The Galaxy S25 Edge Is the Future, Whether You Like It or Not

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge has been introduced. It’s skinny, it’s costly, and the response on-line has been removed from overwhelmingly optimistic. However should you thought it was a gimmick that no one requested for, I am not so positive. Skinny telephones are right here to remain.

The S25 Edge Has Extra Compromises Than Strengths

It is truthful to say that the announcement of the Galaxy S25 Edge was greeted with a certain quantity of skepticism. It is undoubtedly a powerful piece of design, slimming the entire thing down to simply 5.8mm (so long as you ignore the quite hefty digital camera bump) and making it a lot lighter than different telephones with the identical measurement of display.

But to do that, Samsung has needed to make a number of compromises—way over you’d usually anticipate in a tool costing over $1000.

The principle one is the battery. Samsung opted to not change to the new range of silicon-carbon batteries that enable for the next capability in a smaller measurement. We have seen these in telephones just like the OnePlus 13, they usually absolutely live up to the hype. Samsung caught with the outdated lithium-ion battery as an alternative, and the result’s that the capability of 3900mAh makes it the smallest in all the S25 vary. It’ll have the worst battery life in the entire vary, too.

The opposite compromises are within the digital camera. The S25 Edge is the one telephone in the S25 range with out a zoom lens. As an alternative, it depends on cropping into a picture from the principle digital camera to supply a type of digital zoom. Pixel telephones do this too, and whereas the outcomes are completely usable, they do not evaluate to having devoted {hardware} for the job.

The principle digital camera sensor is 200MP, similar to the S25 Extremely. Nevertheless it is not the identical sensor; it is smaller, so the picture high quality is unlikely to be the identical stage both.

And there are a number of different areas the place corners have wanted to be reduce. The CPU has seven cores as an alternative of eight, and the charging pace is pegged at 25W as an alternative of 45W.

The S25 Edge is a flagship telephone, however one whose fundamental promoting level is just not the specs, however the design. However should you hoped that the thinness was simply an pointless gimmick, nicely, you’d higher get used to it.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge

Samsung’s newest flagship telephone gives the corporate’s bleeding-edge expertise in a slim kind issue. When you pre-order the Galaxy S25 Edge immediately from Samsung, you will get $50 in credit score and a free improve to the 512GB mannequin.

Skinny Is the Future

Smartphone producers have all the time fetishized thinness as an indication of progress, they usually justify it by insisting that it’s what shoppers truly need.

Way back to 2012, Wired was reporting on the criticism HTC acquired for equipping its telephones with tiny batteries, and the way the corporate defined that its analysis confirmed customers wished skinny telephones quite than lengthy battery life.

It did not ring true then, and nonetheless would not. Whereas there are little question many individuals who prioritize slick design of their telephones, the typical consumer appears to need longer battery life, adopted by higher cameras. Anecdotally, I might even say extra folks care about thick bezels than the thickness of the telephone itself.

However there is not any going again. With the launch of the Galaxy S25 Edge and the iPhone 17 Air anticipated later in 2025, skinny will grow to be the brand new normal. Apple is anticipated to drop its “Plus” iPhone to make room for the skinny model, and there is hypothesis that Samsung will do the identical with the S26.

After which different producers will comply with. It will take some time to filter by way of each vary and model, and it is not clear how skinny a smaller-screen telephone can go. However at a time when an absence of innovation has led to boring, identikit devices, thinness is a really seen means of displaying how an organization’s telephones are getting higher.

They will be costly for some time, and there might be compromises in options. However whether or not we wish them or not, I do not suppose they’re going to be going away.

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Forward of the S25 Edge happening sale, there are a number of questions that want answering. How strong is it? Is the battery life as unhealthy as many anticipate? Does placing it in a case negate the entire level of the telephone’s existence?

Regardless of the way it seems, the actual fact stays that the entire business has been shifting on this course for years. Telephone makers would shave half a millimeter off each technology or so, or typically simply give their units curved edges in order that they felt thinner within the hand. The Edge and the upcoming Air are the following stage in that course of. Prefer it or not, they’re the long run.