As of Friday, the Samsung Galaxy S25 series is officially on sale. Of course, Samsung has been shipping the S25 phones for at least a week now, but February 7 was still an important date as it marked a shift in the perks. The free storage upgrade for pre-orders is (mostly) gone, but there are now other incentives.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra offer is pretty simple, it comes with a $200 gift card. Check out both Amazon and Best Buy.
The Samsung Galaxy S25+ situation is a bit more complex. The base 256GB model comes with a $100 gift card, making its effective price $900. However, the 512GB model is $100 off (making it nearly a free storage upgrade, which is worth $120) and it gets a $50 gift card. Unless you have a good plan for that $100 gift card, we’d say go with the bigger storage.
Then there’s the vanilla Samsung Galaxy S25 – this one gets a $100 gift card and that’s that. Don’t forget that the vanilla model finally got a bump to 12GB of RAM, but base storage is still 128GB. Here, even more so than with the S25+, we’d say go with the bigger storage.
Samsung’s biggest advantage right now seems to be in the software – One UI 7 was received very well, some people actually like the AI stuff, or Circle to Search at least, and there are things like DeX too. Plus, the promise of 7 years of software support. You don’t need an S25 for all of that, though, the cheaper Galaxy S24 FE will get all of these things with some conditions. First, it’s a 2024 model, so that’s 6 years of support left (that’s still plenty). Also, you’ll have to wait a bit for One UI 7 to actually roll out, but the S24 FE should be among the first to get it.
The Samsung Galaxy A16 5G will also get One UI 7, this phone will be supported for 6 years, but the software is a cut-down version. There’s no Galaxy AI, no DeX, not even Circle to Search. Still, the A16 5G is cheap and One UI is great even without the AI bells and whistles. Oh, and you can pair the phone with the Galaxy Buds FE for $40 more.
Speaking of headphones, you can grab Samsung’s premium TWS buds, the Galaxy Buds3 Pro, with a $50 discount. Unlike the FE buds, these have stems (with lights), more advanced noise cancellation and better audio quality.
Moving away from Samsung, you can grab the OnePlus 12R for $400. That’s pretty cheap for a phone with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 – the old flagship chip is starting to show its age, but it’s still better than any mid-range chip. And the 6.78” display is an LTPO OLED with better than 1080p+ resolution. Throw in a large 5,500mAh battery and the 12R is a pretty good phone. The only thing that’s kind of lacking is the camera.
The sequel, the OnePlus 13R, is priced at $600 and comes with a $100 gift card. This is with 256GB storage too, instead of 128GB. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip is only a generation behind and this model features a 50MP 47mm (2x) telephoto lens, which was lacking on previous R-models. With a Si/C battery, the capacity increased to 6,000mAh.
We don’t know why Android makers hate the magnetic aspect of Qi2. The HMD Skyline is the first – and so far only – phone to implement the magnetic profile. The phone’s Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 is on the slow side and the 2 major OS updates don’t go far (especially since it’s down one already, Android 15 arrived last month). Still, the ease of repair might appeal to some who didn’t quite like the Fairphone.
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