Good news: Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra could have better battery life than Galaxy S24 Ultra after all
Recent rumors have suggested that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra will feature the same battery and charging hardware as the Galaxy S24 Ultra. While tipsters agree on this, we’re now hearing that the upcoming phone may still feature better battery life than its predecessor.
According to a Discord leaker from Vietnam (via X And PhoneArena), Qualcomm’s yet-to-be-released Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset – expected to power the Galaxy S25 Ultra and more of the best Android phones in 2025 – will feature significantly improved GPU power efficiency over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
In theory, this should result in better battery performance for the Galaxy S25 Ultra, even if both devices use the same battery hardware (specifically, a 5,000mAh battery and 45W wired charging capacity).
“The improvement of CPU efficiency [of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4] is in the single digits, but the GPU improvement is huge,” leaker @negativeonehero writes on X. “[MediaTek] D9300 peak at half power is possible.” In layman’s terms, this means the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 might be able to deliver peak MediaTek Dimensity 9300 GPU performance at half the power consumption. Ouch.
This is of course positive news for potential Galaxy S25 Ultra buyers, who may have been concerned about the potential battery life upgrades (or lack thereof) coming to Samsung’s 2025 flagship. That said, the same rumored benchmarks paint a disappointing picture for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4’s CPU performance, which could very well mean that the Galaxy S25 Ultra offers little to no tangible speed improvements over the Galaxy S24.
@negativeonehero indeed closes their X-post by saying: “If you care about CPU performance, skip this generation and wait for 8G5 [the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5].”
Mind you, as we noted in our defense of the rumor that the iPhone 16 won’t feature performance upgrades over the iPhone 15 Pro , we’ve likely reached saturation point when it comes to flagship phone speeds. Do these devices really need to be faster? The Galaxy S24 Ultra is one of the most powerful phones ever made, and we’re willing to bet you’d barely notice a difference in real-world performance even if the Galaxy S25 Ultra did bring dramatic CPU improvements.
We’d much rather see Qualcomm prioritize power efficiency over performance improvements with its upcoming Snapdragon chipset, and the company is reportedly doing just that. We’re expecting to hear more about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 at this year’s edition of Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit, so check back with TechRadar in October for all the latest Galaxy-related announcements.
