This only goes to confirm the rumors that its S25 pricing strategy has suffered from the inability to use processors that are cheaper than the Snapdragon 8 Elite, so it has been forced to keep the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra prices intact despite the rather modest hardware upgrades. Samsung is about to unveil the Galaxy S25 on Wednesday, January 22, and start preorders immediately, with reservations already live before the official pricing tags.
Galaxy S25 price expected to stay the same
| Model/Storage | Galaxy S25 Ultra price (EUR) | Galaxy S25+ price (EUR) | Galaxy S25 price (EUR) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 128 GB | – | – | 899 |
| 256 GB | 1469 | 1169 | 959 |
| 512 GB | 1589 | 1289 | 1079 |
| 1 TB | 1829 | – | – |
As you can see, though, the Galaxy S25 price in Europe is pegged to stay absolutely the same as the starting tag of its predecessor, and the same pricing strategy is expected in the US, where the S25 will reportedly start from $799. Granted, we have new storage tiers such as a 512GB Galaxy S25, but overall Samsung won’t raise the S25 series pries from those of the S24 line the way it did when it introduced the S23 series successors. Why?
While it might be that Samsung’s marketing department has advised it that the market simply can’t bear higher Galaxy S25 line prices, that could only be part of the story. After all, the S23 wasn’t all that different from the S24 models, too, and yet Samsung didn’t hesitate to bump the prices with a Benjamin.
It allegedly isn’t doing this with the Galaxy S25 series this time around, and that is not a good sign. All rumors point to Galaxy S25 specs that are gravitating toward one single big hardware upgrade, the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset.
Don’t hold your breath for the Galaxy S25 specs
While that is unfortunate, Samsung couldn’t afford to do any big design or hardware upgrades with the Galaxy S25, simply because Qualcomm sucked all the air out of its profit margins by pricing the Snapdragon 8 Elite north of $200 apiece.
Samsung tried and failed to use its homebrew Exynos 2500 processor or the MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400 chip in the S25 Ultra or S25+ due to one and the same reason, not enough yield.
What led to all this drama were the reports that Samsung will only be ready with the desired quantity and quality of Exynos 2500 processors in the first half of 2025 as opposed to the last quarter of 2024 that was its original release timeframe.
The Snapdragon chip in the S25 beats Exynos 2500 in benchmarks, but is much more expensive for Samsung. | Image credit – Geekbench
It wanted to include Exynos 2500 because of the up to $100 lower price compared to the $250 Snapdragon that is becoming the most expensive part in an S25, but its foundry simply wasn’t ready with the yield from the second-gen 3nm production process.
Samsung wanted to mix Exynos with Snapdragon for the S25, but couldn’t, and Qualcomm is the reason why Samsung’s mobile chipset expenditures went way above $8 billion for the first time, as 20% of its phone manufacturing costs are now going to the processor.
In short, since the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset is now the most expensive part of its phones, Samsung couldn’t go crazy neither with the hardware upgrades of the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra, nor with their prices.
