Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Camera: Specs, Zoom and Settings

Samsung has changed very little in terms of the hardware compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The main camera is still the same 200MP sensor and the 5x periscope telephoto camera is also the same. The only major hardware change here is the new 50MP Ultra Wide camera. Combined with Samsung’s improved ProVisual Engine (running on the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy), the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s camera is a significant upgrade.

For starters, colours look a lot better. Samsung has finally cracked colour science!

S25 Ultra camera specs

What's actually new vs the S24 Ultra

• 50MP Ultra Wide (replacing 12MP UW) camera will capture landscapes and group photos with much more detail
• The new and improved ProVisual Engine will deliver more natural skin tones, less obtrusive HDR processing and better quality images in low light situations (at least for JPEGs)
• With the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, AI-powered features such as Photo Assist, Generative Edit and Audio Eraser run faster on-device
• Galaxy AI features such as Sketch to Image, Drawing Assist and Now Brief are built in

Why color science matters more than megapixels

Whereas Samsung phones of yore were known for oversaturated greens and somewhat waxy skin tones, Samsung’s new image-processing pipeline in the S25 Ultra (which is handled by what Samsung calls the ProVisual Engine) does a great job of keeping skin tones and foliage natural-looking. There’s a marked improvement in JPEG quality side-by-side with the S24 Ultra, especially with portraits and in scenes with challenging mixed lighting. (If you shoot Expert RAW DNG files and do your own post-processing, however, you likely won’t notice much of a difference between the two phones.)

Despite carryover from the S24 Ultra in the form of the same primary camera sensor and F1.7 maximum-aperture lens, the S25 Ultra’s night shots are impressively clean, thanks to processing. Detail in shadows is nicely rendered with fine, even grain instead of Samsung’s previous tendency to smooth away texture. Settings for use with a tripod or in the hand can be found in the S25 Ultra Night Mode guide.

Zoom range

And of course that 5x periscope is still the best around when it comes to zooming in from a distance. Images at 10x are still impressively sharp and even 30x zoom can be usable in decent light. 100x Space Zoom is more of a party trick, though here and there a decent shot can be gotten. The most popular focal length for portrait photography is probably the 3x dedicated tele. It sits nicely between Wide and 5x.

For street/travel photography, start with the 5x. Being equivalent to ~111mm, it gives you the distance compression you’d get from a short tele on FF, and with the 50MP sensor you still have plenty of room to crop.

Pro Mode and Expert RAW workflow

Pro Mode lives in the stock camera under More → Pro, where you can manually adjust ISO, shutter speed, white balance and focus, and check the result using focus peaking as well as a live histogram. If you enable RAW copies in the camera settings (under Advanced picture options in older versions of the software, or Photo format → Pro mode picture format on One UI 9), then as well as the usual JPEG, Pro mode will save a DNG file. Our S25 Ultra settings page lists starting values for each situation.

Expert RAW is a free Samsung app from the Galaxy Store, and you can pin it to the camera's More menu once it's installed. It saves a linear 16-bit DNG file, created by combining several frames, as well as the usual JPEG. The DNG can then be imported into a RAW processing application such as Lightroom, where you’ll find there’s plenty of detail in the shadows that can be brightened substantially before too much noise becomes apparent. As well as shooting JPEG+DNG image pairs, you can also shoot using multiple exposures, or in Astrophoto mode, although both of these modes are limited to 12MP images.

With the S25 Ultra, Samsung’s Expert RAW app gains Virtual Aperture control (the company’s term for a simulated depth-of-field effect). What’s more, Expert RAW DNG files can now be processed in the phone’s Gallery app, using basic controls for adjusting exposure and contrast, as well as colour temperature and noise reduction, handy if you don’t have a computer to hand.

• 12MP resolution is more than enough for most applications. Use 50MP when there’s plenty of light and you might want to crop the image.
• You’ll get larger files using 200MP, but unless you have plenty of light and anticipate cropping images or making large prints, it probably won’t provide you much advantage.
• JPEG images saved with 8-bit colour may exhibit banding in skies after processing. If this happens, open the DNG file instead, which will provide more colour tones to smooth out gradients.

Where a dedicated camera still wins

However, for any serious commercial work where clients expect pro-level images, you’re still better off picking up your trusty camera.

Edge masking in portrait mode still isn’t perfect and can struggle to separate hair (and ears, apparently) from backgrounds.

Smaller sensors mean highlights blow out quicker than you’d see on an APS-C or full-frame camera, so make sure to expose for the brightest part of the scene (usually the sky in daytime shots) and recover the darker areas in post.

As a single camera for casual use, travel, behind-the-scenes or documentary-type work, the S25 Ultra is more than capable.

Video

There’s HDR10+ support for 8K/30 and 4K/120 recording on the S25 Ultra, too, as well as Log video and some nifty Pro Video options. Stabilization is great, too. The most notable advantage over the S24 is in low light. Clips look noticeably cleaner thanks to the new camera’s video processing pipeline. By default, videos are recorded using 10-bit HDR. Once you’ve shot a video, you can use the Gallery’s built-in video editor to tweak the clip. The handy Audio Eraser feature reduces wind and ambient noise.

Should you buy the S25 Ultra in 2026?

If you can pick up a discounted, used/refurbished S25 Ultra, it’d still make for a worthy Galaxy flagship purchase. The S25 Ultra’s 50MP ultra-wide camera is identical to the one found on the S26 Ultra, while its 10MP F2.4 3x telephoto camera uses only a marginally larger image sensor (GSMArena puts it at 1/3.52 inch, as opposed to 1/3.94 inch on the S26 Ultra), so you’d be hard-pushed to tell the two apart in ideal shooting conditions. However, in lower light the S26 Ultra’s F1.4 main camera outperforms the S25 Ultra’s F1.7 effort, and likewise its F2.9 5x telephoto has the edge over the F3.4 lens found on the S25 Ultra. Expect very similar results from Expert RAW, though.

The only reason to consider making the leap from an S24 Ultra would be for the gains you’d get from the new 50MP ultra-wide camera, as everything else (i.e. the main, 3x and 5x cameras) is identical, at least hardware-wise. You may well find the S25 Ultra processes JPEGs cleaner, mind. If you mostly edit in RAW and don’t use the ultra-wide that often, either stick with the S24 Ultra or grab a discounted S26 Ultra. The S25 Ultra vs S24 Ultra comparison puts the numbers side by side.