Fold phones were the go-to design choice last year, but 2025 appears to be all about thin phones. With the Galaxy S25 Edge’s release, Samsung has officially beat Apple to the punch, offering up a more basic smartphone with average specs, encased in a slim body that’s a moderately unique selling point. To celebrate the occasion, a Galaxy S25 Edge review is in order, to understand what it has to offer.

At first glance, the new smartphone is not dramatically different from the rest of the S25 series, but we didn’t expect a major change this time around. Reducing size can be an expensive and complicated endeavor, which leaves little room for other grand features. The Galaxy S25 Edge’s release was initially expected in mid-April but was quietly postponed without an explanation. Now that the device has been fully unveiled, we can break down the specs to see what it has to offer.

At just 5.8 mm, the Samsung S25 Edge is exceptionally slim and its sleekness is its primary selling point. It is also lightweight, weighing in at 163 grams. The titanium frame adds to the premium aesthetic, especially with the narrow bezels that leave considerable screen space for comfortable viewing. Touted as an “engineering marvel” by Samsung, the device is a bold but middling addition to the Galaxy S25 series. 

The Galaxy S25 Edge release comes with the promise of AI as well as a 200MP wide lens camera for those who want a more substantial reason to invest in the smartphone. Photography is an obvious priority with the S25 Edge specs, bringing attention to the ProVisual Engine integration and ProScaler for AI-enhanced improvements to the device. Of course, the second lens is not nearly as impressive at 12MP.

The new Samsung Galaxy S25 is priced at $1,199 so the device is far from being affordable, but some of its features could convince you that it is worth the money.

With its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite (3 nm) chip safely locked and loaded, the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge brings One UI 7 at launch. If you’re still waiting for your old Samsung phone to update to the latest software version, you might just benefit from upgrading to the new phone entirely at this point. Or wait for One UI 8 to release this year and see how its rollout goes. 

If that sounds like an outlandish suggestion, then we’ll let it go and focus our sights back on the S25 Edge specs and see what it brings to the table.

The Samsung S25 Edge’s slim form factor is its main selling point, and while it’s easy to write it off and claim that the size of the phone doesn’t matter if you’re chronically addicted to using it, then you know the difference it can make. Apart from the aesthetic appeal of sleekness, a thinner, more lightweight phone is also easier to hold and operate comfortably. 

The color variants of the device are limited but just different enough so you can have a light, dark, or blue phone. While the curved edges and vertical camera setup keep it thematically similar to the rest of the S25 series, the raised camera module adds a slightly different touch to it. Seen from the side, it almost looks like an iPhone, which tells us just how much diversity there is in the smartphone offerings from the market leaders.

Apart from being thin, the primary reason to get the Galaxy S25 Edge would be the 200MP wide lens and this isn’t a very convincing argument either. It offers 2x optical quality zoom and 10x AI zoom, which doesn’t always translate to good images. The second 12MP ultra-wide lens is good for macro shots, but the lack of a telephoto lens is going to turn some away from the device.

With the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, the smartphone is able to provide AI enhancements to the photography experience, bringing the same ProVisual Engine offered by the rest of the S25 series. This helps with sharper details and true-to-life skin tones which add a more natural touch to your photos. All the other AI tools we’ve been exposed to with the series are available here as well. You can also capture Log videos for more flexibility. 

While the camera system isn’t bad by any measure, it’s what we’d expect more from a mid-range phone than one that’s over $1,000. As you can tell by our Galaxy S25 Edge review, we’re not exceptionally impressed.

The Galaxy S25 Edge has a 3,900mAh battery, which is smaller than the 4,000mAh battery on the cheaper base S25 model. The compromise on battery is an obvious drawback of the slim smartphone, but the difference isn’t as big as we expected. Samsung says you can still expect “fantastic all-day battery life” from the device. 

The smartphone supports 25W fast charging and 15W wireless charging, and you can expect 55% wired charging in 30 mins with its 25W Adapter. It’s not the worst battery out there, but neither is it the most premium of Samsung’s offerings. Most Galaxy S25 Edge reviews continue to wonder if the compromise on the battery is worth it.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is priced at $1,100 for the 256GB model, while the 512GB model is $1,220. You can preorder the smartphone right now and it will officially be available on May 30, 2025. Those who do preorder the smartphone by May 29, can expect a free upgrade to the 512GB model, so if you’re satisfied with the Galaxy S25 Edge reviews and want to gift yourself a new smartphone, now is the best time to do it.

Cynicism aside, what Samsung has achieved with the Galaxy S25 Edge’s design is a step forward in technological advancement as considerable work must have gone into ensuring the device is still fully functional while compressing the internal hardware. It’s no small feat and not an inexpensive one either, and for that, it’s important to appreciate the new smartphone. 

That said, are the Samsung S25 Edge features convincing enough to spend $1,100 on? We’re not entirely sure. The company didn’t completely cut down all its capabilities by half and still managed to give us a phone that fits in the S25 series well enough. At the same time, there isn’t enough there to convince us to switch devices, especially if we slap on a case and it’s just a regular smartphone again. 

The Nothing CMF Phone 2 Pro launch did leave us with average specs in exchange for a showy smartphone, but the compromise there felt worth it. From our Galaxy S25 Edge review, it’s apparent that we don’t feel the same pull towards the new thin smartphone. Are Slim phones really the next stage in the smartphone’s evolution? Smartphone makers appear to think it is, but users are less convinced by this direction.

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