The Galaxy S25 Ultra debuted in early 2025, only to be joined by other super-premium Android smartphones of similar specs and names in short order.
They mainly consist of the Vivo X200 Ultra, Oppo Find X8 Ultra and Xiaomi 15 Ultra, the latter of which was reportedly the best-selling of the 3 by the end of June 2025.
The 15 Ultra sold a total of 586,000 units, compared to 219,000 and 210,000 for its Vivo and Oppo counterparts respectively.
By contrast, Samsung shipped no less than 8.39 million units of its member of that elite group by the end of the first half of this year.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra was also outmatched in this report, with only 7.65 million units sold by this time in June 2024.
Then again, all of these figures are based on numbers reposted on X from Weibo by the famous leaker Ice Universe; in addition, it is not clear whether they are global or pertain to the Chinese market only.
The S25 Ultra does arguably have an edge on its fellow Ultra smartphones in a number of ways, from the anti-glare 1440p Dynamic AMOLED 2X display driven by a custom version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, overclocked to 4.47GHz – not to mention the exclusive S Pen functionality.
Then again, it has been beaten repeatedly by its various namesakes in popular camera tests such as those run by DxOMark, most recently by the Huawei Pura 80 Ultra, (which does not feature in this data, possibly because it does not run Android) even with Samsung’s 200MP main camera and AI features.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is also still priced at over $1,000 on sites such as Amazon.
I became a professional writer and editor shortly after graduation. My degrees are in biomedical sciences; however, they led to some experience in the biotech area, which convinced me of its potential to revolutionize our health, environment and lives in general. This developed into an all-consuming interest in more aspects of tech over time: I can never write enough on the latest electronics, gadgets and innovations. My other interests include imaging, astronomy, and streaming all the things. Oh, and coffee.