Galaxy S25 Edge vs Galaxy S25 Ultra: Beauty versus brawn

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Galaxy S25 Edge and S25 Ultra standing against a wall with their backs towards the camera

Intro


It's 2025, and regular flagship phones don't cut it anymore. 

You need something new and intriguing to capture the attention of the regular public, and it seems that both Apple and Samsung agree this could be thin phones. 

In preparation of the iPhone 17 Air, which is coming later this year, Samsung has just announced the latest member of its Galaxy S25 lineup, the new and ultra-thin Galaxy S25 Edge. With a super-thin 5.8 mm titanium body, it emphasizes the design aspect of Samsung's phone and puts nearly all its eggs in that basket. 

Where does the Galaxy S25 Edge fits in the larger Samsung narrative, and how does it compare against the very best Galaxy out there, the Galaxy S25 Ultra?

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Galaxy S25 Edge vs Galaxy S25 Ultra differences:


7.4
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge
8
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
6.4
6.4
6
7
7.4
8.3
8
10
6.5
8
7
8
Battery Life
Photo Quality
Video Quality
Charging
Performance Heavy
Performance Light
Display Quality
Design
Wireless Charging
Biometrics
Audio
Software
8
8.2
7.1
6.8
8.2
8.5
9
8
6.4
8
8
8

Table of Contents:

Design and Display

Thin is definitely in


The Galaxy S25 Edge is all about that design. After years of mostly growing and growing, it seems that manufacturers are now looking to saturate the other end of the spectrum and gauge consumers' interest in ultra-thin phones. 

The Galaxy S25 Edge is the first high-profile phone from a major manufacturer to pioneer this space. The magic number here is 5.8 mm––that's precisely how thin the Galaxy S25 Edge is, making it noticeably more compact than just about any other proper flagship out there. For example, an iPhone 16 is 7.8 mm thick, while the regular Galaxy S25 measures 7.2 mm. 


Aside from the superb thinness, the Galaxy S25 Edge is unmistakably a "Galaxy". It has those same core design features as the rest of the Galaxy S25 lineup, like a flat frame, flat front and back panels. The corners are slightly curved, consistent with the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus, and the new Ultra itself. 

It also has a titanium frame, making it the second phone in Samsung's roster to do this. Interestingly, the other one is the Galaxy S25 Ultra itself. 

New on the Galaxy S25 Edge is Corning's Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2.0 glass, which uses enhanced methods to crystallize glass, making it even more resistant to cracks and scratches. However, we don't get the same anti-reflective coating here as on the Galaxy S25 Ultra


One major change can be immediately spotted at the rear of the Galaxy S25 Edge. It has a somewhat protruding camera island at the back, but most importantly, the camera bump houses just two cameras. More on that later. 

How does the Galaxy S25 Ultra compare?

Size-wise, the Galaxy S25 Edge clocks in at158.2 x 75.5 x 5.84 mm, while the Galaxy S25 Ultra measures 162.8 x 77.6 x 8.2 mm. The latter's obviously taller, wider, and thicker, given that it's the best-spec'd flagship phone in Samsung's lineup, and packs more hardware inside.

One of those is the built-in S Pen stylus. The Galaxy S25 Edge doesn't support this hardware feature.

Colors-wise, the Galaxy S25 Edge comes in Titanium Silver, Jetblack, and Icyblue colors. 


Meanwhile, the Galaxy S25 Ultra comes in Titanium Gray, Titanium Black, Titanium Whitesilver, Titanium Silverblue colors.


The Galaxy S25 Edge comes with a 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen, with a super-smooth 1-120Hz refresh rate. New here is the smoother and more granular refresh rate, which now supports smaller increments instead of the standard 1Hz steps. This would lead to a smoother overall experience and sounds like something that could very soon get adopted by many other devices.



Aside from that, we get a QHD+ display with 2600 nits of peak brightness that's mostly similar to the one you get on the Galaxy S25 Plus.

On the other hand, the Galaxy S25 Ultra comes with a 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen with 1-120Hz refresh rate, sharpness of nearly 500ppi, and peak brightness around 2,600 nits.

Properties wise, we didn't really expect many differences, and Samsung didn't really disappoint us. Aside from the size, the color temperature, peak brightness, and gamma are pretty much identical, just as expected. 

Display Measurements:


  

One unique feature that the Galaxy S25 Ultra has but the Galaxy S25 Edge doesn't is an anti-reflective coating on the screen, which prevents unwanted reflections from marring the user experience. It's a beneficial feature that we hope every Galaxy from now on adopts, but this feature doesn't seem to be trickling down just yet.

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Biometrics-wise, both devices come with ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanners on board.

Performance and Software

Snapdragons for everyone


The Galaxy S25 Edge and the Galaxy S25 Ultra share the same Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset. Built on a 3nm manufacturing node, this one is a slightly overclocked version of the regular Snapdragon chip and is a proper powerhouse that shines both in synthetic benchmarks and in real life scenarios.

However, the peculiarities of the ultra-thin design have forced Samsung to tune up the Galaxy S25 Edge's chip for efficiency. As the cooling solution inside lacks the physical space to disperse heat as well as the larger Galaxy S25 Ultra, such an optimization is critical and paramount. Everything with the S25 Edge is tailored for efficiency, so a slightly lower peak performance is a given. 

And our CPU benchmarks seem to confirm that. The Galaxy S25 Edge performs slightly worse than the Galaxy S25 Ultra in the Geekbench 6 single- and multi-core CPU tests, but the overall power is still there. 

CPU Performance Benchmarks:


Geekbench 6
SingleHigher is better
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge2823
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra3137
Geekbench 6
MultiHigher is better
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge9060
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra9769

The same can be observed in the graphics-tasking 3DMark test, where the Galaxy S25 Edge performs slightly worse than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but still very impressive in comparison with other phones. 

GPU Performance


3DMark Extreme(High)Higher is better
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge5407
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra6208
3DMark
Extreme(Low)Higher is better
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge2628
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra2981

In terms of memory and storage, the Galaxy S25 Edge features 12GB of RAM, which is just as much as the Galaxy S25 Ultra. This should be enough for regular multitasking capabilities as well as to process on-device AI requests swiftly. 

Storage-wise, the Galaxy S25 Edge comes in either 256GB or 512GB of storage, but the Galaxy S25 Ultra can be yours in either 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB. 

Both the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Galaxy S25 Edge comes along with Android 15One UI 7, and seven years of software support. Although it took its sweet time to arrive to older Galaxies, One UI 7 is an important software update that refreshes the user interface, adds some new features, and enhances existing ones. 

Camera

The first two-camera Samsung phone in ages


The Galaxy S25 Edge is all about the design, so the camera has taken the back seat. The phone features a dual camera, consisting of a high-res 200MP wide-angle one and a 12MP ultrawide. The Galaxy S25 Edge features the same sensor as the Galaxy S25 Ultra but uses different lenses on top.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy S25 Ultra comes with everything but the kitchen sink. A 200MP wide-angle camera, a 50MP ultrawide, a 50MP periscope with 5X zoom, and another 10MP 3X telephoto. Up front, we get a 12MP front camera.

PhoneArena Camera Score:


Photo
Video
Phone Camera
Score
Photo
Score
Main
(wide)
Ultra
Wide
Selfie Zoom
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge 140 146 79 21 23 22
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra 158 165 87 23 27 28
Phone Camera
Score
Video
Score
Main
(wide)
Ultra
Wide
Selfie Zoom
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge 140 134 72 20 24 17
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra 158 150 75 21 28 26
Find out more details about photo and video scores for all phones we have tested on our PhoneArena Camera Score page

In our in-house camera benchmark, the Galaxy S25 Edge performs worse than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but that's absolutely an expected outcome given that the latter is easily among the most versatile and capable camera phones you can get right now. Still, the Galaxy S25 Edge performs very decent given its more limited hardware setup.

That's as good as it gets right now, as the Galaxy S25 Ultra is the current leader in our custom PhoneArena Camera score ranking, where it shares the top spots with phones like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and the Oppo Find X8 Ultra.


Battery Life and Charging

A surprisingly decent battery life


One thing is certain about the Galaxy S25 Edge: this one doesn't top the battery test rankings. However, it delivers surprisingly decent battery life.

The limiting form factor of the Galaxy S25 Edge has only allowed Samsung to put a 3,900 mAh battery inside. In comparison, that's just 100 mAh less than the battery inside the Galaxy S25. At the same time, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is equipped with a larger 5,000 mAh battery, similar to what most previous Galaxy Ultra flagships had. It has superb endurance and punches above its weight in terms of battery longevity.

But, thanks to the chipset that has been tailored for efficiency, the Galaxy S25 Edge delivers very decent average battery life of six hours and 22 minutes. It lasts for 16 hours and 40 minutes in our web browsing test, seven hours and 44 minutes in the video streaming test, and nearly ten hours in our 3D gaming test. All tests were conducted with the screen manually set at 200 nits. 

The Galaxy S25 Ultra, just as expected, performs better in all these tests. Still, it's encouraging to see the Galaxy S25 Edge perform so well despite the significantly smaller battery. 

PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:


Battery Life
Charging
Phone Battery Life
estimate
Browsing Video Gaming
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge
3900 mAh
6h 22min 16h 40min 7h 44min 9h 38min
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
5000 mAh
8h 0min 20h 49min 8h 54min 14h 21min
Phone Full Charging 30 min Charge
Wired Wireless Wired Wireless
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge
3900 mAh
1h 6min N/A 59% N/A
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
5000 mAh
1h 9min 1h 58min 68% 33%
Find out more details about battery and charging for all phones we have tested on our PhoneArena Battery Score page

Charging-wise, the Galaxy S25 Edge comes with 25W wired and 15W wireless charging. That's fine, and consistent with the charging speeds the regular small-sized Galaxy flagships have got through the years. The Galaxy S25 Ultra beats that with faster 45W wired charging, but the same rate of wireless charging. Both take around a little over an hour for a full charge. 

Audio and haptics


Audio is great on both devices, but the Galaxy S25 Ultra delivers deeper bass and a bit richer sound, which can probably be traced to the size of the speakers inside the body. Still, you will find it enjoyable to listen to audio on either Galaxy, it's just the bigger model boasting more oomph. 

Haptics are traditionally superb on Samsung phones, so all is good here. 

Specs Comparison





Summary



With the Galaxy S25 Edge and its super-thin body, the whole focus is on the design language, with the hardware specs taking more of a secondary role. 

While the phone is as capable as its peers in the Galaxy S25 lineup, it is a litmus test for Samsung, determining whether consumers would get excited about a phone that's all design but doesn't necessarily come with the best of the best hardware out there. To some, that would be sufficient.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is the best no-nonsense flagship phone in Samsung's arsenal, featuring the best hardware the company has right now. It's the phone you get if you care about the hardware and desire the best of the best. At the same time, the design here is also quite premium, so the Ultra doesn't really play second violin to the Edge.

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