I’ve spent the last two weeks with Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, and when showing the all-new Galaxy S device to my friends and family, the same two comments would always be made. The first: ‘wow, that’s thin’. The second: ‘why?’.
Sadly I’ve been unable to provide a quick answer to the latter. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge doesn’t trim the fat when it comes to being an epic handset – it features the same great user interface that Samsung refined with the S25 launch and, indeed, it looks and feels especially premium. But the feature that justifies its ‘Edge’ namesake hasn’t been demonstrated as particularly useful.
Despite being more expensive than the Galaxy S25 Plus (the edge starts at $1,099.99 / £1,099 / AU$1,849, while the Plus starts at $999 / £999 / AU$1,699), it features a lot of the same specs – and where it doesn’t, it’s often made sacrifices, including with the camera and battery.
There’s a nice mix of features here that, on the whole, are probably attractive to a user after a particular spec. That being said, the S25 Plus remains the better phone, and if you’re gravitating towards more expensive phones, I’d recommend the S25 Ultra over the Edge.
I don’t really have a lot to say about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, but if you’re someone who has been craving a thin phone, pay attention to this device. I don’t recommend paying full price but, once Black Friday sales roll around, I’d be more inclined to purchase the Edge at a discount. At full price, however, with the Galaxy S25 Plus now seeing price drops, it’s a tough sell.
What are these features?
Ask yourself what you’re willing to sacrifice for a thin phone. Battery size? A camera lens? A stylus? To achieve what is likely the thinnest phone on the market right now, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge has sacrificed all of these things but, at the same time, it has received an interesting mishmash of features from both the S25 Plus and S25 Ultra, along with some features of its own.
The 200MP lens on the Edge, which it carries over from the Ultra, is great in use and captures a lot of color and detail, though the 12MP ultrawide camera from the Plus is also featured, rather than the much more capable 50MP lens on the Ultra. The telephoto lens is nowhere to be seen, removed to achieve the thinness, meaning that zoom capabilities are severely limited.
The battery is only a 3,900mAh capacity pack – smaller than the 4,900mAh battery found in the Plus and the 5,000mAh in the Ultra. This is again due to the thinness. I can confirm that it’s not as devastating as it may read on paper – I’ve been able to yield full-day batteries from the S25 Edge successfully during my time with it; however, I’m left yearning for the gigantic battery in the S25 Ultra, which I could rely on to last me into a second day if I forgot a charge.
My 9-5 workday with the S25 Edge saw the phone run down to about 51% once I got home, and using it casually one morning, the phone dropped from 100% to 87% in just under two hours. No doubt it’d be struggling if I forgot to charge it overnight, or when I got home after work.
A phone of this price might be unconscionable with a battery like this, but I kind of see it as a non-issue. It’s not really intended to be the same exceptionally capable device as the Ultra, after all – this phone is realistically closer to the Z range, as it’s more niche and experimental (albeit no fold).
The display is also fairly nice, though it’s identical to the 6.7-inch, 3,440 x 1,440 resolution screen featured on the Plus – apart from the new Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 protective layer. I would have liked the screen to have similar squared dimensions to the Ultra, along with the flagship phone’s premium anti-glare glass to make it a more competitive handset (and more different to the Plus), but that’s just me.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite processor is the exact same as the one that’s in the Plus and Ultra, and the AI feature set (which Samsung still hasn’t indicated the future pricing of) remains identical.
And that naturally leads up to the thinness – yeah, it’s thin. I don’t really know what to say: Samsung made a thin phone. Cool. It’s still as thick as a standard phone when you put a case on it, something that I would highly recommend as, although it looks quite nice, I was not confident in holding the phone without a case by the side of the road or when on a balcony. The camera housing also adds a bit of chunkiness, protruding far from the phone’s back.
What was I expecting?
The Galaxy S25 Edge feels like a stumble more than anything else, which is a shame considering Samsung’s recent track record: the hugely impressive Galaxy Ring, the epic Galaxy S25 Ultra refresh and awesome-value Galaxy A56 are all brilliant examples of the Korean tech giant’s ability to read the room and understand what its customers actually want.
While I don’t deny the existence of folks looking for a thin phone, the S25 Edge fails to carve out a unique niche among the Galaxy S family of devices. Simultaneously, the Edge feels too close to the S25 Plus to feel unique on its own, and too feature-stripped to justify buying at full price.
There are places that Samsung could take the Edge idea to make it more appealing. As I alluded earlier, bringing it closer in spec and aesthetic to the Ultra, offering its anti-glare layer and more squared shape while also being thinner, smaller and cheaper is one place where the Edge might be justifiable.
Another is the opposite: reckoning with the fact that it’s going to be feature-limited to begin with, instead positioning it closer to the base-model Galaxy S25, offering a similar set of cameras and size, along with the incredible thinness with a slightly higher price.
It’s close to the issues encountered by the Galaxy Z Flip. That phone has similar battery and camera limitations as the Edge, along with a high price, but the Flip gets a pass as it’s really cool to treat your phone like a classic flip phone and it has an additional screen. The Edge is just thin.
For now, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge feels just a little too niche for mass-market appeal, which explains why the company has only chosen three color options (one being exclusive to Samsung’s online store). It’s a good phone and I recommend purchasing it – just not over the other phones in the S25 range and certainly not for the full price.
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zac.kelly@futurenet.com (Zachariah Kelly)
