Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus could get a major performance boost — beating Galaxy S25 Ultra
Leaked benchmarks suggest a shocking upgrade could happen
Earlier this week we got our first look at just how powerful the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra could be, thanks to leaked Geekbench benchmarking scores. But as impressive as those figures were, a new leak suggests that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus may actually offer better performance — at least in part.
The alleged U.S. Version of the Galaxy S25 Plus appeared on Geekbench running the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset, achieving a single-core score of 3,054 and a multi-core score of 9,224. For reference, the S25 Ultra recorded a single-core score of 3,069 and a multi-core score of 9,080.
Row 0 - Cell 0 | Single-core | Multi-core |
Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus (alleged) | 3,050 | 9,224 |
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra (alleged) | 3,069 | 9,080 |
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra | 2,300 | 7,249 |
iPhone 16 Pro | 3,400 | 8,341 |
The question is, why has the Plus model pulled ahead in the multi-core benchmarks? Phone Arena speculates that it could be because both U.S. versions of the phone are locked at a 4.19GHz clock speed on their performance cores. Meanwhile, the European S25 Ultra is clocked at a faster 4.47GHz, putting the American model at a disadvantage in early testing.
It may also be down to the fact we’re still 4 months away from the Galaxy S25’s presumed launch date. That means the phones are still in active development, and the benchmarking scores probably aren’t reflective of the final version of both phones, which we'd expect to offer roughly identical benchmark results.
The past few generations of Samsung Galaxy S phones have also had custom overclocked versions of the latest Snapdragon chipsets, so odds are that there is still work being done refining the chips. The vanilla Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 on the other hand, which is due to be announced at Snapdragon Summit next month, should be in a more stable state.
We won’t know for sure until the Galaxy S25 series actually launches, and we have the opportunity to do our own benchmarking tests. But, no matter which way you look at it, the Galaxy S25 Plus and Ultra are both shaping up to offer some serious performance — potentially even beating out the iPhone 16 Pro’s amazing multi-core benchmark score.
We’re expecting the Galaxy S25 series to arrive sometime in January, and we’ll no doubt be hearing plenty more about the phone over the coming months. In the meantime you can stay up to date on all the latest news and rumors in our Samsung Galaxy S25 and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra hubs
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Tom is the Tom's Guide's UK Phones Editor, tackling the latest smartphone news and vocally expressing his opinions about upcoming features or changes. It's long way from his days as editor of Gizmodo UK, when pretty much everything was on the table. He’s usually found trying to squeeze another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of coffee, or complaining about how terrible his Smart TV is.