The pre-order offer for the S25 series on Google Fi has ended, but they are offering a new promotion for existing customers (new customers should qualify up to Feb 20. but you need to wait 21 days before taking advantage of the offer).
New users should be eligible and should be able to get an additional $60 credit via referral, but you will need to sign up and activate your service no later than Feb 11. After Feb 11, do not use a referral if interested in this offer.
Requires the customer to be on the flexible or unlimited plus plan.
My offer is $650 off. However, it may be YMMV.
This is similar to the
preorder offer, where most were offered $650 off, but some customers were invited to a $750 offer.
I received the $750 offer for pre-order, and my post-launch offer is $650.
Perhaps, for those that received the $650 pre-order, their post-launch may be $550/$600? (will update OP once we get a few more data points).
This offer ends on March 14 at 9:59AM PDT.
Some observations from the pre-order offer that likely apply here:
- Existing customers are defined as those that have had service for >21 days.
- If you sign up by February 20, you will have enough time to qualify as an existing user by promo end. This should work, but not guaranteed.
- Using a referral offer may conflict with this promotion.
- I was unable to take advantage of the $750 off offer because I had an active countdown for my referral credits.
- However, if you sign up with a referral code + activate no later than February 11, you should qualify for the $60 referral credit + the existing customer discount. I would not bother trying a referral after February 11.
The above is contingent on this being a widely available offer, and not just invite-only... We should see more datapoints come through in the coming day or so.
The users most likely to benefit from this would be those that accepted a referral offer during the preorder period but their countdown prevented them from being able to apply the instant savings.
The terms for my offer are linked here:
https://fi.google.com/about/promo...GwqK_fLAYA
https://fi.google.com/about/phone...-s25-ultra
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Yes I do have one. Now waiting for 5 more days for counter to drop to 0
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It's sad to say, but Samsung needs to start copying from the Chinese manufacturers and then innovating on top of that base. I remember the days when Samsung still did wild things, when they came out with the original Note. I'd love to see something really off-the-wall. Built-in wireless earbuds? Hell yes. Maybe a new gaming phone with a built-in controller ... nobody has tried that since the xperia play, and it did it badly. Hell, I'd even settle for a well-implemented physical keyboard.
But no. We have a huge lineup of phones, and every. single. one. needs to be an anonymous black slab. We'll throw in a gimped S-Pen as a nod to the days when we were still creative, but that's ALL you get.
The real space for innovation that they should be focusing on is tailoring the software to power users. I, and many other power users HATE the IOS-ificiation of Android. Give me at minimum read-only access to my full filesystem. Give me the option to root from the factory. Give me an SD card. Add things like SMB and WebDAV sync to the backup client. Give me a Linux environment on my phone (with the ability to access the SD card that you added back, of course), I'd LOVE to be able to run Docker or LXC containers on it. Design something that's intended for use by people who are tech enthusiasts, because to a large extent THEY help drive the choices of their non-tech friends, and will sell them on the down-the-line models.
This offer is an instant savings, where you get the reduced price upfront, pay for 4 months of service (largely negated by a referral credit), and can cancel with no clawback. You get to keep your better priced phone plans with one of the primary carriers.
However, with the right trade-in offers / upfront promos, the upgrade makes sense. If you can buy the S25 Ultra outright for around $700 and sell an older S23 Ultra or S24 Ultra for $500–$800, you're essentially upgrading for about $0–$200. That's a reasonable price for a fresh battery and a clean start with a new device. Without those offers, though, I wouldn't even consider it.
Taken on its own, the S25 Ultra is a solid phone. It has a great display, good battery life, and plenty of features. But compared to the S24 Ultra, the improvements are so minor that upgrading doesn't make much sense—especially when some changes, like the shift from a 10x optical zoom (on S23U) to 3x + no spen bluetoon feel like a step backward.
It's not a bad phone—it's just not an exciting one.
With that said, I wholly agree.
Samsung lost the plot. They're becoming complacent and aiming for a safe play.
A lot of their "innovation" lately has just been copy/paste of Apple. It's boring and uninspired.
I hope we get more competition. I'm only interested in this because it's a value play.
However, with the right trade-in offers / upfront promos, the upgrade makes sense. If you can buy the S25 Ultra outright for around $700 and sell an older S23 Ultra or S24 Ultra for $500–$800, you're essentially upgrading for about $0–$200. That's a reasonable price for a fresh battery and a clean start with a new device. Without those offers, though, I wouldn't even consider it.
Taken on its own, the S25 Ultra is a solid phone. It has a great display, good battery life, and plenty of features. But compared to the S24 Ultra, the improvements are so minor that upgrading doesn't make much sense—especially when some changes, like the shift from a 10x optical zoom (on S23U) to 3x + no spen bluetoon feel like a step backward.
It's not a bad phone—it's just not an exciting one.
With that said, I wholly agree.
Samsung lost the plot. They're becoming complacent and aiming for a safe play.
A lot of their "innovation" lately has just been copy/paste of Apple. It's boring and uninspired.
I hope we get more competition. I'm only interested in this because it's a value play.
10x to 5x but agree that it's not worth upgrading from S24U for more than $200. I think the form factor innovation will come in the fall in the form of a tri fold but that admittedly is a niche market. If you care about the chip performance and efficiency then S25U was a great year over year upgrade, not much in anything else.
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But agree with the rest of your sentiments!