Galaxy S25 Edge and the Thin Phone Problem

This is a pencil. It's 7. 7 mm thick.

This is the S25 Ultra. It's 8. 2 mm thick.

And this this is the S25 Edge. It's just 5. 8 mm thick.

We got to talk about these ultra thin foams. Okay, so the obvious take is nobody asked for this. Like these ultra thin phones look cool or whatever.

They make for a snazzy commercial, but what we really want is thicker phones that have less camera bump but way more battery. The universal thing that everyone wants is more battery, not thinner phones. Facts.

This is true. And I I could just end this video right here. But I figured, what if we actually gave it a shot?

What if I actually daily drove a phone whose biggest feature is how thin it is? So, I did. Now, the thing that won't shock you is that the rest of this phone is very familiar.

From the front, it's literally a Galaxy S25 Plus. Same size, 6. 7 in display, 1440p, 120 Hz, plenty bright, it's beautiful.

It's got this ultrasonic fingerprint reader, still super fast. And then all of the same software. So, it has the newly updated 1 UI7 that I also just got on my Ultra.

and mostly like the vertically scrolling app drawer is nice. Uh the new extra swipes to get to quick settings is kind of annoying, but pro tip, if you go to notification panel settings and then switch them from separate to together, it no longer requires extra swipes to get to quick settings. They're supposed to be quick after all.

But there's also, of course, the iOS copycat stuff, too. Maybe you've seen the obvious dynamic island clone on other phones before. Apparently, Samsung is not immune to it.

But there's three main things that are actually new about using this phone, which is the cameras, the battery, and the thinness and lightness, which you'll see what I mean. So, they've managed to actually stuff the same main camera as the S25 Ultra in this phone, which is kind of crazy. Great camera, 200 megapixel sensor that bends down to 12 megapixel shots by default.

It makes these nice, sharp images in a big variety of scenes. It's great. But then unlike the rest of the S25 lineup, there are no telephoto cameras on this phone.

Now, on one hand, I can argue it makes logical sense, like there's less room inside the phone here, and often a 2x digital zoom from a good sensor is actually better than a 2x optical zoom from a crappy small sensor. But yeah, you are definitely missing out on the further zoom performance here, which might not seem like much, but every once in a while, having some far zoom does come in very handy. I was just at my cousin's graduation and I think every single human there was zoomed as far in as their phone could physically go.

And so then a phone with a telephoto feels obvious. But instead the second camera here is an ultrawide. Not the same ultrawide as the ultra phone though.

This is a smaller 12 megapixel sensor. I found it to still be very solid though. Doesn't have any big weaknesses or vignetting or softness issues like I found on some of the iPhones ultrawides.

And it does macros as well. What you're probably wondering more about though is the battery. And yep, there's no way around it.

It's definitely worse. This is a huge S25 plus-siz screen with a smaller battery than the regular S25. So, yeah, you notice it.

It's 3,900 mAh, which is enough to be fine. And you can end the day with a bit of battery life left on a light day. And there's a whole ton of people that live most of their daily lives with very predictable charging opportunities.

Like you might be like me and have a wireless charger at your desk at work in front of you all the time. You might charge during your driving commute. Maybe you're always around an outlet when you're at home.

So it's manageable. But you got to think if it's already 25% worse than the S25 Plus as a starting point, then you already know when this phone gets old, it's going to be even worse. I'm sure someone will do a scientific test and and get exact values out of this, but I think in general, if you are expecting six hours of screen on time out of an A+ flagship phone all day, convenient, then expect closer to 4 and a half to five out of this, not as hot.

But all the sacrifice, of course, was made in the name of thinness and lightness because that pesky graphite and copper that gives you incredible all day battery life is also so thick and heavy. And if only you could just get rid of some of it, then you could have this stunningly thin piece of metal. And let me tell you, it is really thin and light.

It's kind of crazy. I'm so sorry to say, but there are there are a couple devices that have come out in the past couple years that are genuinely impressively thin and light, and they feel just kind of like this amazingly thin sheet of metal that happens to have a screen on it. Like the Galaxy Tab Ultra was one of those.

Uh, the new iPad Pro was another one of those from this past year. And this phone is another one of those. Like, it's one of those things where, okay, yeah, it looks a little thinner on video.

Whoop-dedoo. Snazzy commercial. Great.

I put it up next to another phone. It makes it look thick. Cool.

It could do that. But then you hold it and start using it, and that is the exact moment that it starts being impressive. Like I've showed this phone now to a whole bunch of people in this studio and out there in the real world and you know looking at it even they'd be oh yeah you know it looks kind of thin but then I'd hand it to them and then then they'd be super impressed when they actually hold the thing.

Now will that feeling go away after a couple of months of using this phone? Yeah, maybe a little bit. Uh will this feel totally pointless to some people once they put a case on the phone?

I think for some people yes. Honestly, this phone with a case on it, though, is still thinner than any regular phone with a case on it. But then, will this phone have durability issues like a certain other thin phone in the past?

Well, I I feel like if you're Samsung, there's no way you didn't consider that. And so, this phone has Gorilla Glass, ceramic, too, and titanium for the frame. And so, I feel like there's no chance they repeat the bending in pocket mistakes of the past.

But only time will tell, I guess. I just can't get over the fact that it's it's holding the phone in person that has sold way more people than any video or photo comparison ever could, which I understand probably is extremely ironic considering I'm telling you this through a video and I can't hand you the phone, but you're just going to have to trust me on this one. Also, this here is one of the last phones Samsung used the Edge name on.

This is my Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. And they call these older phones edge because they curved the display glass over the left and right edges, giving it a kind of a bezelless waterfall effect since screen to body ratio was like a huge deal at the time. And it also happened to make the rails of the phone that you actually hold extremely thin, which was a kind of a unique feeling at the time.

And this new Edge phone, again, because of how thin it is, is actually a unique feel in the hand. And I do think it will actually win some people over with the clear obvious trade-off being less battery and some serious table wobble with no case. Now, I can't talk about the S25 Edge without also talking about the elephant in the room, which is the rumor of future ultra thin phones, including the alleged iPhone 17 Air coming later this year.

And my thoughts about these are really just revolving around one thing, which is battery. Shocker. See, earlier this year, I reviewed the OnePlus 13.

And I talked about some of the big things we expect to see in smartphones in 2025. One of which is a reall life battery advancement, which we don't see very often. This one is silicon carbon battery tech.

Essentially, it allows you to have higher battery density and faster charging, which means you can do one of two things. You can either make phones that are the same size that have much much better battery or you can unlock this new ultra thin phone form factor and have roughly the same battery as before. The OnePlus 13 did the first thing.

It had a 6,000 mAh battery in the size of the normal flagship and it was amazing. It had 7 hour plus screen on time. It was great.

This S25 Edge jumps on the ultra thin thing, but it is not a silicon carbon battery. Uh, so there's some speculation why maybe Samsung couldn't source enough of this new battery tech to ship the number of phones that they were planning to with this model. Or maybe they're just a little bit apprehensive about taking risks in the battery departments after getting burned in the past.

Totally fair. Either way, they jumped on the ultra thin thing, but battery life suffered. So, what about the rumored iPhone 17 Air?

Well, word on the street is that phone also won't use a silicon carbon battery, possibly for a lot of the same reasons. The rumors I'm reading now are pointing towards like a 2,800 mAh battery, which even in iPhone land is just so much worse than the rest of their lineup. And that is going to be fascinating to see how they present that and how they justify that.

Either way, look, I think I think ultra thin phones can work with silicon carbon battery tech. I think something like this with like a 4500 to 5,000 mAh battery would be amazing. Ultra thin phone lasts all day.

Great. And then they can also make a regular size phone with a super long battery life. And then people can pick between the two.

I just saw Realme made a concept phone that's a totally normal 8 1/2 mm thick, but with a crazy 10,000 mAh battery and 320 watt fast charging, which would be incredible. Now, yes, it is a concept phone, so it's not real. It's more of a demonstration of the advancements of silicon carbon battery tech.

But that's the stuff that we're hoping is on the horizon. Maybe S26 Edge will get there. Thanks for watching.

Catch you guys in the next one. Peace. Never.

Ever.