The Samsung Galaxy S25’s best feature will probably be one you can’t see

Minor camera and design updates could be joined by a powerful performance boost

11 Jan 2025, 15:00 · TechRadar

News By Jamie Richards published 11 January 2025

(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

The next generation of Samsung flagships is nearly here – we’re expecting to hear official news of the Samsung Galaxy S25, S25 Plus, and S25 Ultra by the end of the month – and I suspect that this year's most consequential Galaxy upgrade will have nothing to do with the new phones' appearance.

It’s easy to get excited about the prospect of cutting-edge tech whenever a phone maker announces a new flagship model, but in reality, we’ve generally seen year-on-year progress slow down when it comes to the major components and functions of modern smartphones – at least those that you can see.

The Samsung Galaxy series, for its part, has inhabited roughly the same form factor for half a decade; the Google Pixel series has focused on stabilizing performance with each version; and the iPhone 16 is the first truly new-feeling handset from Apple in years.

We’re again expecting to see a slew of marginally improved specs for the S25 lineup this January, particularly so on the base-model S25 and its identically-specced big sibling, the S25 Plus; both will miss out on the highest-end upgrades destined for the S25 Ultra. For the two ‘standard’ models, the latest S25 specs predictions suggest a bit more RAM, a slightly larger screen, and maybe some bumped-up storage options. Cameras and battery sizes are due to stay the same. It's hardly Christmas, is it?

There is, however, one category where we’re expecting to see much more of an improvement this year, and it’s not one you can see – not without ripping your phone in half, anyway (which TechRadar famously advises against).

Each and every Galaxy S25 model is tipped to launch with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, the latest in Qualcomm’s line of class-leading mobile chipsets. Put simply, this could be a game-changer for performance and instantly rocket Samsung to pole position in the performance race with Apple. Allow me to explain why.

Elite by name, elite by nature

The S25 may look similar to the S24 (pictured), but big boosts under the hood could make for a radically different experience. (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

For those not in the know, the Snapdragon 8 Elite follows up the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 – already one of the most powerful mobile chipsets ever produced – and improves (by Qualcomm’s own metrics) on that chipset's single and multi-core performance by 45%; it also offers vastly improved power efficiency.

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