Galaxy S25 Plus vs Galaxy S24 Plus: Main differences to expect

Intro

While 2024 isn’t over yet, we are slowly closing the curtain on the year and turning our gaze to 2025. Next year will kick off with a pretty solid bang, as we expect Samsung to unveil its next flagship series early in January. 

So far, it’s pretty certain that the Galaxy S25 will be a pretty minor and iterative release that will only change a few aspects of the Galaxy S24 Plus. It appears that Samsung isn’t feeling particularly adventurous right now, so aside from a slightly thinner body and updated hardware inside, we will be getting the same flagship phone for yet another year in a row. 

That’s fine. If Apple can do that, so can Samsung. 

Table of Contents:

Design and Size

Not much going on in the land of Galaxy 

Well, if you’ve been waiting for a major redesign with the Galaxy S25 Plus, you’re too far out of touch with the state of the mobile phone market these days. 

Display Differences

Currently, it doesn’t seem Samsung will follow Apple into its display enlargement project, so the Galaxy S25 Plus will most certainly remain a phone with a 6.7-inch display at the front. It will absolutely be one of those Dynamic AMOLED 2X screens with HDR support, QHD+ resolution, and super-smooth 1-120Hz refresh rate. 

One area in which we might expect to see an upgrade could be the maximum brightness. With screen brightness increasing with every generation, it’s now normal to expect a bump with every time a new phone gets unveiled. 

Meanwhile, the Galaxy S24 Plus is a phone with a pretty great 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, excellent sharpness, and pretty high peak brightness. Samsung displays are usually exceptional… except for when they are not. Samsung received lots of flak back when the Galaxy S24 series was released, as multiple users complained colors appear washed out in comparison with the previous generation. Sure, this was fixed later, but the bad aftertaste lingers still. 

Biometrics-wise, the Galaxy S25 Ultra will surely come with an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner built right into the display.

Performance and Software

Musical chairs between Qualcomm and MediaTek

For years now, we’ve become accustomed to expect high-end Galaxy phones to arrive with that top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets. Aside from the occasional Exynos stint, this has been the case for years, and it appears that the Galaxy S25 series wouldn’t be the odd one out. 

Camera

No major changes… again

It appears that we will be getting the same triple camera setup as before with the Galaxy S25 Plus. Brace yourselves, as the familiar and surprisingly agile combo of a 50MP main camera, 12MP ultrawide, and 10MP 3X telephoto are making a comeback. That’s right, it doesn’t seem that Samsung will bring higher-megapixel cameras to either the Galaxy S25 Plus or the Galaxy S25, which means that we’re not getting a solid hardware upgrade. 

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect upgrades at all, though! Most of the image quality enhancements these days are predominantly done on the software side, which means that even though the Galaxy S25 Plus might not come with substantially different hardware than the Galaxy S24 Plus, it might still capture superior photos and videos!

Battery Life and Charging

As per the rumor mill, the Galaxy S25 Plus will come with a 4,900mAh battery once again. If that number doesn’t ring a bell, it’s the same battery capacity as the Galaxy S24 Plus. 

However, it’s good that we’re getting the same battery. As mentioned many paragraphs back, the Galaxy S25 Plus will be thinner than the Galaxy S24 Plus, and the one major phone component that usually suffers in such scenarios is precisely the battery. It’s just the pure physical aspect of it, so we’re relieved Samsung has found a way to ditch some weight without hurting the battery capacity.

In terms of charging, the Galaxy S25 Plus is most certainly getting 45W wired charging once again, as well as Samsung’s 15W Fast Wireless charging. No talk about a potential Qi2 upgrade, which will bring MagSafe-like properties to the Galaxy flagship, allowing you to snap charging accessories to the back thanks to the magic of magnets. 

Specs Comparison

Here’s how the Galaxy S25 Plus and the Galaxy S24 Plus specs will likely stack up:

All Galaxy S25+ specs are preliminary and subject to change

As evident by the table above, we can count the differences between the two devices. Sure, many of these can change, but seeing how conservative and coherent Samsung has been in the past few years, we don’t expect major moves and changes in the Galaxy S25 Plus‘ specs sheet.

Summary

Overall, the Galaxy S25 Plus will be more of the same for seasoned Galaxy fans, giving us a slow and predictable evolution in some key areas. 

This isn’t an inherently “bad” move––change for the sake of change alone is probably a worse thing to see. Samsung’s Galaxy Plus phones have evolved pretty slowly, true, but it has never felt that Samsung needs to do major reworks. 

If you have a Galaxy S24 Plus, you most certainly shouldn’t upgrade to the newer device. Even though there are many “unknowns” involved with the Galaxy S25 Plus, it will most probably not introduce a major reason to get it if you already have the previous phone.