Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge tests the waters for rumored iPhone 17 Air

Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge debuts at $1,099, prioritizing design over significant upgrades while offering features like a dual camera and optimized battery.

Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S25 Edge is held sideways to highlight its thin design at the company’s Gangnam branch in southern Seoul on May 13. It is the thinnest smartphone in the entire Galaxy lineup. [NEWS1]

The main selling point? Thinness. At just 5.8 millimeters thick, Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge will test whether consumers see a slimmer handset as worth a starting price of 1.49 million won, or $1,099 — an extra $100 over the company's S25 Plus — ahead of Apple's rumored release of iPhone 17 Air. While it’s undeniably sleek, the question, as preorders open, will remain: Is weight loss worth the extra cash?

The “Edge” branding, which began with the 2014 Galaxy Note Edge and lived on in the Galaxy S6 and S7 lines, once stood for curved glass and flair, but it's been repurposed here to mean thin and light: Samsung pitches its latest smartphone as a style-first device to chase a crowd raised on Apple’s aesthetic.

The S25 Edge is the slimmest Galaxy phone to date, beating the base S25 by 1.4 millimeters. The device weighs 163 grams, a single gram heavier than the S25.

At a preview session Tuesday at Samsung’s southern Seoul office, Moon Seong-hoon, executive vice president and head of smartphone development, framed the model as “the beginning of the slim smartphone era” — one that Samsung hopes to lead.

Pocketable design While the S25 Edge introduces no disruptive features, Samsung has worked to maintain the highlights of its flagship line. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Elite, the same co-developed Galaxy-optimized chip set used across the S25 series.

To manage heat in its thinner frame, Samsung redesigned the vapor chamber, widening and flattening it for more efficient thermal control compared to the S24.

The chassis sports a Corning Gorilla Glass 2 display with the same titanium frame as the S25 Ultra, reinforcing its durability despite the slimmer profile.

A new dual camera The Edge has only two rear cameras. It borrows the same 200-megapixel wide-angle sensor as the S25 Ultra, in a smaller housing, and adds a 12-megapixel ultrawide shooter, but drops the telephoto lens, slimming the rear array down to two usable cameras. That means no optical zoom, though the main camera offers 2x digital zoom and “10x AI Zoom.” Digital zoom looked noticeably grainy compared to that of the Ultra during daylight testing.

The 12-megapixel lens also brings support for autofocus and macro photography. Like the Ultra, it also supports Samsung's Nightography lowlight photography mode.

Battery duration is a trade-off As expected with a thinner chassis, the battery drops to 3,900 milliampere-hour (mAh), undercutting the 4,000mAh capacity of the S25 and 5,000mAh of the Ultra.

“It may feel like the battery capacity is small, but we extended the power consumption control time and optimized the power usage of each component to ensure that it can be used for a full day without any issues,” Moon said.

The handset supports 25-watt wired and 15-watt wireless charging, lacking the faster 45-watt charging enabled on the S25 Plus and S25 Ultra.

A ruler is used to measure the Galaxy S25 Edge, confirming its 5.8-millimeter thickness, at Samsung Electronics’ Gangnam branch in southern Seoul on May 13. [NEWS1]

Will the “Beyond Slim” regime continue? Samsung is betting on being first to the post in the slim phone race. It launched the S25 Edge ahead of Apple’s expected iPhone 17 Air and before Chinese rival Tecno's Spark Slim, which is 5.75 millimeters thick and appeared earlier this year at MWC 2025.

Samsung seems to have released the S25 Edge series as a design-focused test bed, and whether the “Beyond Slim” lineup will continue will depend on popular demand.

“The Edge is not a one-off special edition but part of the ‘S25 family,’” Moon told press at the event, but he stopped short of confirming long-term plans.

Preorders for the S25 Edge run Wednesday through May 20, with official release set for May 23. The edition comes in three colors — Titanium Jet Black, Titanium Icy Blue and Titanium Silver. Storage configurations of 256GB and 512GB are available; the starting price is 1.49 million won, or $1,099.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]