Is Samsung’s thinnest and ‘designer jeans friendly’ phone worth it?

The Korean electronics giant says it has achieved an engineering feat with the S25 Edge. But it shares a lot of similarities with a chunkier and cheaper model. So is it worth the hype?

The S25 Edge won't leave a wear mark in the hip-pocket of your designer jeans.

At a recent gathering I noticed a rectangular bulge in the hip-pockets of other dads. It wasn’t caused by a wallet but a phone, and its outline left a chalky wear mark.

The Galaxy S25 Edge will be available from Friday.

Phones have become bigger and chunkier in recent years, reversing a trend from the 2000s. Just look at the original iPhone versus the latest model.

But Samsung has decided to buck the trend with its newest phone: the S25 Galaxy Edge. It’s the Korean electronics giant’s thinnest smartphone, measuring 5.8mm thick.

It is targeted at people who value form as much as function. Or to put more simply, those who don’t want their designer jeans ruined.

It slides stealthily into my hip-pocket without leaving a crease. Nobody would even know I had a phone.

But is this enough of a selling point?

The S25 Edge is Samsung's thinnest phone, measuring 5.8mm.

Unboxing

Setting up the Edge, which is priced from $1849, is straightforward. You can transfer data wirelessly or via a cable from an existing Galaxy device, and within a few minutes you’ve landed on the home screen and ready to go (it took me about another 30 minutes for all my data to come across from an S25 Ultra).

Samsung acknowledges says the Edge is designed to fit between the cheaper S25+ and the S25 Ultra, which costs $300 more. In other words, it has all the features from the S25+ but is aimed at catering for those who are looking for a more premium device, and the coating on the Edge feels great in my hand. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to slip from my grasp.

Nathan Rigger, Samsung Australia head of product for smartphones, told me it was “lighter than a packet of chips”. And at 163 grams, it’s 55 grams lighter than the Ultra, a noticeable difference.

It also feels robust and not like it’s going to bend or its screen pop out – unlike the iPhone 6 controversy in 2014.

AI features

The original image of Abbey Road.

I was speaking to a friend who is an iPhone user and the first thing he asked me about the Edge was how good was its artificial intelligence features. AI has become a big selling point as smartphone upgrades become more incremental and sales plateau.

There are a number of AI tools the Galaxy S25 series boasts. You can summon Google Gemini with a touch of the side button and get it to look at a photo of the contents of your fridge and suggest recipe ideas based on the ingredients you have. This works pretty well, although, like when I test drove the 25 Ultra in January, it confused a loaf of bread for chicken.

How Samsung's Galaxy AI removed the cars and people at Abbey Road.

There are also a suite of photo and audio editing tools, which like Apple Intelligence, are designed for everyday use, particularly in deleting unwanted objects with a swipe of a finger. Think about framing what is set to be a great photo on holidays. But then the shot is ruined by someone walking across the frame at the wrong time, or there are just too many people ruining the ambience. But Galaxy AI makes it easy to click on any distracting objects and delete them.

How Apple Intelligence removed the cars and people in the image of Abbey Road.

I compared this with a similar function on Apple Intelligence using a busy photo, with cars and people, of the pedestrian crossing outside Abbey Road Studios in London, which thanks to The Beatles has become a tourist Mecca. The results were striking. On the Samsung, which at a six month headstart in the AI race over Apple, it was able to delete the unwanted objects and turn the picture into an empty road. But Apple, while being quicker, struggled, with the road’s surface significantly distorted.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is in a few weeks, so we’ll wait to see what they have up its sleeve to remedy this.

Cameras

A picture taken with the S25's 2x optical zoom.

Although the Edge has one less camera than S25+ and two less than the Ultra, the question is, do you really need them?

A 10x optical zoom is good on paper, but I rarely use it. The 2x optical zoom is enough for me, in most cases. And if you really must have that extra reach, the 200MP delivers a pretty decent 10x digital zoom (which is achieved by cropping the image). There is enough resolution for the pictures to be sharp and usable.

The S25 Edge's wide angle camera has 200MP, giving it enough resolution to crop an image an create a 10x digital zoom.

But the Edge is not without its compromises. It has a sizeable camera bulge, given how thin it is. This causes it to wobble if you’re typing on your phone on a flat surface. Normally a case can fix this problem. But Samsung says it expects many who will buy the Edge will go caseless to make the most out of its svelteness.

Performance

The S25 Edge (left) and S25 Ultra.

The Edge features a Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip, the same as the S25 Ultra. It has a dynamic AMOLED display with a resolution of 3120 x 1440 pixels, 120Hz refresh rate, and 2600 nits of brightness (again the same as the Ultra). Samsung said Edge’s battery life was designed to last all day, based on typical use. It won’t slow you down.

The vapour cooling chamber – what’s used to dissipate heat and improve performance – is also 11 per cent larger than the S25+.

For audiophiles, it supports a range of codecs, including aptX lossless and Sony’s LDAC codec, to allow listening to music over bluetooth at high fidelity – so long as your wireless headphones are also compatible.

Bottom line

Compared with the S25+, which is $150 cheaper, the Edge has a smaller battery, shares the same 6.7-inch display and chip.

Is it worth the extra $150? For some people, yes. Samsung has achieved an engineering feat.

The Edge is not just about looks. It lives up to its claims of bringing the best of the S25+ and the Ultra in a thinner package – and it won’t ruin your pants.

The Edge can be pre-ordered now, with general availability from Friday.