The Samsung Galaxy S25+ Is One of the Best Premium Android Smartphones Out There, and It’s Currently on Sale for $300.
In January 2025, Samsung announced the Galaxy S25 series , a trio of phones that competed with Google’s Pixel for the title of the best Android smartphones available in 2025. The Galaxy S25+ is the mid-range model, a cheaper alternative to the then-top-of-the-line Galaxy S25 Ultra . Currently available for $699.99 (a $300 discount from its original retail price of $999.99), it’s still one of the best Android smartphones available in 2026. Given the rising prices of many tech products, including Samsung phones , it’s nice to see prices on others coming down.
After the discount, the S25+ ends up being cheaper than the most basic model, the Galaxy S25 , offering much better value for money.
The S25 series offers improvements over the S24 series : the best OS features are available to all Galaxy phones, delivering capabilities you can only get in One UI 7, including exclusive media and notification features. Two of the best features are the Now Bar and Now Brief, which display short alerts or notifications personalized to your feed and activities. PCMag gave the Galaxy S25 an “Excellent” rating for its useful AI features, better battery life than the Ultra (approximately 15 hours on a single charge), excellent cameras, and robust software support.
The main differences from the newer S26 model are the lack of some AI features and a minimalist design. Perhaps the best competitor to the Galaxy S25+ is the Google Pixel 9 , which currently costs $575. If you’re already a Google or Samsung user, your best bet is to stick with your brand, unless you plan on upgrading all your other accessories.
The Galaxy S25+ runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, features three rear cameras, including a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and a 6.7-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. RAM is a generous 12GB, and storage options start at 128GB, but this $699.99 option is for the 256GB version.