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Samsung Galaxy S25 prices won't increase and that's not a good thing

By Daniel Petrov

Published: Jan 20, 2025, 9:35 AM

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The Samsung Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra prices that leaked indicate that the company is in a bind. Samsung will reportedly price the Galaxy S25 series absolutely the same as it did its predecessors from the S24 line at launch, at least in Europe.

This only goes to confirm the rumors that its S25 pricing strategy has suffered from the inability to use processors that are cheaper than the Snapdragon 8 Elite, so it has been forced to keep the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra prices intact despite the rather modest hardware upgrades. Samsung is about to unveil the Galaxy S25 on Wednesday, January 22, and start preorders immediately, with reservations already live before the official pricing tags.

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Galaxy S25 price expected to stay the same

Thanks to a recent leak from a European carrier insider, we can expect the following Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra prices in many countries on the Old Continent.

Model/Storage	Galaxy S25 Ultra price (EUR)	Galaxy S25+ price (EUR)	Galaxy S25 price (EUR)
128 GB	-	-	899
256 GB	1469	1169	959
512 GB	1589	1289	1079
1 TB	1829	-	-

While there will be a few variations like the Galaxy S25 starting from ten EUR more in Spain than in France, or the 512GB Galaxy S25 Ultra price being twenty EUR cheaper in Belgium, those mimic the pricing differences of the Galaxy S24 due to the different VAT tax levels in different countries.

As you can see, though, the Galaxy S25 price in Europe is pegged to stay absolutely the same as the starting tag of its predecessor, and the same pricing strategy is expected in the US, where the S25 will reportedly start from $799. Granted, we have new storage tiers such as a 512GB Galaxy S25, but overall Samsung won't raise the S25 series pries from those of the S24 line the way it did when it introduced the S23 series successors. Why?

While it might be that Samsung's marketing department has advised it that the market simply can't bear higher Galaxy S25 line prices, that could only be part of the story. After all, the S23 wasn't all that different from the S24 models, too, and yet Samsung didn't hesitate to bump the prices with a Benjamin.

It allegedly isn't doing this with the Galaxy S25 series this time around, and that is not a good sign. All rumors point to Galaxy S25 specs that are gravitating toward one single big hardware upgrade, the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.

Don't hold your breath for the Galaxy S25 specs

While that is unfortunate, Samsung couldn't afford to do any big design or hardware upgrades with the Galaxy S25, simply because Qualcomm sucked all the air out of its profit margins by pricing the Snapdragon 8 Elite north of $200 apiece.

Samsung tried and failed to use its homebrew Exynos 2500 processor or the MediaTek's Dimensity 9400 chip in the S25 Ultra or S25+ due to one and the same reason, not enough yield.

Even the lowly S25 won't ship with an Exynos in Samsung's home turf of South Korea, and we may only see the Exynos 2500 in a phone at a much later date, perhaps as far out as the Galaxy Z Fold 7 even, since the S25 Slim is said to come with Snapdragon 8 Elite, too, while the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset is reportedly reserved for the eventual Galaxy S25 FE later in the fall.

What led to all this drama were the reports that Samsung will only be ready with the desired quantity and quality of Exynos 2500 processors in the first half of 2025 as opposed to the last quarter of 2024 that was its original release timeframe.

Thus, the Exynos 2500 chip may eventually be used to lower the cost of Samsung foldable phones that are arriving in the second half of 2025, rather than the S25 series that will be announced this week at a dedicated Unpacked event.

In addition, Samsung reportedly came away impressed from Qualcomm's presentation of a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip made specifically for the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and ultimately decided to battle the iPhone 16 series with a chipset that has a performance and power draw comparable to the upcoming A18 Pro processor of Apple.

The Snapdragon chip in the S25 beats Exynos 2500 in benchmarks, but is much more expensive for Samsung. | Image credit – Geekbench

It wanted to include Exynos 2500 because of the up to $100 lower price compared to the $250 Snapdragon that is becoming the most expensive part in an S25, but its foundry simply wasn't ready with the yield from the second-gen 3nm production process.

Samsung wanted to mix Exynos with Snapdragon for the S25, but couldn't, and Qualcomm is the reason why Samsung's mobile chipset expenditures went way above $8 billion for the first time, as 20% of its phone manufacturing costs are now going to the processor.

In short, since the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is now the most expensive part of its phones, Samsung couldn't go crazy neither with the hardware upgrades of the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra, nor with their prices.

The Galaxy S26 series won't face this particular challenge and Samsung is reportedly postponing the big upgrades for 2026, but until then it will have to take good advantage of all the new Galaxy AI shenanigans that Qualcomm's chip can bring to the table to warrant the purchase of its 2025 flagships.

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.