At the time of writing, my Galaxy S25 Ultra is en route to my home and is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. That’s right, despite the fact that the new S25 phones are like 95% the same as last years, I bought one. Maybe I’m a sucker. To be fair, we do have a new vapor chamber for that new SOC, a new ultrawide camera, gorilla glass armor 2 and more RAM for the lower end models and.. uh.. I guess that’s actually about it.

Hey, There’s Software!

Much like last year, the focus has been almost entirely on new software. We’ve got Now Brief, Now Bar, the reassignment of the Gemini assistant to the power instead of Bixby, Gemini has been extended to integrate with more Samsung apps I’ll never use, natural language search in settings and their gallery, AI Select in the Edge Panel and more.

With all that, I do firmly expect these phones to once again be among the best phones on the market and I expect them to sell pretty well. Perhaps they’ll surprise us again by outselling the prior model like the S24 line did - despite the much maligned S Pen downgrade.

Last year's models defied expectations by selling well, despite social media backlash that Samsung had become complacent by releasing the same phone year after year. People said the new AI features were useless and no one would want them. Fortunately for Samsung, the broader public disagreed. You do have to wonder though, how many years in a row can Samsung release phones that only an tech expert could differentiate from the prior year before even the broader public starts to perceive laziness? 

And didn’t Samsung say they’d stop doing this?

Samsung’s Crisis

Back on October 8th of 2024, a post was made on Samsung’s Newsroom page outlining what they described as a crisis. They admitted that their sales “did not meet the expectations of the market” and promised to “make the serious situation we are currently facing into an opportunity for a leap forward.” Only months later they would release an Ultra phone whose only defining physical characteristic is slightly rounded corners. Am I being too hard on them? Probably?

It’s fair to point out their hardware upgrades have been.. le'’s say underwhelming, but it’s not fair to expect the S25 series to represent the change of course seemingly outlined in their blog post given the phones were certainly deep into development at that time. It’s also worth once again pointing out that the S Series in the midst of a solid year. To me, it’s quite obvious that they weren’t talking about their flagship series, but were instead referring to the poor sales of their foldables. Unliked the S Series, the Z Fold4 sold better than the Fold5, which sold better than the Fold6 to this point. That’s real bad and it’s not hard to see why it’s happening

Their foldable hardware is just as stagnant and is facing major competition from the likes of OnePlus, Google and 214 other Chinese OEMs, each of which are shipping noticeably better hardware. The S25 series looks too samey, but you can’t tell me the hardware is behind. Charging is too slow, but otherwise the hardware remains towards the top of the heap. The Z Fold line cannot say the same. They’re thicker, the cameras are lower end, the screens haven’t adjusted to public sentiment… They just haven’t kept up.

Fearlessly Pioneering or Appeasing

I know everyone wanted to see an S25 series that bucked the trends and went hard on hardware changes, but that was just never going to happen. Samsung isn’t going to reinvent their best selling wheel. When will we know if they were serious about “fearlessly pioneering” again? With the Z Fold7. Let’s just be real: If they ship another phone that keeps the same cameras, doesn’t adjust aspect ratio and isn’t thinner they were full of s**t. It just is what it is.

Here’s the good news though. We’ve seen reports from reputable people like Ross Young here that Samsung might just be readying the Z Fold Special Edition for launch globally as the Galaxy Z Fold7. That would be a device that ticked most every box mentioned and would be the most radical upgrade since the Z Fold2. This is precisely what Samsung must do. No ifs, ands or buts. They have to deliver this year.

If the S Series is going to be their safe line of phones that doesn’t really push any boundaries anymore, settling for consistent sales figues then the Foldables need to be the Pioneer they claim they still are. It’s put up or shut up time, Samsung. If they don’t nail this one, that OnePlus Open 2 is looking mighty nice..

Personally, I just hope they don’t the the S25 Edge is what we’ve really been wanting all this time..