Samsung announced the Galaxy S25 Ultra on Wednesday at its January 2025 Galaxy Unpacked event at the SAP Center in San Jose, California. The lone camera hardware upgrade? It was an ultra-wide lens that will make any hardware geek swoon.
I enjoy snapping the occasional landscape or cityscape while traveling, but the ultra-wide lens is typically the least-used lens on my phone.
So why was I so ecstatic to hear about this addition to the Galaxy S25 Ultra? Ironically, the new ultra-wide lens is the key to dramatically improved macro photography for highly detailed close-up shots of technology hardware—phones, laptops, keyboards, CPUs, and more.
Samsung Smartphone Product Manager Charles Uptegrove tells Laptop Mag, "From a macro shot, we're getting four times the detail year-over-year...so really bringing full high resolution into the conversation."
A macro look at how the Galaxy S25 Ultra is saving me $400
This is where we get to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, saving me at least $400. In my never-ending quest to add more high-quality macro photos to my reviews on Laptop Mag, I've researched macro lenses for my Panasonic Lumix GH5. The affordable option is the $397 Lumix G Macro, while the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm at $549 is a beloved, slightly pricier choice. Either way, it's a lot for me to spend on a lens for such a specialized use case.
Imagine my excitement to hear I can potentially skip that added investment and handle this task with my phone. You may rightly point out that the Galaxy S25 Ultra costs $1,299, but there are great preorder deals to bring that cost down. Unlike the single-task macro lens, I need a phone for many things.
However, I'm never one to believe the marketing claims. After all, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is far from the first phone to claim macro photography prowess, and most are terrible at it. If a phone proudly boasts of its dedicated macro lens, I can virtually guarantee you should skip it; these are almost invariably unusable 2MP sensors that cost the company pennies to claim it offers a "triple camera array."
So, let's take a look at how good the macro photos from the Galaxy S25 Ultra are.
Going ultra-wide to get ultra-close
I'm thoroughly impressed with the macro photos that I've been able to get with the Galaxy S25 Ultra so far. I can't upload the full 50MP resolution photos (or even the default 12MP resolution), but the detail is astounding, and I can pull them into Photoshop and reduce them to a usable size for the site without sacrificing too much of that quality. You can clearly see the textures on the MacBook and Magic Mouse and microabrasions on the edge of the Galaxy Ring, along with the circuitry inside.
I'm thoroughly impressed with the macro photos that I've been able to get with the Galaxy S25 Ultra so far.
Now, one big caveat if you are a budding macro enthusiast: Light is always critical for photography, but it will make or break your macro photos more than the typical wide-angle snapshot. If I'm not hitting the subject of these photos with either full sunlight or one of my video lights from close-up, the details will quickly become a grainy mess. Samsung's AI enhancements are good, but they can't perform magic.
The macro photos have been a wonderful first foray into photography with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but I'm looking forward to experimenting further with its cameras.
While the rest of the camera hardware remained the same, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip powering the phone includes numerous upgrades targeted at photo and video enthusiasts that could make the Galaxy S25 Ultra more of an upgrade than you might expect.
