsung users still enjoy the convenience of jotting down notes with style. 

Apart from the Galaxy Z Fold6 that supports the S Pen, and the Moto G Stylus 5G that's priced at just $399 on Amazon, there aren't many current-gen Android smartphones that come with advanced stylus features. With displays on our phones getting bigger every year, having a few options that come with a built-in stylus wouldn't be so bad. 

The Bluetooth-enabled S Pen from previous generation Galaxy smartphones could even be used as a remote shutter for capturing images. Even without this functionality, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is a great device to annotate documents on — not to mention the perfect way to out-doodle all of your friends on Snapchat. 

It's tough to talk about the Galaxy S25 Ultra without marveling at its industry-leading specs. The phone is powered by the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC, 12 GB of RAM, and comes with up to a terabyte of storage. It features a 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X QHD+ display that refreshes at 120Hz. Obviously, you expect nothing but the best when you're paying north of a thousand bucks for a phone. Affordable alternatives to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, like the OnePlus 13, are a prime example that you can still get the latest and greatest without losing your wallet's entire heft.

One thing Samsung has nailed with its S-lineup is design. Though there's criticism surrounding the largely unchanged appearance of the Galaxy S25 Ultra — it has an unmistakably refined chassis. We've started seeing other brands adopt this strategy — the iPhone has the stovetop camera layout, while the Pixel houses its sensors in a camera visor. This creates a strong brand identity and allows for newer generations of phones to feel like a refined evolution rather than a messy redesign.

Every year, Samsung's flagship model stands right alongside the newest iPhone to offer one of the best photo and video shooting experiences on a smartphone. The Galaxy S25 Ultra has a quad-camera setup at the rear, featuring two telephoto lenses — allowing digital zoom up to 100x. Many mid-range phones have adopted ultrawide sensors already — perhaps it's time for them to offer optical zoom as well. 

For better or for worse, it's become nearly impossible to spot a new product launch without the mention of AI. Releases like the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the iPhone 16 series have had keynotes where AI took center stage. While Apple Intelligence could very well be one of the worst iOS 18 features we've tried, Galaxy AI has managed to get mostly positive feedback from users. Of the many Galaxy AI features available on the S25 Ultra, Circle to Search and Live Translation are something we need on every phone.

Circle to Search may just be a glorified reverse image search utility, but it works beautifully — especially when paired with the S Pen. You can use the stylus or your finger to circle over anything on your screen and receive relevant information about the subject. This can come in handy when an interesting clothing item in a movie catches your eye, for instance. Live Translation is an addition to Galaxy smartphones that highlights the highs of AI, and how it can genuinely be useful when implemented in the right way.

Another excellent Galaxy AI feature is the ability to search for specific photos in your gallery using natural language queries. Given how eager every manufacturer is to hop on the AI bandwagon, it's very likely that we will be seeing a bunch of useful features on every smartphone soon.