Samsung’s new Galaxy S25 Ultra is a fantastically boring phone. Still, it contains some nice surprises, including a refined battery removal system that drastically improves repairability.
Most smartphone batteries are held in place by pull tabs, or worse, a big wad of glue. As a result, battery replacements are a tricky and somewhat dangerous endeavor, especially when dealing with a swollen or otherwise defective battery.
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The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Is a Great Phone, but It Doesn’t Stand Out
Long gone are the days of seeing incredible improvements year after year.
To our surprise, the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra totally bucks this trend. A new iFixit teardown video reveals that the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s battery isn’t covered in glue or connected to a finicky pull tab. Instead, it’s nested in a small plastic wrapper with finger-friendly tape. Peel the tape from the top of the battery, turn the phone upside-down, and the battery falls right out.
This is an exciting improvement over previous Galaxy Ultra smartphones. And, notably, Samsung’s new battery-removal process is far more user friendly than the iPhone 16’s electrically-releasing battery. You don’t need any specialized tools or knowledge to remove a piece of tape.
Still, if you dragged me into a room and told me to repair a Galaxy S25 Ultra, I would turn around and walk out the door. The battery itself is easy to remove, but in order to get down to the battery, you still have peel off the phone’s glued-down back panel and pick through a bunch of internal components—a tedious and delicate process that should be a lot simpler. And as iFixit notes, Samsung hasn’t abandoned its cement-like display adhesive. Screen replacements on the Galaxy S25 Ultra are not for the faint of heart.
The iFixit team gave the Galaxy S25 Ultra a provisional 5/10 repairability score. This is the best repairability score that a Galaxy flagship has received in recent memory, and, importantly, Samsung could bump it up to a 6/10 by taking a more friendly stance toward at-home repairs. Whether that actually happens is anybody’s guess.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
$1300 $1500 Save
$200
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is a top-of-the-line smartphone with a 6.9-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display and a 120Hz refresh rate. It boasts the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, 12GB of RAM, and a 5,000mAh battery with 45W Super Fast Charging 2.0.
Source: iFixit
