The Galaxy S25 Edge is thin, powerful and beautifully designed — but still, it left me wanting for more.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Snapdragon 8 Elite For Galaxy is FAST | Limited camera array |
| It’s very light for its screen size | Lightness maybe isn’t enough at this price |
| Battery life better than expected | Battery life is better on other flagship phones |
Score: 3/5
 |
Buy The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge! | Buy On Amazon |
In this review
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge Specifications
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge Design
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge Camera
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge Performance
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge Battery
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge Conclusion
Ethical disclaimer: The Galaxy S25 Edge used in this review was loaned to me by Samsung Australia for this review, and it will go back to Samsung Australia.
That gets it reviewed, and that’s all – though in this case some poor health did rather delay this review, but I digress! I feel that ethical disclosure like this is important and should not be buried at the bottom of reviews or skipped over altogether, as some other sites do. For more on ART’s ethical position, see here.
Design
The last time Samsung released a phone with an “Edge” suffix was an astonishing nine years ago – I can recall, I was at MWC back in 2016 when they were unveiled, though sadly my review of the Galaxy S7 Edge has been removed from the web by its original publisher… if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to shake my fist in impotent rage for a minute…
There, all better now. Where was I? Oh yes, history lesson time.
The original Samsung Galaxy Edge phones were all about curved screens, but that’s not the core sales proposition for the Galaxy S25 Edge. This is a phone that sells on being exceptionally thin, measuring in at 158.2×75.6×5.8mm and weighing just 163g. Thin and light is very much the point of this particular handset over and above any other consideration, for better… and worse.
I will pause for just a second here to commend Samsung, because this really does represent exceptional engineering work given everything else stuffed inside the Galaxy S25 Edge’s frame.
At a technical level, this is incredibly impressive… but I do wonder whether everyday consumers are going to care as much about technical achievements as I might, especially given the Galaxy S25 Edge’s asking price, which runs $1849 for the 256GB variant or $2049 for the 512GB variant.
Only one regular Samsung Android phone officially costs more than the S25 Edge, and that’s the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Also read:
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review
To give the S25 Edge’s 163g weight some context, the Galaxy S25 Ultra hits the scales at 218g, not including the case that I’d suggest you put on either phone. 163g is a fine technical achievement, but having tested out the Galaxy S25 Edge over the past couple of weeks, I think that for most users the “surprise” at its light weight will fade all too quickly.
I test a lot of phones and pick up a lot of them and with only a handful of exceptions, I rarely think of them as being overly “heavy” in the hand.
If you do want and need a phone that you’re going to have to hold up unsupported for a long period of time – shooting video freehand for example – then this might have some relevance, but how often do you really need that?
Once my mind got past the point of thinking “oh yes, this is the light phone I’m testing” (at which point my mind is primed to think about weight) I honestly stopped thinking about it, and at that point, it became significantly less relevant to my day to day use of the phone.
That is, I think, a serious issue for the Galaxy S25 Edge, because that thin and light style is 100% the sales proposition for this particular phone. Like the Galaxy Z Flip6 this is a phone that sells on style first and foremost, and one of its key style points isn’t automatically apparent to anyone else; this just looks mostly like any other current generation Samsung Galaxy S phone outside its thin profile.
The Galaxy S25 Edge’s display measures in at 6.7 inches with a resolution of 3120×1440, though its default resolution unless you change it up is just 2340×1080 pixels in order to preserve battery life. This makes it a close-ish match to the Galaxy S25 Plus, a phone I’ve not been able to review to date, but one that you can have at a lower price than the S25 Edge.
You do get a choice of colour styles, with Titanium Silver, Titanium Jetblack or Titanium Icyblue available officially in Australia; Samsung sent me the Icyblue variant to test out. The colour is subtle and confined only to the rear of the phone, with a solid titanium frame in a more elegant silver finish.
You get the standard volume and power/assistant buttons at the side, with an in-display fingerprint reader for primary biometric identification, and all of these work well enough, though me being me, I quickly switched the power button back to being a power button – your own assistant tastes may vary.
On the durability side, one of the bigger consequences of wanting go thinner and lighter is that you can’t quite match up the quality of glass found on (for example) the Galaxy S25 Ultra; instead the Galaxy S25 Edge makes do with Corning’s Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2. It is on the slippier side in the hand, and I’d ordinarily advocate for a case here, but I feel that if you are going to spend up big on a super-thin phone, you might not be keen to add thickness and weight to it.
Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 should still give it some degree of protection, as should its inbuilt IP68 water resistance, though I will throw in my typical reminder that water resistance isn’t water proofing, and it will degrade over time, too.
Camera
Premium priced phones come with premium cameras, right?
In the case of the Galaxy S25 Edge, the answer to that question is a highly qualified “yes.. but also no”.
Let me explain, because Samsung’s lineup of cameras across its premium phone lineup is somewhat confusing at first glance.
Buy any of three phones cheaper than the S25 Edge, including the now highly affordable Galaxy S24 FE, and you’ll get a triple camera array with wide, ultrawide and telephoto catered for. Buy the S25 Edge and you don’t, though you do get the 200MP sensor found in the flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra for primary photo duties.
It’s a similar kind of tradeoff that Samsung offers with its Galaxy Z Flip line, which has yet to see a triple lens camera array, but it’s ultimately one that does leave me wanting at this price point, especially because it’s not that hard to look around or bargain shop for a Galaxy S25 Ultra at (or even under) the price of the Galaxy S25 Edge at launch. If smartphone photography is important to you, that’s the Samsung phone I’d suggest you buy at this kind of price point.
All of which is not to say that the cameras that the Galaxy S25 Edge has are bad in and of themselves. They’re quite good, with that primary 200MP sensor doing a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of creating pleasing images. Samsung’s typical slightly oversaturated colour post processing does hit most photos if you’re shooting in automatic modes, but a lot of people do like that kind of look.
There’s no inbuilt real telephoto, just digital cropping up to 10x. Here the 200MP does help, because you genuinely can push that 10x to its full distance with few real issues:
Wide (200MP) lens shot, all looking fine (as you’d expect)
“10x zoom” (which is just a crop from that 200MP lens) ain’t too bad either.
But I’d still prefer a proper telephoto lens at this price.
I can appreciate that getting a triple lens setup into the Galaxy S25 Edge might have been a bit too much for the engineering team at this point in time, but it still does mean that you’re buying a “version one” tech effort, with one of the biggest costs there being a less capable camera than I’d like to see here.
Galaxy S25 Edge Sample Photos
I’m not the prettiest selfie subject. Never was.
Some things just need to be documented to prove that they exist. Why they exist is a different question.
Performance
The Galaxy S25 Edge is thin and light in design terms, but the same description cannot be applied to what Samsung’s managed to stuff into its frame. It features the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy system used in the full flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra with 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage on board; Samsung loaned me the smaller 256GB model for review.
It’s here where, at least partially, the Galaxy S25 Edge can justify some of its asking price, because just like it is on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy is one speedy chunk of silicon.
Here’s how the Galaxy S25 Edge compares using Geekbench 6’s CPU test against other current flagship phones:
Here’s how it stacks up using 3DMark Wild Life Extreme against the same phones:
All of which, not surprisingly, leads to a phone that really doesn’t struggle with any everyday Android app you might care to throw at it, as well as a number of more high-intensity apps as well.
Still, I’ve included the Galaxy S25 Ultra in those tables above, and not without reason. While there is a theoretical price gap between the two phones – at the time of writing I could find at least one Galaxy S25 Ultra for quite a bit less – you don’t get features like the S-Pen built into the Galaxy S25 Edge, and it doesn’t in fact support it at all.
This baffles me, because while you might not want to build in the enclosure for the S-Pen as it is on the S25 Ultra, you could easily sell S-Pen cases and make the true lightness and thin nature of the S25 Edge as an easy and obvious personal notepad.
The Galaxy S25 Edge follows Samsung’s current and laudable pattern of offering 7 years of OS upgrades and 7 years of security updates, putting it just behind Google’s Pixels. True, Google offers the same 7 year cycle, but its ownership of Android does mean that Pixels see updates well before Samsung devices, which is why I classify them that way.
It’s 2025, and you can’t have a smartphone without AI inbuilt. Being a premium flagship Android phone, that means that the Galaxy S25 Edge has “Galaxy AI” features built in – and they’re the same ones found in the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
I’m still an AI skeptic, waiting for that moment where the lightbulb goes off and AI offers me something that actually benefits me rather than (as it currently does) burning through obscene amounts of energy while equally draining away human creativity… but I digress, perhaps.
If you’re keen on Galaxy AI, the full suite is here, though you do have to bear in mind that Samsung’s promise to keep it “free” only extends to the end of the year. 2026 could well bring Galaxy AI at a monthly cost, though only Samsung knows what kind of price that might be.
Believe me, it’s a running gag in media briefings to ask how much Galaxy AI will cost at the end of the year, only to be met with a refusal to answer, at least at this time.
Battery
One of the larger sacrifices – at least on paper – that Samsung had to make with the Galaxy S25 Edge was in the battery compartment.
A thinner phone simply doesn’t have the same kind of space for battery capacity as a thicker one, which is why the Galaxy S25 Edge runs with a 3,900mAh battery pack, a fair distance from the typical 5,000mAh battery found in most standard Android phones in 2025.
As such, my expectations were not high in regards to the Galaxy S25 Edge’s battery life overall. First stop; my standard YouTube based battery test to give a comparative picture of battery life expectations:
Honestly, the Galaxy S25 Edge performed way better than I expected here, a sign of just how power efficient the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset actually is.
Still, it’s also on the lower side for a premium flagship phone, and my own more anecdotal testing did find it running out of power on some testing days, though I would have to add the caveat here that this included a period where I was stuck on a sofa, quite unwell, so I was using the phone quite a lot.
For most users the Galaxy S25 Edge should manage a day’s usage without too many worries, though it doesn’t quite live up to the expectations that you might have at its high price point, once again.
As with all Samsung flagship phones, there’s no in-box charger supplied with the Galaxy S25 Edge. You’ll have to provide your own with wired USB-C charging topping out at 25W while wireless charging maxes out at 15W.
I’m also somewhat disappointed that Samsung didn’t use the Galaxy S25 Edge to jump fully into the Qi2 wireless and magnetic charging world, because a thin and light phone like this feels like such a natural match for that technology.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge: Alex’s Verdict
At an engineering level, the Galaxy S25 Edge is an exceptional phone; just getting the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy to run in a phone this thin and light without melting your hand alone is impressive stuff.
It does make me genuinely curious about what Samsung does next with this engineering across both its standard and foldable lines, because applying this kind of design across more capable phones could lead to some truly stellar results.
Therein lies the rub, however, because I do have to highlight that in some ways, the Galaxy S25 Edge just doesn’t feel as capable as it could at its launch price.
The cameras are the most obvious culprit, but it’s also less capable in battery life terms and lacks premium features like the S-Pen that you can find on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, a phone that can be had right now for around the same kind of price, even though its official RRP is somewhat higher.
That does relegate the Galaxy S25 Edge to being a truly niche phone. If you lust after that thin design and want processing power to go with it, then yes, this will do what you need it to do while looking really nice. However, for the same money, you could get a much more capable phone, so you’ve got to really thirst for that thin and light design.
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Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge: Pricing and availability
|
Buy The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge! | Buy On Amazon |
The Galaxy S25 Edge retails in Australia with pricing at $1849 (256GB) or $2049 (512GB).
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