The Honor Magic V2 is finally available to order in Europe, almost 5 months after its introduction at IFA 2023 in Berlin. The thin foldable is already up for sale in Purple and Black and costs £1,699/€1,999 for a 16/512 GB variant. European customers also get the Magic Care+ service for screen replacements for free.
The phone was introduced to hundreds of media representatives and guests at the Porsche Experience Center in Leipzig, Germany.
Honor took its sweet time to bring the Magic V2 to Europe, a market the compny likes to call its "second home”. The smartphone is still packing some serious punch though. It's the thinnest inward-foldable with a 7.92” foldable OLED panel of 120 Hz refresh rate and a silicon-carbon battery with 5,000 mAh capacity.
The Magic V2 is SGS-certified to survive 400,000 folds, which should last for a decade of everyday use. We already unboxed the phone and shared our first impressions - head this way to read them.
The Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, unveiled earlier this month, is now on sale in India through Asus' official Indian website and Vijay Sales.
The Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro is offered in a single Phantom Black color with two memory options - 16GB/512GB and 24GB/1TB, priced at INR94,999 ($1,140/€1,055) and INR119,999 ($1,445/€1,330), respectively. The 24GB RAM model is called Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition, and it will come bundled with the ROG AeroActive Cooler X, which will also be available for purchase separately for INR5,999 ($70/€65).
The Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 at the helm and boots Android 14-based ROG UI. It's built around a 6.78" 165Hz FullHD+ LTPO AMOLED display with a fingerprint reader embedded and packs a 5,000 mAh battery with 65W wired charging support (30W in India).
The ROG Phone 8 Pro features four cameras - 50MP primary (with OIS), 32MP telephoto (with OIS, 3x optical zoom), 13MP ultrawide, and 32MP selfie. It also sports a customizable 341 Mini-LED matrix on the back.
Forced by the EU's Digital Markets Act, Apple has today announced that it's making big changes to iOS, the App Store, and how browsers work on the platform. These changes will become available in the EU with the iOS 17.4 release which is scheduled to land in March.
Let's start with browsing. Even today you can select a default browser that isn't Safari, but any browser that isn't Safari has to use Safari's WebKit rendering engine. That will change, every browser can use whatever engine it wants. Additionally, after EU iPhone owners install iOS 17.4, the first time they go into Safari they will be presented with a browser choice screen.
The much bigger news is that Apple will allow alternative app stores on iOS. Now, because the company says this will "create new risks" for its users, it will apply a "baseline review" for all apps, regardless of their distribution channel. This involves a combination of automated checks and human review. This process will result in at-a-glance descriptions of apps and their functionality which will be shown before download.
To ensure that developers of alternative app stores "commit to ongoing requirements that help protect users and app developers", Apple will authorize these "marketplace developers". It will also add additional protections that prevent iOS apps from launching if they are found to contain malware.
However, Apple notes that it has "less ability" to address risks such as "apps that contain scams, fraud, and abuse, or that expose users to illicit, objectionable, or harmful content" with the new DMA-forced provisions. The company plans to share more information with its customers in March when all these changes come into effect.
NFC will be opened up on iPhones in the EU, so that alternative wallet and banking apps will be able to use tap to pay and be set as the default method for mobile payments.
The App Store will have new options for using payment service providers within a developer's app, as well as new options for processing payments "via link-out", "where users can complete a transaction for digital goods and services on the developer's external website".
Users will be informed when an app they're downloading uses alternative payment processing. They will also get a notice when they are no longer transacting with Apple, and when a developer is directing them to transact with an alternative payment processor. This will also entail a new app review process, through which Apple will verify that developers accurately communicate this information.
Moving forward, in the EU iOS apps on the App Store will pay a commission of either 10% ("for the vast majority of developers, and subscriptions following their first year"), or 17% on transactions for digital goods and services. There will also be a 3% payment processing fee for those apps that will choose to stick with the App Store's payment processing. And finally, iOS apps "distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold" as a "Core Technology Fee".
Apple says 99% of developers will reduce or maintain the fees they owe to Apple, while under 1% will have to pay the Core Technology Fee outlined above. For apps on iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS in the EU, developers who process payments using a third-party or by linking out to their website will get a 3% discount on the commission they owe to Apple.
So, you can purchase a Google Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro in the new color called Mint, exclusively from the Google online store and Google Fi in the US. According to Jenny Davis, CMF design manager at Google, it's "a breath of fresh air and a cool spring breeze. It's serene, yet not boring. It's a luminous color that really invites the mind into a state of calmness - energized calmness".
It joins Rose, Obsidian, and Hazel for the Pixel 8, and Porcelain, Obsidian, and Bay for the Pixel 8 Pro. As you'd expect, the specs haven't changed at all - these are the same Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro we've known since their introduction last October. The only thing that's new is the color, which was revealed in collaboration with street artist Ricardo Gonzalez, aka @itsaliving.
As a special way of introducing the new hue, he painted over an existing Google Pixel billboard in New York City with the new Mint color, as you can see in the video above.
If you get a Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro in Mint by February 3 at 11:59 pm PT, Google will throw in a free case with a matching color.
Just when the world is all about the Galaxy S24 series, we bring you our Galaxy A25 review. Not the best timing, granted, but Samsung has been taking its sweet time shipping us any S24 review units, so in the meantime - we have another important device - the Galaxy A25. Important to Samsung and value-oriented users alike. Flagships make the headlines, but midranges and value devices are the bread and butter of the business, and they can make or break a company's bottom line.
The Galaxy A25 is a globally available device too. It is already selling in the US, UK, Europe, and India to name a few. So, it is basically competing on all fronts in the midrange. And Samsung has made sure it has come prepared.
The new Galaxy A25 may be playing things safe and does not deviate too much from the established Galaxy A-series formula so the design has seen few changes but there are a bunch of updates under the hood.
Samsung Galaxy A25 specs at a glance:
Body: 161.0x76.5x8.3mm, 197g; plastic back and frame, glass front.
There are some notable hardware upgrades over the A24. For one, it is a 5G headset thanks to an in-house Samsung Exynos 1280 chipset. This actually addresses one of the key criticisms against last year's Galaxy A24, which only ever came in a 4G version. Kind of an odd choice, really, given that the lower-end Galaxy A14 did have a 5G variant.
Samsung is also upgrading the display refresh rate of the familiar 6.5-inch Super AMOLED panel to 120Hz, up from 90Hz on devices like the Galaxy A24 and the Galaxy A15.
While the camera setup on the A25 hasn't changed in a major way, Samsung is introducing an 8MP ultrawide as a replacement for the 5MP one, which should result in better-quality photos and videos. Speaking of videos, thanks to the new chipset, the Galaxy A25 can do 4K@30fps video capture on its main camera. There is gyroscopic EIS support as well. The Galaxy A25 also offers a stereo speaker setup, unlike its predecessor.
All of these upgrades arguably push the A25 closer than ever to the A3X series of devices and the excellent Galaxy A34 in particular. You still don't get a formal IP rating with the Galaxy A25, though and certain elements of its design, like the larger display bezels, continue to give away its more budget nature.
All that being said, we are very interested to see just how well the new Galaxy A25 stacks up against competitors in its highly competitive price bracket, including some other Samsung devices like the Galaxy A34 we mentioned. Join us on the following pages for the answer.
Unboxing
The Galaxy A25 ships in a simple slide-out cardboard box. Nothing too fancy, and we still don't exactly trust how thin the sleeve part of the packaging is. Still, the phone doesn't sit directly underneath that and remains well protected. There is no plastic in the packaging, but you still get a nice little cardboard cradle for the phone itself, which works well enough.
The accessory package is as basic as they get. Samsung only provides a white USB Type-C to Type-C cable with the phone and nothing else. Well, unless you count the SIM ejector tool. If it's good enough for the S series, we guess it is good enough for the A. Though we can't say, we particularly like this reality.
Design
As mentioned, Samsung didn't introduce radical changes to the phone's overall design. The middle frame does have a distinctive sculpted shape in this generation, which is by far the easiest way to tell the Galaxy A25 apart from, say, the Galaxy A24.
We find the new frame nicer to touch and better in in-hand feel and handling than the previous design. The difference isn't huge, though.
Other than that, you still get the familiar triple vertical camera cluster on the back, without any discernable camera island or "area" of any sort. The back panel itself is perfectly flat.
The same goes for the front side with a flat glass piece covering it. The display bezels are still on the larger end and give away the budget nature of the device. The round teardrop notch for the selfie camera is also something we tend to associate with Samsung's lower-end offerings.
The Galaxy A25 is available in a total of four colors. There is the eye-catching Personality Yellow variant, which we have for review, but there are also more subdued options: Brave Black, Fantasy Blue, and an Optimistic Blue.
The back panel has a very fine pattern to it. Something akin to very fine checkers. You can't actually feel the pattern, though, since it is not on the top surface and it is hardly visible from a distance. It is very subtle.
Build quality
The Galaxy A25 is mostly made of plastic. This includes both the back panel and the middle frame. Both look great and also feel great to the touch.
We have sung praises to plastic as a phone-building material in the past and will continue to do so. It doesn't quite scratch or dent like metal and doesn't shatter quite like glass, either.
While the Galaxy A25 is definitely closer than ever to the Galaxy A3X line, proper ingress protection rating is still not a thing on the Galaxy A25.
There is no apparent gasket on the SIM tray, which you sometimes see on devices, even without a formal IP rating. We recommend against submerging the A25. By the way, the SIM tray is a hybrid affair. It holds two Nano-SIM cards, or one can be swapped out for a microSD memory card.
Handling and controls
We found the Galaxy A25 fits snugly in the palm. It is not particularly slippery and offers a good grip. Neither the back nor the frame shows fingerprints. The 6.5-inch display is fairly large but still manageable in one-hand operation. This reviewer does have fairly large hands, though.
There is nothing particularly noteworthy about the control set and layout of the Galaxy A25. Well, perhaps aside from the fact that the fingerprint reader is side-mounted instead of in-display. That is another small bit that Samsung still reserves for the Galaxy A3X line.
On the plus side, the capacitive side-mounted reader works very well - it is perfectly accurate and pretty snappy.
Speaking of the Galaxy A3X line and the A34 in particular, it does lack a 3.5mm audio jack. The Galaxy A25 does still get one.
It sits right beside the Type-C port and the bottom-firing speaker on the bottom side of the device.
Speaking of speakers, the A25 does get a stereo speaker setup. More on that later.
6.5-inch display now with 120Hz refresh rate
Samsung continues to make some of the best panels in the industry and tends to equip even its more budget devices with decent models. The Galaxy A25 is a great example. It gets a Super AMOLED display, just like its predecessor, which still measures 6.5 inches in diagonal.
The 1080 x 2340 pixel resolution with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio work out to around 396 ppi of pixel density. We find that to be perfectly sharp in person.
The display bezels are still on the larger end and give away the budget nature of the device.
The new addition to the Galaxy A25 is the 120Hz refresh rate, up from 90Hz on last year's Galaxy A24 and now more in line with the 120Hz available on the Galaxy A3X family and the A34 in particular.
Before we talk more about the refresh rate, we should mention a few words about the display's performance. Samsung says that the Galaxy A25 should be capable of 1000 nits of peak brightness on its display - basically the same as last year's A24. We measured 434 nits by maxing out the manual slider, and the phone reached 1030 nits in max auto mode, basically confirming the market claims. These numbers are mostly in line with those from last year's Galaxy A24.
In terms of colors, the display is 8-bit in depth. Samsung offers two color profiles - vivid and natural with a color temperature slider and individual RGB channel adjustments in vivid mode.
The Galaxy A25 lacks HDR support. The phone itself can decode HDR10 and HLG, but not Dolby Vision or HDR10+, but the display can't show any HDR content at all. On a more positive note, the phone has the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing apps like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams and saturate the display resolution.
High refresh rate handling
The Galaxy A25 has 120Hz refresh rate, which is up from 90Hz in last year's A24 model. This is a great addition in itself, but unfortunately, just like on the Galaxy A34, there is practically no automatic refresh rate switching to speak of. Two "motion smoothness" options exist in settings - High and Standard. The first runs at 120Hz fixed while the second runs at 60Hz fixed.
There is no logic for switching from 120Hz to 90Hz or 60Hz automatically, as you might find in many competitors.This means you constantly waste at least some power when in 120Hz mode. On the plus side, at least high refresh rate gaming works as expected, with titles that support rendering past 60fps light enough for the Exynos 1280 to handle.
Battery life
The Galaxy A25 has a hefty 5,000 mAh battery pack on board - a capacity that most users have come to expect nowadays. The phone makes decent enough use of said battery, managing an active use score of 10:19 hours. We would have ideally liked to see some better browsing and gaming results.
Charging
The Galaxy A25 supports Samsung's 25W Super Fast Charging standard. It is Power Delivery based, but you are still best off buying one of Samsung's chargers to ensure you get the best possible charging speeds and PPS charging profiles. As we mentioned, no charger is in the box, so you have to provide your own.
We used Samsung's 25W charger for our testing, and the A25 did quite well. Pretty much in line with what we would expect from a recent 5,000 mAh Samsung device with 25W charging.
In terms of actual numbers, we managed to get our A25 from 0% to 27% in 15 minutes and up to 49% in half an hour. A full charge took 84 minutes.
Speakers
The Galaxy A25 has a hybrid stereo speaker setup. This is a new addition this year. An upgrade over the mono speaker of the A24 and more in line with the setup on the A34. One dedicated speaker is on the bottom of the phone, and an amplified earpiece handles the other channel. Naturally, this means that the balance between the two isn't great. The bottom speaker is definitely louder and clearer. However, the stereo effect the two produce together is pretty convincing and pleasant to use for multimedia consumption.
In terms of loudness, our Galaxy A25 unit managed -26 LUFS, which just barely qualifies for our "VERY GOOD" grade. This is a marked improvement over the AVERAGE score of the Galaxy A24 and pretty much perfectly in line with the performance of the Galaxy A34.
The actual quality of the sound is also very good and very similar to the Galaxy A34. There is no noticeable distortion, even at high volumes, and the sound stage is fairly rich. The mid-tones could have been presented a bit better, but the highs sound great, and there is even some bass. There is Dolby Atmos on board, a full-featured equalizer and UHQ upscaler.
Connectivity
As already mentioned, the Galaxy A25 is a 5G device. It offers 5G dual stand-by on both of its Nano-SIM slots. The second slot is a hybrid affair. It can take either a Nano-SIM card or a microSD card for expandable storage. We have information that there is a single SIM variant of the Galaxy A25 out there as well, but almost every store listing we have seen is for the dual SIM one.
For local connectivity the A25 has dual band Wi-Fi 6/ac and Bluetooth 5.3. Some regions get NFC, while FM radio doesn't seem to be available anywhere. However, it is still worth checking with your local retailer.
There is no IR blaster on board, but there is a 3.5mm audio jack, as we've already mentioned.
You get GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS and QZSS support for positioning. The onboard Type-C port has USB Host/OTG functionality but nothing else fancy in features like video output. The Type-C port is backed up by a USB 2.0 connection, which means a theoretical maximum data transfer rate of 480 Mbps.
The Galaxy A25 has a decent set of sensors, but unfortunately, it does not include a proper hardware proximity sensor. You get a virtual proximity sensor that mostly gets the job of turning off the display during calls done. It is not ideal, though. Other than that, you get an ICM42632M accelerometer and gyroscope combo, an STK31610 light sensor, and an AK09918C magnetometer. There is no barometer.
One UI 6 on top of Android 14
The Galaxy A25 runs on Samsung's current One UI 6 on top of the latest Android 14. This is the "full-fat" One UI instead of the "Core" version available on some lower-end Galaxy devices. That means fewer, if any, feature omissions.
The Galaxy A25 is eligible for four years or four major OS and One UI updates and a total of five years of security patches throughout its lifecycle. That's not half bad in our books.
You are getting the same general UX and even most of the features of the Galaxy S series, which is great to see on a mid-range device. The good news to all Galaxy users is that the list of software features reserved for the flagships has been shrinking in recent years and currently includes niche things like Samsung DeX.
Despite the major jump up in version, OneUI 6.0 remains very visually and functionally familiar without too many obvious changes. There are some small things here and there - like more freedom to move your clock widget on the lock screen, a new button layout on the quick panel and an enhanced notification layout in the notification shade.
The home screen has simplified icon labels, and you can now drag and drop icons from one screen to another by holding the icon with one hand and swiping between screens with the other. There is a new Weather insights widget and a Custom camera widget that can launch the camera straight into a selected camera mode.
There are some small behavioral changes with settings as well. Airplane mode, for example, has gotten smarter and now remembers the last time you had Bluetooth or Wi-Fi turned on alongside Airplane mode and restores said state automatically. Battery settings now get their own top-level menu for easier access. The Digital Wellbeing menu has been redesigned to be more easily legible.
Samsung's new Auto Blocker is a one-stop shop for all of your privacy and security needs. You get automatic checks for things like malware and suggestions and some neat optional features like preventing unknown apps from being installed, blocking potentially malicious ADB commands from being executed on the phone, and scanning images for malicious content.
Speaking of Samsung apps, you get quite a few of the company's in-house developed solutions like Samsung Messages, Phone, Contacts, Gallery, Notes, Health, Files, Internet, and Store, often in conjunction with "duplicate" Google apps, for roughly the same function. Samsung isn't shy about including some of its more niche apps as well that many users will never end up using, like the Wearable app, Smart Things, and Global Goals. Members or Samsung Free.
There aren't too many pre-loaded apps that we would outright consider bloatware, but our Galaxy A25 unit came with TikTok, Spotify, Netflix, Facebook, Temu, Happy Color and WoW. Luckily, nothing you can't quickly uninstall and get rid of.
We noticed no ads within One UI 6 on the Galaxy A25 as is usually the case.
Performance
The Galaxy A25 is based on Samsung's Exynos 1280 chipset. It is a fairly modern part from 2022 made on a 5nm LPE (EUV) manufacturing process. We have already seen this chipset perform quite adequately in the past in devices like the Galaxy A53 5G and the Galaxy A33 5G. It has an octa-core CPU configuration with two ARM Cortex-A78 cores working at up to 2.4GHz and another six Cortex-A55 ones clocked at 2.0 GHz. The onboard GPU is a Mali-G68 unit.
The Exynos 1280 is paired with either 6GB or 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB or 256GB of onboard storage. Our test unit, which we ran the benchmarks on, is a base 6GB/128GB one.
Let's start with GeekBench and some CPU testing. First off, it is encouraging to see that Samsung seems to have squeezed some extra performance out of the Exynos 1280 since it clearly performs better inside the Galaxy A25 compared to, say, the Galaxy A53 5G. This could be down to many things, including faster memory or storage and OS improvements. Still, it is a pleasant finding.
In the grander scheme of things, the Exynos 1280 seems to perform a bit better than the Snapdragon 695 and the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 in both single and multi-core CPU tasks. The Dimensity 6080 is mostly trading blows with it back and forth, as well as the Dimensity 7050. Anything from MediaTek's 80xx line is superior, though, and so is the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 inside the Poco X6.
The Dimensity 1080 seems to be slightly better in overall performance - a reality backed up by AnTuTu and its much more compound set of tests that also take into account things like storage and memory speed. The Galaxy A34 outpaces the A25 by a bit and the A54 has a bigger lead still.
Neither is near the top in overall performance in this price range, however. That honor seems to go to the Motorola Edge 40 and the Infinix GT 10 Pro, rocking the MediaTek 8020 and 8050, respectively. Still, the Galaxy A25 definitely holds its own well and offers a nice little bump in AnTuTu score over its A24 predecessor.
3Dmark largely paints the same picture as AnTuTu, with the Motorola Edge 40 and the Infinix GT 10 Pro topping the chart. When it comes to GPU performance, the Mali-G68 inside the Galaxy A25 seems to be about on par with the Dimensity 1080 and the Dimensity 7050 since all of these chips share the same GPU setup. And said setup offers a commanding lead ahead of the Mali-G57 MC2 crowd, as found inside the Helio G99, Dimensity 6080 and Dimensity 700, as well as the Adreno 619 on the Qualcomm side of things.
In more practical terms, we found the Galaxy A25 runs smoothly with no noticeable hiccups or slowdowns. It has plenty of power for daily tasks as well as some casual gaming.
The Galaxy A25 never gets overly hot to the touch, even after extreme stress testing. The included passive cooling solution seems to handle the heat output of the Exynos 1280 quite well, too. The Galaxy A25 doesn't thermal-throttle suddenly or aggressively, offering a smooth performance curve instead.
Thermal-throttling
A familiar triple camera setup now with a higher res ultrawide
The Galaxy A25 mostly carries forward the camera setup of its Galaxy A24 predecessor.
This includes the main 50MP snapper with OIS, the 2MP macro cam on the back and a 13MP fixed-focus selfie camera. The one upgrade here is the move to a higher resolution 8MP ultrawide camera on the back, up from the 5MP unit inside the Galaxy A24.
Overall, you can tell that Samsung hasn't changed the camera all that much. One new addition to the mix is gyro-EIS - a nice little bonus to have and previously unavailable in the Galaxy A24.
The camera app is the same as you'd find on every Samsung phone these days. You only get Pro mode on the main camera, while night mode can be used across the main, ultrawide and selfie cams.
Daylight camera quality
The main camera saves 12.5MP photos by default. We've already seen this particular camera do a great job on other devices like last year's Galaxy A24.
The resolved detail is okay, the noise reduction did a great job, the contrast is great, and the dynamic range is wide. In typical Samsung fashion, colors have a bit of an extra "pop" to them. However, overall, the photos don't look overprocessed or over-sharpened, which is great.
Unfortunately, if you look closely, the photos appear quite soft.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 12.5MP main camera samples
Even in the absence of a dedicated depth sensor, the main camera captures quite decent portrait shots. Subjects look detailed with pleasant skin tones. Subject detection and separation are quite accurate, and the quality of the background blur is excellent.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 12.5MP main camera samples
Samsung Galaxy A25: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples
The Galaxy A25 lacks a dedicated telephoto camera, but it can still capture 2x zoom shots with its main camera. These are very comparable to 1x shots quality-wise, which means they look good if you don't zoom in too closely.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom samples
The new 8MP ultrawide camera offers a decent little upgrade over last year's 5MP unit but is nothing to phone home about. Contrast and dynamic range are all right. We like how the color rendition looks. It is far from natural but is well-matched to the slightly saturated look that the main camera offers.
Details are an imperfect mix of washed-out and over-sharpened. The quality of photos reminds us of what good-grade surveillance cameras produce, meaning it will capture the scene, but the quality is not great by phone camera standards.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 8MP ultrawide camera samples
The 2MP macro camera has its focus fixed at 4cm away, and it may take a few attempts to get it right. Once you do, you can save some usable closeups you can post on your Instagram. Their colors and dynamic range are good, but the resolved detail is rather unimpressive.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 2MP macro camera samples
The 13MP selfies we took on the Galaxy A25 are excellent - there is plenty of resolved detail and balanced overall rendition, accurate colors, and wide dynamic range. We've seen worse selfies from more еxpensive phones, so we do commend Samsung for making a good selfie camera on such an affordable device.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 13MP selfie camera samples
Low-light camera quality
The main camera on the Galaxy A25 captures decent, but largely unimpressive low-light photos. While there is quite a bit of detail, most surfaces look soft and a bit noisy. Both shadows and highlights are well-developed, and light sources are contained decently, though still not perfectly. Dynamic range and contrast are good. The colors are a bit cold but generally alright.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 12.5MP main camera low-light samples
The Galaxy A25 applies some automatic night mode procession on its own, but there is a dedicated manual Night mode as well, which has longer exposure times and does more image stacking. The resulting images are a bit sharper, with less noise and cleaner surfaces. Light sources are handled notably better, too.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 12.5MP main camera night mode samples
2x zoom shots from the main camera expectedly look noisier and softer than 1x ones. They are still very much usable, though.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom low-light samples
Night mode doesn't seem to do a lot for these shots. The exposure is higher, which can lead to some clipped highlights and doesn't help shadows all that much, and that's about it.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 12.5MP main camera 2x night mode samples
We didn't expect much from the new 8MP ultrawide in low-light given its lackluster performance in daylight. The low light photos are decidedly soft and noisy without that much detail. The color rendition is pretty off compared to the main camera.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 8MP ultrawide camera low-light samples
Night mode boosts exposure a bit and lightens everything up, but it doesn't really help develop darker areas or light sources any better. The amount of captured detail remains about the same, with a bit of extra sharpening applied to what is already there. This does make for an overall cleaner look, but it is quite artificial.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 8MP ultrawide camera night mode samples
The selfie camera fails to impress in low light conditions as well. Faces come out looking soft and muddy most of the time, even if you pretty much nail the fixed focal plane. On a more positive note, at least skin tones look believable most of the time.
Samsung Galaxy A25: 13MP selfie camera low-light samples
Video capture quality
One upgrade afforded by the Exynos 1280 chipset over the Mediatek Helio G99 in last year's Galaxy A24 is the ability to capture 4K@30fps video. The Galaxy A25 can do that on its main camera and only in 1x mode. The 2x zoom mode from the main camera, the ultrawide, and the selfie camera are all limited to 1080p.
By default, video gets saved in an h.264/AVC stream at around 49 Mbps in 4K and 17 Mbps in FullHD. Audio is also standard 48 kHz stereo AAC, and both get bundled together inside a standard MP4 container. There is also the option the save on some space and capture in h.265/HEVC instead.
4K video from the main camera looks great with plenty of detail, practically no noise, good contrast and dynamic range. Colors, just like with stills, are a bit on the saturated side, but not excessively so. The contrast is cranked a bit as well to get that extra "poppy" look.
As mentioned, 2x zoom video is limited to 1080p and looks pretty unimpressive in comparison. It's not bad, but the level of detail definitely isn't there. The same can generally be said about the ultrawide camera and its 1080p videos. While definitely usable, these are soft, especially around the edges of the frame. We do like that the colors reasonably match the main camera.
Breaking away from the trend, 1080p videos from the selfie camera look great. The detail is there with excellent skin texture. Skin tones look great as well. The contrast is pleasant, and so are the slightly saturated colors. Overall, a great showing.
Another new addition to the Galaxy A25 mix is gyro-based Electronic image stabilization (EIS). It comes in two flavors or levels. One is basic stabilization, which is toggled through the camera settings menu. It caps the resolution to 1080p but can work on all cameras (except for the 2MP macro) and does a pretty decent job of smoothing out small shakes and bumps. Then there is Super Steady, which only works at 1080p and on the ultrawide camera. It is meant for sports and other action shots and offers better overall stabilization at the expense of cropping away more from the frame.
Low-light video from the main camera is surprisingly clean and detailed. The detail is there, and colors look nice as well. Dynamic range could be better, though, with blown-out light sources and mostly crushed shadows. 2x zoom video from the main camera is worse with less detail due to its 1080p resolution also softer and slightly noisy. 1080p video from the ultrawide is very disappointing. It is dark, muddy and noisy.
The competition
At the time of writing, a base 6GB/128GB Galaxy A25 will set you back about $250/€285/£250/INR 27,000, and the higher-end 8GB/256GB tier will set you back $399/€330/INR 30,000. That's a competitive price bracket with plenty of viable alternatives.
While we are still not certain what Samsung is cooking up for the Galaxy A35, last year's Galaxy A34 has fallen in price nicely. You can get a base 6GB/128GB unit for around $250/€250/£190/INR 25,500. Of course, since the A34 is technically "last gen" and came out with Android 13 and One UI 5.1, you have a shorter support window remaining from the four years of major updates and five years of security patches Samsung is promising.
In terms of upgrades over the A25, ther A34 is getting you a proper IP67 ingress protection, 4K video capture on the selfie camera and a slightly more powerful Dimensity 1080 chipset. The other specs are kind of a wash across the two devices. You are even giving up the 3.5mm audio jack that the A25 has. Still, the A34 might be a better fit for you personally.
Samsung Galaxy A34 • Xiaomi Poco X6 • Xiaomi Poco M6 Pro
We have plenty of models to consider from the latest crop of Xiaomi devices. There is the ever-popular Redmi Note series and the vanilla Redmi Note 13 in particular. It currently goes for a bit less than the Galaxy A25 and offers pretty comparable specs. Its Dimensity 6080 is a bit more powerful, but you do have to settle for 1080p video capture despite the phone's ample 108MP main camera resolution.
Enter the Xiaomi Poco X6. It seems like the most reasonable alternative to the Galaxy A25. Granted, it does seem to cost slightly more, but you are getting a better, brighter and HDR-capable 12-bit AMOLED display, a more powerful Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset, IP54 ingress protection and Gorilla Glass Victus, 256GB base storage and 8GB of RAM and notably faster 67W charging on the 5,100 mAh onboard battery, to name just a few points. If you have just a bit more to spend, you could also go up to the Poco X6 Pro with its faster UFS 4.0 storage and better overall battery life, according to our testing.
If you are looking to save some money instead, there is the Poco M6 Pro 4G, which is kind of identical to the Redmi Note 13 Pro 4G just a bit cheaper. Next to the Galaxy A25, it has a pretty comparable display and a slightly less powerful chipset. You will have to live with 1080p video capture, but you won't be giving up on other niceties like the stereo speaker setup, 3.5mm audio jack, the NFC or the FM radio. As a bonus, the Poco M6 Pro also offers faster 67W charging and official IP54 ingress protection.
Our verdict
Last year, Samsung made a rather perplexing choice with the Galaxy A24 by only introducing it in a 4G/LTE version. All the while the A34 was 5G and even the A15 had a 5G variant. This is no longer the case with the new Galaxy A25, and that's not the only sensible upgrade introduced to the formula.
The move from 90Hz to 120Hz refresh rate might be relatively small, but it is meaningful and helps the phone feel smother and more responsive overall. You could probably eek some longer battery life runtimes out of it with the high refresh rate disabled so it's up to you to make that choice.
The jump up from the MediaTek Helio G99 to the Exynos 1280 might not be colossal in terms of raw performance either, but beyond the already mentioned 5G connectivity, it also brings 4K video recording to the Galaxy A25, which is another small but significant update.
The new stereo speaker setup also counts big time in our books. It might not shine in any particular manner over the competition, but it is still miles better than the single speaker offered on the Galaxy A24.
All of these small updates pile up and arguably place the Galaxy A25 closer than ever to Galaxy A3X territory regarding features. Other than the upgrades, the Galaxy A25 still offers a solid build, now with a slightly tweaked design, which we found to offer a more comfortable grip. Both the battery life and performance are dependable, and the same can mostly be said about the camera setup. Well, at least in daylight. Low-light photography is a bit of a letdown, though still not bad enough to be a dealbreaker.
We would have loved to see a proper ingress protection rating on the Galaxy A25 like its bigger brothers get, but perhaps next year. We really don't see anything major in the Galaxy A25 to complain about. It is a solid Samsung device with all that entails for a reasonable price, and we are sure it will enjoy good popularity.
Pros
Attractive & sturdy design.
The Super AMOLED display now does 120Hz.
Stereo speakers with good quality.
Latest Android and One UI.
Good performance for this price range and great thermal behavior.
Great photo and video quality now with 4K video capture, lossless 2x zoom, great selfie photos&videos.
5G, NFC, microSD.
Cons
No charger in the box.
Still no official ingress protection rating.
No automatic refresh rate switching and no HDR support.
Video stabilization is only available in 1080p.
Pretty poor all-around low-light camera performance.
