The Ultra used to impress me — now it feels like Samsung’s dead weight

The weather is starting to turn in my fair Britain, and as sure as eggs are eggs, that means we’re on the downward hill to a new Samsung Galaxy line.

Samsung loves to kick off the new year by taking the wraps off a new flagship range. The Samsung Galaxy S26 range is just on the other side of Christmas, and as you’d expect, that means we’ve been inundated with leaks and rumors of Samsung’s new devices.

There are a lot of changes this year, with rumors saying we’ll be seeing the end of the basic S26 and S26 Plus models, and the advent of Pro and Edge models into the main roster — but one thing that won’t be changing is the Ultra model.

That’s because, apparently, the Galaxy Ultra has become a fixed point in space and time, barely changing, unmoving before the ravages of time.

I’m being hyperbolic, but honestly, it’s starting to feel a little bit like that. The Ultra version of the Samsung Galaxy was meant to be the pinnacle of everything Samsung could do with a smartphone.

It was the cutting edge, the extreme, the experimental. But now it’s just another phone, in another lineup. It’s stale, it’s stagnant, it’s boring.

And it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change with the next version. Samsung needs to give the Galaxy Ultra some serious upgrades, or just let it die.

The Ultra is now ultra-stagnant

It’s barely changed since 2022

The Samsung Galaxy Ultra range debuted in 2020 as a part of the newly rebranded Galaxy S20 lineup. Available in 4G and 5G variants, the S20 Ultra represented a seismic shift in Samsung’s approach.

The Ultra was Samsung’s phone with everything turned up to the max, from the enormous 6.9-inch display, quad-lens camera setup, and a correspondingly huge price tag.

The next couple of years saw some big shakeups in the Ultra’s design, and it wasn’t until the Galaxy S22 Ultra that Samsung hit on a design approach that you would recognize even today.

Yes, that’s right, the S22 Ultra. From 2022. I was as shocked as you. When I look back at the long line of Ultras, the phone has barely changed since 2022. Samsung seemed to really enjoy the S22 Ultra’s design. It’s used basically the same design every year since.

I’m not even joking. I put every Ultra phone since 2022 side by side, and they’re barely different. The biggest difference in recent years was Samsung adding rounded corners to the S25 Ultra.

Oh wait, I’m sorry, it also added metal camera rings to the latest Ultra — which promptly fell off. But aside from those minor cosmetic changes, not much has changed in the Ultra’s design.

This is forgivable, though, because Samsung has endeavored to ensure the hardware is tip-top, right? Er, sort of.

Samsung has dutifully updated the processor every year to include Qualcomm’s latest chipset, but aside from that, not much has changed.

The very first S20 Ultra included 12GB of RAM as standard, and while that number dropped to 8GB for a few years, we’re right back at offering 12GB as standard in 2025.

Samsung thankfully left 128GB of storage behind in 2022, but the top tier of 1TB has been present since the S22 Ultra.

The battery has been the hardest hit by time. Samsung debuted the S20 Ultra with a massive 5,000mAh cell, which was pretty notable, then. Five years on, that same cell seems a lot less roomy than it once did.

Charging is a similar story, and excepting the S21 Ultra, which sported an oddly low 25W charging rate, every Ultra model has sported the exact same rates for wired and wireless charging.

Once again, 45W and 15W were good in 2020, but they’re looking a lot less impressive in 2025.

What about the camera? This one’s a bit more complex, but it’s definitely not always an upwards trend.

Remember when the S21 Ultra introduced a lens with an incredible 10x optical zoom? That disappeared in the S24 Ultra, replaced by a 5x zoom. The main lens has stayed at 200MP and hasn’t had a downgrade, but it’s been the same since 2023 — it’s hardly new, “ultra” tech.

Worst of all, the rumors are saying that won’t be changing any time soon.

All in all, it’s a tale of a phone line that’s been depreciating through standing still, while everyone else moves on. The Ultra used to be Ultra, but what was once so, no longer is.

And this would be, again, forgivable, if the world hadn’t moved on. But it has.

Other brands have leapfrogged the Ultra

Is AI development just the safer option?

To see how bad things have become, consider the $900 OnePlus 13. At a full $400 less than the S25 Ultra, you’d expect OnePlus’s current flagship to lag behind Samsung’s. But no, it honestly doesn’t.

It has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, the same storage options, and vastly more RAM, with the top option offering 24GB.

The battery weighs in at a hefty 6,000mAh, 1,000mAh more than the “Ultra,” and the OnePlus tops out at 100W for wired charging (though it’s capped at 80W in the US). It’s even capable of charging wirelessly at 50W — 5W faster than the S25 Ultra’s wired speed.

It’s night and day, and it’s frankly embarrassing that a phone marketed as the “Ultra” can be dumpstered quite so hard by a phone that’s $400 less.

Yes, the S25 Ultra exceeds the OnePlus 13 in some areas, most likely the camera, but again, you’re paying $400 for that. That, and an S Pen which might be on the way out.

I almost have to wonder if this is a conscious decision by Samsung.

Recent years have seen it push hard into AI development, so did the Korean company choose to focus on that over hardware advancement? It’s entirely possible it sees AI as the “safer” option.

After all, Samsung has had its share of bad press following certain hardware leaps, and messing with battery tech and charging like OnePlus has might trigger Note 7-related anxiety.

But it’s all just excuses, really. If Samsung is going to continue to call its biggest S phone the “Ultra,” it needs to re-earn the name. And if it won’t live up to the name, it needs to let the Ultra die.

Let it die or let it grow

It’s too late for the S26 Ultra

In some ways, the Ultra moniker has become obsolete. With a price tag to justify the name and true cutting-edge tech, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 probably fits the title far better than the Ultra ever did.

And we see rumors about an Ultra version of a Samsung foldable every year, so we’re clearly not the only ones who think that.

So is the writing on the wall for the S Ultra? Of course not. It still sells extremely well, and that’s probably part of the reason Samsung hasn’t really messed with it for the past three years.

Still, with the S26 Ultra looking much the same as its predecessors, we have to wonder how long this can continue. Four years of releasing basically the same phone is enough.

Samsung needs to pull out all the stops for the S27 Ultra. It’s time for Samsung to fight for the “Ultra” title once again, and really make its king worthy of its position atop the S-range. Because if nothing else, the other S-range phones can’t grow until the Ultra does.

It’s too late for the S26 Ultra. But the Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra? That could and should be a real monster, and Samsung needs to make it so. That, or it should give up on calling its phone “Ultra.” Because it won’t be.