All right, this is it. Your official first look at and hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. Samsung’s ridiculously thin addition to the S25 lineup. So, this is delayed a bit and the rest of the lineup has been out for a while since earlier this year, but I just know somewhere out there there was somebody who was waiting for the thinnest possible version of an S25, just the minimum Z-axis dimension. This person totally exists. And good news for this person, it does actually seem to be a pretty good phone for as thin as it is
if you’re into that. So, what I was really wondering about this phone when it was first revealed or teased was how are they going to position this? Is this going to be some ultra high-end phone where they make a huge deal and hype up how thin it is and they broke physics to make this possible? And it turns out the answer, which kind of makes sense, is it’s right between the base S25 and S25 Plus and the S25 Ultra. So, the theoretical customer for this phone is making like a half step up from the base
phones, but not going all the way to the Ultra. So, you can think of this S25 Edge here as basically an S25 Ultra light, if that makes sense. It still has the titanium rails from the Ultra phone. It’s in one of three stunningly vibrant colors, black, silver, or slightly bluish silver. But then they also took the primary camera, the 200 megapixel huge sensor from that ultra phone, plus all the software and image processing that comes with it. Then the second camera is a 12 megapixel ultra wide. No
telephoto here. And then it has the screen from the S25 plus. So it’s a 6.7 in 120 Hz 1440p AMOLED display. And then the whole thing is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite just like the rest of the lineup. And with all that power and the custom NPU and all the software features that we expect all the rest of Samsung’s phones to have. So, it feels when you’re using it, you know, very familiar software-wise, which is great. But when you make a phone this thin, 5.8 mm thin to be exact, well, you know, of
of course, there are some obvious trade-offs you have to make. Samsung’s not immune to physics. So, there’s no way around it. There’s just less room inside the phone. So, that means less room for internals, like a telephoto camera, which is missing. And there’s also less room for a battery. So, we’re back down to a 3,900 mAh battery with 25 watt charging. 3900 in an Android phone back in the day used to be a lot, but now with as powerful as these phones have gotten and with as bright as these screens have gotten and as big as they
are, this is like bordering on worryingly small. Just for context, the S25 Plus, which is the same size, is 4900 mAh. And that’s not to mention all the other stuff I got to test when I got it. things like cooling. Like I just don’t expect this to have the same level of heat sink and cooling as the thicker phones. But also, now that I’ve held it, as much as I hate to admit it, there is also some kind of upside to this ultra thin design, too. Hear me out. So, the phone obviously looks incredible. I
i mean, this is a sleek and modern design. It’s impressive. I also think the camera sort of has this floating island design. It’s actually my favorite design in the entire S25 lineup. So, with no case on it, this phone looks really good and also underrated. It’s much lighter than most flagship phones. So, the official spec on paper is 163 g, which is basically the same as the small base S25. And so, just holding a phone this big in the hand that’s that light, there’s something about it. It’s much
more convincing holding it than watching a video. If you can get into a store and hold it, you’ll see. But, it’s one of those things that I can’t quite translate through the screen. I definitely felt a certain way watching a bunch of videos of this phone, but now that I’ve held it, you know, I was swayed a little bit, not going to lie. Now, I also like that the sides are flat. And then, even though the whole point is to be super razor thin, they did keep some of those small things that I think they could have gotten rid of,
like the physical SIM card tray is still here. I think the buttons on the phone are actually slightly smaller just because of how thin it is. But then also the 25 watt charging speed is the same speed as the regular S25s. And they kept 15 watt wireless charging as well. On the front, it’s actually the same Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 as the Ultra phone, but without that fancy anti-reflective coating on the Ultra. Some people like me who have used the Ultra will miss that, but a lot of people won’t actually notice. And then
inside it’s 12 gigs of RAM and either 256 or 512 gigs of storage. And the starting price is $1099. So again, right in between the plus and the Ultra. So some thoughts. Okay, first of all, and a lot of you have already typed this out in the comments, and I can see them below the video already with my psychic powers, but people aren’t asking for thinner phones. Like, we know this already. Matter of fact, most people are asking for a slightly thicker phone to get more battery life, and this is the opposite. So, I expect this phone to
have worse battery life than all of the rest of the S25s. I’m not sure how much worse yet. I got to test it. So, get subscribed to see the full review when it comes out. But I can pretty much guarantee it will be worse. Second of all, though, there’s also rumors of an iPhone 17 Air, an ultra thin iPhone coming out at the end of this year as well. I wasn’t sure how they would position that phone, but I’m now a little more confident they’ll probably also do a sort of middle of the lineup thing. Um, but you know, Samsung’s is
out first, so they can say that they did it before Apple, and that means a lot to Samsung. I think both phones will have some battery issues to deal with, but Samsung did actually keep an ultrawide camera and a physical SIM card tray and the same exact chip as their highest end flagship phone, which it looks like the iPhone will not do any of those things. Then the other thing is we all know the stats. Almost everyone puts a case on their phone. So instant reaction is just like, oh, why would I get a thinner
phone like this when I’m just going to put a case on it and it’s just going to end up feeling like any other regular phone? But I do actually think that with how crazy thin and light they’ve made it, this is one of those phones that you put a thin case on it or, you know, maybe even a Dbrand skin or something like that, but it’s still actually going to feel thinner and lighter than a normal phone with a case on it. So, if you’re one of those rare people who is actually looking for specifically a
thinner phone or a lighter phone, but not necessarily a smaller screen, then okay, yeah, this is theoretical for you. Matter of fact, before I review this phone, this is the exact customer who I think it seems like it’s aimed at. This is someone who is going to upgrade to a Samsung phone somewhere in the lineup and liked the idea of going all the way up to the Ultra cuz the camera looked really nice, but they don’t want to carry this big thick ultra phone with the S Pen they’ll never use.
So, they’ll get this. They also like the idea of the ultra camera but don’t mind having a worse ultra wide and no telephoto and less battery or just someone who sees a cool commercial, thinks it looks shiny and thin and just buys it anyway. But anyway, stay tuned for the full review. Should be coming out at some point soon.
Thanks for reading. Catch you in the next one. Peace.
