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Review: Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge - Thin with fewer compromises than expected

Samsung's extra-thin top model is better or just as good as its sister models in most areas, but with a significantly thinner format.

Published 22 May 2025 - 10:09

Samsung has a history of trying to pre-empt Apple in new product segments, and from the moment rumours about an iPhone Air started swirling, you could bet there would also be a corresponding Samsung phone. We are likely to see the iPhone 17 Air in September, but the Galaxy S25 Edge is here now, with a thickness of only 5.8 mm.

But it's not the first time phones have been super thin. The iPhone 6 was 6.9 mm thick and the Samsung Galaxy S6 6.8 mm. Other manufacturers had even thinner models. Back then, we probably had lower expectations for the cameras and battery life in the phone, but the iPhone 6 also had a tendency to bend if, for example, you sat down with the phone in your back pocket. Now there are stiffer materials to build the phones with, or perhaps rather, there is a willingness to pay for stiffer materials that was lacking then.

The camera bump is not included when the thickness is stated, it protrudes a bit but doesn't feel bulkier than on many other top models. Its placement, however, means that the phone doesn't lie the slightest bit steady if you try to use it lying on a table.

The question I keep asking myself when I test the Galaxy S25 Edge is: Does this matter? Do I really care that the phone is unusually thin?

Yes and no. It offers no ergonomic advantages, it doesn't become easier to reach across the entire screen with one hand just because the phone is a few millimetres thinner. The feeling that the mobile is just one big screen and nothing else becomes stronger when the mobile is thin, but at the same time, it's not something I think about when I use it daily. If you have a protective case, you'll notice it even less. On the other hand, the phone also becomes noticeably lighter because it is thinner.

Alternative to S25 Plus

Another way to look at the Galaxy S25 Edge is as an alternative to the Galaxy S25 Plus. If you want a top model from Samsung with a large screen, the S25 Edge has a lot going for it compared to the S25 Plus.

The screen is, to begin with, identical, with a high refresh rate, high maximum resolution, and fast refresh rate. Additionally, a brightness that allows it to be used even in direct sunlight. The screen lacks the anti-reflective treatment that the Galaxy S25 Ultra has.

Edge is admittedly 500 kronor more expensive in the same memory configuration compared to Plus, but it is also noticeably lighter and feels more agile. It's not hard to understand why the rumour suggests that the S26 Edge will replace the S26 Plus in the range. In the S25 family, the S25 Plus is just an in-between model between the S25 and S25 Ultra, while Edge compared to Ultra offers a large screen in a significantly more agile format.

The potential drawbacks of the S25 Edge compared to the S25 Plus are the cameras and battery life, and perhaps also that performance might suffer because the phone has less space for cooling mechanisms inside.

I can dismiss the latter straight away. The chipset in the phone is the same as in the S25 Plus, Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, and in our performance tests, we might see it lose a bit under high load over time compared to the S25 Plus, but it's marginal, and otherwise, it's just as fast. The phone gets warm under high load but also cools down quickly when the load decreases. In practical use, the phone feels lightning-fast just as you would expect.

The cameras surprise

In the Galaxy S25 Edge, there wasn't room for the same triple camera setup with telephoto and wide-angle cameras as in the S25 Plus, so you have to settle for a main camera and a wide-angle camera, both of a new type. The main camera has a sensor as large as in the S25 Plus but with a maximum resolution of 200 megapixels, and the wide-angle camera in the S25 Edge has autofocus, which is missing in the S25 Plus.

It turns out that the cameras in the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge are surprisingly good. The S25 Plus has a decent set of cameras for all needs, but the S25 Edge is better. The main camera consistently takes pictures that feel sharper when you zoom in on them, in daylight but even more so in low light. The wide-angle camera's pictures also become noticeably sharper and more detailed.

The big surprise, however, comes when I take photos with zoom. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge does not have a telephoto camera, but the main sensor's resolution of 200 megapixels allows you to take a 12-megapixel crop from the image and get four times magnification without using digital enlargement. It's clear that Samsung is taking full advantage of this, as the sharpness in photos taken with 2, 3, and 4 times zoom is noticeably sharper than equivalent photos with the S25 Plus. I thought that the light intake might suffer and took photos with zoom in twilight, but there the advantages of the camera in the S25 Edge become even greater. A really good main camera thus proves to do the job of taking zoomed-in photos better than the separate telephoto camera with a relatively small sensor that the Galaxy S25 Plus has.

Weak Battery

The last potential disadvantage, battery life, is harder to magic away. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge has a 3900 mAh battery, which is 1000 mAh less than in the S25 Plus. This is not noticeable at all in our screen test, where we stream video at maximum brightness.

However, when I use the phone, I notice that certain apps that run continuously, and if the coverage is a bit poorer, can drain the battery quickly. This is a peculiarity of Samsung's phones in particular; with other manufacturers, I don't notice it nearly as clearly, but it is of course worsened by the fact that the battery is a bit smaller to begin with, and I feel that this is a phone I can't rely on to have a battery that lasts all day with my usage pattern.

Otherwise, the Galaxy S25 Edge naturally has NFC for contactless payments, and actually also wireless charging, a feature they would have been excused for prioritising away due to lack of space. And of course, it has Android 15 with One UI 7 just like the rest of the S25 series. This also means a wide range of artificial intelligence features, such as giving commands to Samsung's apps via Gemini, creating images from sketches, and simultaneously translating phone calls. However, the call recording feature that Samsung promised is still nowhere to be seen, but you can record and transcribe calls held in the same room as the phone, and it will also print out who said what.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge strangely feels both unnecessary and logical. On one hand, the thinner format doesn't add much to the existing product family, on the other hand, it is an improvement and a worthy replacement for the Galaxy S25 Plus. But it is not a phone for those who want extra long battery life.

Questions & Answers

How many system updates is the Galaxy S25 Edge promised? Seven years of system updates and security updates are promised for the phone, just like the other S25 models.

How are the AI-based image editing features? You can move and remove objects and the shadow disappears too, and you can even draw onto objects. Samsung's features for this are best in class while still being more fun than something I actually benefit from.

Any other differences in the S25 Edge compared to the S25 Plus? The screen is Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 instead of Gorilla Glass Victus 2, making it more durable.

An alternative

If you want the phone to be a bit lighter and it's not important for the screen to be so large, the Galaxy S25 is an alternative, which can actually be used with one hand.