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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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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.
A spectacularly thin offering (Image by PhoneArena)
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.
Galaxy S25 Edge
Galaxy S25 Ultra
Thickness 5.8 mm (10mm with camera)
Thickness 8.2 mm (9.1 mm with camera)
Weight 163 gr
Weight 218 gr
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.
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.
Displays are just as good (Image by PhoneArena)
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.
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
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
Slightly worse performance on the Edge, but great overall (Image by PhoneArena)
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.
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.
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 15, One 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
When was the last time you've seen a dual-camera Samusng flagship? (Image by PhoneArena)
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.
Galaxy S25 Edge
Galaxy S25 Ultra
Wide 200MP
Wide 200MP F1.7
Ultrawide 12MP
Ultrawide 50MP F1.9
-
Periscope 50MP 5X zoom
-
Telephoto 10MP 3X zoom
Front 12MP
Front 12MP
Battery Life and Charging
A surprisingly decent battery life
The Edge is no slouch in terms of battery performance (Image by PhoneArena)
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.
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.
The Galaxy S25 Edge is a stunning device (Image by PhoneArena)
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.
Peter, an experienced tech enthusiast at PhoneArena, is captivated by all things mobile. His impartial reviews and proficiency in Android systems offer readers valuable insights. Off-duty, he delves into the latest cryptocurrency trends and enjoys sci-fi and video games.
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