It’s no secret at all the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra will succeed the Galaxy S24 Ultra (review) in early 2025. What is new, however, is how the premium smartphone could be equipped with hardware that could significantly improve AI performance and also have an impact on the user’s smartphone experience.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra is state-of-the-art in many aspects. This includes using UFS 4.0 memory, being the fastest available storage standard today. It is also worth noting that this memory standard does not apply to the entire Galaxy S24 series: The Galaxy S24 (review) with 128 GB memory still relies on UFS 3.1.
Galaxy S25 Ultra to feature UFS 4.1?
I’m sharing this with you because the Galaxy S25 Ultra could take another step forward in terms of storage speed based on a leak on X. If the leaker, who has focused on South Korean companies to date, is accurate with his information, Samsung’s flagship smartphone will most likely to be one of the first handsets to be equipped with UFS 4.1 next year.
The next major performance boost is coming with UFS 5.0. / © Sawyer Galox
The source did not provide us with much more information, but it was interesting the Ultra model was mentioned explicitly. This could indicate the base Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+ models will not necessarily be equipped with this memory standard. Therefore, it is possible these two devices will retain the UFS 4.0 memory standard.
Why is this good news for Samsung fans? Having faster memory does positively impact a smartphone in many ways. A rather moderate update is expected as the roadmap does not envisage the next big leap to UFS 5.0 until 2027. However, even this minor update could have a significant impact, especially when it comes to AI functionality on the Galaxy S25.
Since the AI functions that Samsung advertised under the Galaxy AI banner sift through enormous amounts of data, an incremental update to the speed in the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) also ensures AI applications that run on the device will process tasks faster. This includes voice assistants with a faster response, better object or scene recognition when taking photos, and much more.
However, it will also have a positive impact on other areas: Face recognition will unlock the phone faster, switching between apps is quicker and multitasking could also benefit from the new standard. It is also quite possible for UFS 4.1 to allow the battery to be more efficient. Please read the comprehensive article by Agarapu Ramesh, which deals with the possibilities of UFS in the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Of course, we hope that Samsung will include more improvements in the Galaxy S25 Ultra. For starters, we hope to see a major camera update in the new S25 Ultra model. However, we can probably predict improvements in artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role in its new smartphones. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Samsung will actually make the jump to UFS 4.1 as early as the beginning of 2025.
What do you think? Will this upgrade have a major impact and how long do you think it will be before the competition catches up?
