How long can Samsung keep doing this? Galaxy S23 vs. S25 phone comparison

0:00 hey everyone welcome back to the channel in today's video we're going to be comparing Samsung's Galaxy s23 phone to their new s25 phone that was just released now whether you're looking at both of these phones and wondering if it's worth it to save a few bucks to buy the s23 or if you already have an s23 and you're trying to figure out if this is the year to upgrade then this video is for you I've personally been using this s23 for the past 2 years since it was launched in February of 2023 and it's been a great phone for me I've now had two weeks with the s25 and the long story short here is that these are very similar phones but there are two key differences that on paper are both big upgrades for the s25 so let's first start by looking at the overall design and displays the s23 and s25 are essentially the exact same size and weight although

0:46 the s25 is a little bit lighter while the s23 has a 6.1 in display the new s25 sports slightly smaller bezels all around which allows a 6.2 in display and an impressive 91% screen to body ratio that said both panels are the same 2340 x 1080 resolution so the s24 actually has a better pixel density but it's not really noticeable both panels are Dynamic AMOLED 2x screens with HDR support but there's a significant Improvement in the overall brightness with the new s25 which has a blistering Peak brightness of 2500 nits that's in comparison to the 1750 nits brightness of the older s23 the other big upgrade here is that while the s23 is display is an ltpo that can range from the super smooth 120 HZ all the way down to 48 HZ

1:33 the s25 ltpo display now supports refresh rates as low as 1 HZ which should ultimately increase battery life as it's able to adapt to the demands of the phone that said my favorite Improvement to the display and one of the two key upgrades that I mentioned earlier is that the s25 now supports adaptive color tone this is a feature that when enabled will actually change the white balance of the phone in real time to adapt to the ambient Lighting in the environment you're in this means colors look more natur natural and more paper- like this was a feature included in last year's s24 but so far Samsung has not added it to the s23 so that combined with the more wide ltpo frequency range makes the display an easy win for the s25 here in terms of colors the s23 comes in Phantom black green cream and lavender with some other

2:20 online and retailer exclusive colors like lime and graphite available as well the s25 has blue black which is what I have here as well as the Silver Shadow Navy spy Blue Mint coral red and pink gold your preference here is just that your preference but it's interesting that they seem to be moving away from a true black as an option in a lot of their devices lately overall outside of the coral red most of the colors here are pretty subtle and muted one thing I do like on the s25 is not just the matte back but also the matte sides here as well I greatly prefer these over the polished look of the s23 Rails which have really started to show their Weare even though I've been keeping in this in a case you like also noticed some light scratches on the s23 display here in the corners this phone has taken a couple

3:06 spills over the years mainly due to me raising two young small kids but I haven't had any major cracks or scratches so the gorilla glass victus 2 coating seems to be doing its job and that same spec is carried over here to the s25 all right so next let's talk about the camera systems and this is going to be a short section because the s25 camera system is actually the exact same as the s24 which is the exact same as the s23 which I am filming on right now so we're actually doing some live samples here as I am talking showing the different examples from the s23 system as the s25 side by side so you can see how they compare and now I switched over to the s25 here to record this again using the selfie camera and one thing I

3:51 wanted to note is that with the s25 upgraded chipset which we'll talk about here in a minute it does feel like the camera app is is just a little bit snappier it's quicker to autofocus it's quicker to process photos once you've taken them and so that's a nice little benefit there's also some other AI tools like audio erase which allows you to kind of isolate your voice from maybe background sounds or music that's happening uh in your video recordings that you take with the s25 but I found that most AI features tend to trickle down to other Samsung phones as they release more versions of oneui for those older phones so I I expect that this may be something that comes to the s23 eventually so I won't go into the demo here or really talk about any of those other features that

4:38 that feel like they may eventually trickle down to the s23 let's finish out looking at these photos and video samples from both camera systems and then we'll head back to the studio to compare and I'll give you my findings [Music] o [Music]

5:41 as you can probably tell the performance here is basically identical between both phones any differences in terms of brightness or colors is likely due to just the phone focusing on different parts of the image at the time I'm confident that you can get identical results to the s25 with the s23 so I'll just say the camera system here is not a reason Reon to upgrade to the newer model that software conversation earlier Segways nicely into our next section here so let's talk about software the s25 shipped with Samsung's latest version of their 1 UI which is now on version 7 this is a skin running on top of Android 15 as of the day I'm filming this the s23 is still running one UI 6.1 which was built on Android 14 but I do expect 1ui 7 to come to the s23 within the next few months so I'm not going to dive too hard between the differences

6:28 between these two versions of the software right now the short story though is that there are things that I like about one ui7 like the new ability to search settings with natural language like saying make the screen stay on longer which I found super useful already and I know this will be a big win for all of us designated remote technical sport people for our families there's also a few things that I'm less of a fan of like the new swipe down quick panel where depending on which corner you swipe from you'll either see your quick settings menu or you'll see your notifications and then you can swipe between those two pages as needed this will take some getting used to for me as I'm so used to getting my quick settings with a swipe down from anywhere on the home screen but now I'm forced to reach the top of the phone to swipe down from the corner to get those same settings as by default a swipe down from the home screen only opens your notification panel anyone who's used an

7:14 iPhone recently will immediately recognize that this is exactly how iOS works I recently reviewed the Samsung buds 3 Pro earbuds and my main takeaway there is that for the design they've made a big change to look and function much more like the apple airpods and I feel the same way about one ui7 this feels very distinctly like Samsung is trying to make this version of Android feel more like iOS than ever before and from a business standpoint I get it when you're buying a new phone people tend to stick with what they're used to and creating some more similarities in the look and feel between Android and iOS is Samsung's gamble that they'll be able to convert more current iPhone users to buy Galaxy phones we'll see if that gamble pays off but as an avid Android Enthusiast it makes me a little sad to see a company like Samsung shifting so much in the direction as I fear it will

8:01 eventually take away from The Innovation we're used to seeing which thrives on competition as I said regarding the audio erase tool there are quite a few other AI powered features here that come along with Android 15 and one ui7 but as far as I know all those features will eventually be available on the s23 plus Samsung announced that some of these Galaxy AI features included on the s25 would be free for users for only the first 6 months but they haven't said anything beyond that in terms of what happens after 6 months or how much we'd be expected to pay to keep those services so again I'm just going to kind of gloss over those for this review until we learn more that said there is one Key software benefit that the s25 has over the s23 and that's in longevity of support when the s23 was released it came with a promised 5 years of security updates and four years of Android

8:47 version upgrades so this means that this should be supported up through Android 17 in 2027 with security updates continuing through 2028 the s25 however launches with a massive 7 years of guarantee updates across the board which should mean that this phone will stay up toate with the latest version of Android and oneui through 2032 so this is a major difference if you're someone who likes to keep using your phones for as long as possible for that the s25 is the obvious choice that being said the hardware is going to have to keep up for that whole time and for me the first sign of my phone wearing down is diminishing battery life so let's talk about that next now these are basically the smallest Flagship phones that you can buy right now and the trade-off is your also going to get a smaller battery and not much has changed

9:32 here in terms of capacity the s25 Now Sports a 4,000 Milah battery which is a very small upgrade over the 3900 mAh battery of the s23 when the s23 originally came out I was quite pleased with the overall battery life often ending my days with medium use with 30 to 40% battery life remaining however over the past couple of months I definitely can feel the battery draining even quicker so now I'm often lucky to end the day with 10 to 15% remaining and on heavier days where I'm traveling or otherwise away from my desk it usually means I need at least one quick top up from a battery bank or charger unfortunately that's pretty in line with my experiences with the s25 so far it definitely feels worse out of the gate here than the s23 did when it was first new now that's not necessarily uncommon as sometimes phone manufacturers continue implementing battery tweaks in

10:18 the software in the first few months of a new phone's lifespan and that can really increase overall runtime but so far I haven't seen any updates in that regard so time will tell if you have an 25 let me know down in the comments how you feel about your battery life so far to round out the section I'll just note that the charging speeds for both of these phones are again identical with a limit of 25 W wired charging and up to 15 WTS wireless charging here's another area where I know that myself and many others were hoping and expecting the s25 series to launch with ch2 magnets inside to get that mag safe experience for Android but it's not here this s25 is considered ch2 ready but that just means it needs to be paired up with an improved case that helps make sure that the magnets are aligned then that's what allows the 15 W charging it's a bummer

11:05 to not have the magnets built into the phone and this is an area where apple has a really long lead time here and a ton of accessories that are able to take advantage of that mag sa functionality lastly let's talk about internal specs because this is another key area where the s25 has legitimately gotten a big upgrade the s25 comes packed with the brand new Snapdragon Elite 8 chipset from Qualcomm to go along with 12 GB of RAM and I tell you this thing is screaming fast the s23 was no slouch sporting the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 along with 8 gigs of RAM and in real day-to-day use I was never left wanting when it came to speed on the s23 that said I ran a quick Benchmark using geekbench 6 and the s25 came out 30% faster in single core performance and a whopping 85% faster in multicore this is

11:50 a legit upgrade and for any power users are folks who do a lot of 3D Mobile gaming the s25 stands Head and Shoulders above its older counterpart here again in day-to-day use the differences aren't so noticeable unless you're comparing them side by side as I've been the s25 does perform a little bit quicker in all subtle areas that you may not otherwise realize so it's not just the speed of navigating the menus or opening apps which are faster but things like scanning a QR code are seemingly instantaneous on the s25 so overall it's a nice little bump and speed although I have to imagine that the power on tap here is likely part of the reason why the battery life so far isn't improved over the previous generation so do I recommend getting the s25 over the s23 I'll put it this way if you don't own either of these phones and are wondering which one to get I do recommend the s25

12:37 even at a slightly higher price point the future longevity in terms of future software upgrades here will pay for themselves with extra years of support and the extra speed with the Snapdragon Elite 8 likely will help ensure the phone stays performant even as those years Roll Along I'm also a huge fan of the ltpo display that goes down to 1 Herz and gets that adaptive color tone option but on the other hand if you already have the s23 and you're wondering if it's time to upgrade I'd say you can safely wait this one out as there's just not that big of a leap in any one area to justify a big cost upgrade now so unless you're getting an amazing trade in value or some other carrier deal maybe wait a year and see what the s26 brings along all right I hope this video was helpful for you and if it was I'd really appreciate it if you can hit that like button and subscribe for more videos like this thank you for watching and

13:25 we'll see you on the next one m [Music]