Terrible Camera Quality On My S25 Ultra

[brotz68]

About 4 days ago, I received my brand new Galaxy S25 Ultra. Everything has been wonderful, except for the camera performance. I have an S24 Ultra that I've been doing camera comparisons with, and in almost every scenario, my S24 Ultra wins by a long shot. It's almost like I can't take a single good picture with my S25 Ultra. 

The areas that look the worst are low-light photos. In low light, the S25 Ultra overprocesses pictures like crazy, which often results in a "smeared" look, with crazy artifacts everywhere. Low light photos consistently look like oil paintings with how aggressive the processing is. There were a few shots I took in very low light in my backyard that had some awful artifacting in the sky. The images have strange patterns, and only cover the very top of the pictures.

Most shots in normal lighting are extremely grainy, dark, and often times blurry and less detailed than my S24 Ultra. This is massively disappointing for a phone worth the price of a good gaming computer. 

I'm genuinely concerned as to whether or not this issue is software related, or it's a hardware problem, specific to my unit. If there's anyone who can help me here, please, feel free to let me know. I'll provide some pictures to give examples. 

[Shamrock_sean]

Unfortunately this is what I've had with Samsung time and time again the same old horrid image quality. Promises of updates fixing camera quality it never changes. Ever since S21 Ultra onwards it's been same old story poor noisy mushy night shots and zoom photos having alot of noise too even in daylight against sunlight. Night shots always have noisy blotches in the sky with colour banding. I gave up cos it never gets better 

[nganguli]

Same here. I had switched to a Mi11Ultra in 2021 for these specific reasons with Samsung. That phone takes awesome shots, even across 2022 and 2023, people would ask which phone was used to get some shots I shared, and these were folks on other flagships. Unfortunately I broke it, so decided to upgrade and went back to Samsung. Huge mistake. I have now spent the last 5 days taking the same photos with the same settings on both phones and comparing them side by side. In 9/10 cases, my 2021 "Chinese " flagship beats the 2025 "Ultra". Expecially in low light, the difference is very clear. I have the Intelligent Processing set to minimum, which turns off the scene optimizer. All post Processing options are always off on my Mi11 Ultra too. But the Samsung still does some post Processing, pictures are overly grainy, focus is all over the place even if I lock on to a face, and low light shots are all over the place. It just brightens the images in the same light, which doesn't look natural. I have tried raw pro mode too, same results when compared to the pro mode from the Mi11U. The camera shutter is still laggy, portraits at 2 or 3x are super grainy. At this point it just seems like huge money down the drain. I had considered the Mi14 Ultra or Vivo X200 pro long and hard before a general inflow of opinions suggesting I go with the Samsung "flagship". It seems all the marketing investments are paying off good for Samsung. People all across seem brainwashed with a huge lineup of influencers also vouching for the brand when their own glossy shots are mostly taken by pro grade camera men.

Unfortunately when you spend this much for a phone and it turns out bad, 90% people will just bottle it or think they are using it wrong. 

[Members_HL1z8Eu]

Hi i have same issues in got the device today. Very dark low light photos. Even i take normal photo it's not maintaining the clear photo. Automatically loosing focus and its behaving like portrait mode. Blurring many area. Worst selfie camera in low light . Also normal light photos skintone is worst i am extremely disappointed as my redmi note 13 pro is taking far more better and consistent shots which only cost 700 $ aud. I am feeling like to return the device if possible. 

[Members_xSYH43d]

I upgraded from S22U to S25U and agree, the camera is a huge disappointment. I would say half the time my S22U produces a far better photo, some of the time they're about on par, and only in a few certain scenes is the S25U better. Have tried all kinds of settings. I'd say it's entirely software related, but that doesn't guarantee a fix. I am almost certainly going to return the S25U. Which is a shame as I absolutely love the look and feel of it now I've used it properly.

[Jerster]

I am in the same boat as you. I have an s22 ultra and wanted to upgrade to the s25 ultra. I received it and was beyond disappointed when I tested the camera's and they were like the quality of an old flip phone from the 2000's. I put it against my s22 and the difference was  clear. Samsung has gone down hill if a almost 4 year old phone beats there new one. I will be returning my phone and will not be back for a while.  

[Members_khfT8mu]

I thought it was just an issue with my phone! Comparing  photos between s23 ultra and my s25 ultra, it seems almost in 90% cases, s23 ultra captures more details and the newer one clicks a grainy and noisy photo!

[brotz68]

Yeah, it's definitely not hardware related. Some Samsung insiders have claimed that Samsung is fully aware of the issue, and they're preparing to roll out the patch update sometime this week. Keep your eyes peeled, as it's likely either this week or next week we'll see the updates actually start hitting S25 Ultra devices.

[shrikantpatil0307]

I am completely agree with you. The photos whether it is Portrait mode or Normal one, when you zoom it, it becomes either grainy or like oil painting. It's not only with low light. Even in full day light you can see the blurry, grainy effects on face. I upgraded my S23 Ultra with S25 Ultra and I am so disappointed. I hope this issue will be fixed soon. But I still feels that I made the biggest mistake by upgrading because my main interest was only photography and and S25 Ultra failed. I should have visited the shop first to actually test the sample photos. I purchased it blindly with full of trust. 

[Plants_r_cool]

I'm incredibly disappointed, to say the least, with the photos from my new $1,400 S25 Ultra. I was expecting a huge upgrade in photo quality with my S25 Ultra, but doing a side by side with my 7 year old Galaxy Note 9 (which only has a 12mp camera), the Note 9 somehow takes way better pictures. The 200mp camera pictures are so blurry and out of focus, no matter the lighting or distance of the subject. Macro shots with the 50 mp ultrawide camera are a bit better, but not great. Scene optimizer turned off on both phones, but S25 Ultra pics still come out over processed, looking like oil paintings (like the original poster said). Subjects often have an unnatural halo effect. Expert RAW photos come out the same . Camera firmware is up to date on both phones. Third party apps are not affecting camera performance. 200 mp50 mp200 mp200mp

[VadimOlga]

The same 😒! I hope it will be fixed soon....