Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge review: Slim, stylish and smarter, but is it enough?

Samsung first teased the Galaxy S25 Edge back in January alongside the rest of the S25 series. At the time, details were scarce, except for one standout fact: its ultra-slim profile. It also made it clear that the era of experiments by major players is coming back. With both thin and compact smartphones making a comeback. Coming back, measuring just 5.8mm, the S25 Edge is noticeably thinner than its siblings. That alone sparks both excitement and skepticism. On one hand, it’s impressive to see a flagship device packed into such a slim form factor. On the other, it raises questions about what compromises may have been made to achieve it. Striking the right balance is what users expect, and it’s exactly the lens through which we reviewed this device. This is our comprehensive review after a month of testing.

Price & Availability

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is available in multiple configurations and can be bought from major online retailers and offline stores as well.

Design & Display

Kicking things off with the Galaxy S25 Edge’s strongest suit, Samsung has truly delivered on its promise of a slim device without sacrificing build quality. The phone looks cutting-edge, and its ultra-thin design is something you’ll find yourself appreciating every time you pick it up. The slim profile naturally results in a lighter device, and that’s exactly what you get here.

I also compared its thinness to its siblings in the S25 lineup, and the difference is immediately noticeable.

In boxing terms, the Galaxy S25 Edge is a strawweight contender light and slim but it still feels reassuringly solid in hand. It carries an IP68 dust and water resistance rating, a standard feature across Samsung’s flagship lineup, and it easily holds up in both conditions.Thanks to its straight edges, the S25 Edge is also easy to grip, consistent with the design language of the rest of the S25 series.On the aesthetic front, our review unit came in the Titanium Gray finish, which strikes a balance between industrial and elegant. However, if you’re looking for something with more flair, the Jet Black Titanium variant might be more your style. While we haven’t tested that one, it’s worth noting that the Titanium Gray finish is a bit of a smudge magnet.

Now, moving on to display, the S25 Edge comes with a 6.7-inch LTPO AMOLED 2X Display with a max refresh rate of 120Hz. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge offers a display that’s both smooth and highly responsive, making day-to-day interactions feel seamless. With a peak brightness of 2600 nits, the screen remains perfectly visible even under harsh sunlight. Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ adds a layer of protection against everyday scratches, boosting overall durability.

The ultra-thin form factor enhances the experience of using the display—it feels sleek in hand and makes navigation more enjoyable. And while larger screens might offer more immersive viewing, the S25 Edge strikes a great balance between portability and usability, whether you’re catching up on content or scrolling on the move.

It also features an under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor fast to register and even quicker to unlock, keeping security snappy and convenient.

Software

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge runs on Android 15 out of the box with One UI 7, and just like its siblings in the S25 lineup, it brings the full suite of Galaxy AI features to the table. We’ve previously tested these features on the other S25 models, and they work just as smoothly on the Edge.

Live Translate makes real-time conversations more fluid by instantly translating phone calls and messages, helping to break down language barriers effortlessly. Circle to Search is another standout—it lets you look up anything on your screen by simply circling it, whether it’s text, an image, or a product you’re curious about. The built-in transcription tool also shines, converting speech to text with impressive accuracy, making it ideal for meetings, interviews, or quick voice notes.

One of the most powerful additions is Gemini Live, which elevates multitasking. It works across apps, allowing you to fetch information from the web and share it through another app using just your voice. Want to send someone an address? Ask Gemini to find it and send it via WhatsApp. Need to schedule something? It can pull details and add the event to your calendar—all hands-free. This kind of seamless cross-app AI integration makes the assistant genuinely practical, not just a novelty.

There is an addition of the visual engine as well here, which basically allows you to point the smartphone to a scenario and talk to the AI agent; this also works perfectly well.

The Galaxy S25 Edge, like it’s other siblings also benefits from Samsung’s commitment to long-term software support, with seven years of OS and security updates. That makes it a future-proof investment, promising fresh features and security enhancements well into the next decade.

Performance

This is where the compromises of a thin form factor start to become apparent specifically when it comes to heating and battery life. The Galaxy S25 Edge is powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy SoC. This custom-tuned 8 Elite chipset has delivered strong performance for Samsung in the past, and for the most part, it performs well here too.

Every day usage on the Edge feels smooth, thanks to the 12GB of RAM. Multitasking is a breeze you can keep several apps running in the background and pick up right where you left off. Whether you’re browsing, scrolling through social media, or watching videos, the experience is consistently reliable.

However, gaming is where things get a bit tricky. While the S25 Edge isn’t designed as a gaming device, you do expect a standard of performance from a flagship. Here, it does tend to heat up when playing demanding titles at high settings something noted by my peers as well. That’s the inevitable trade-off when you’re working with a chassis this thin. Testing the device in Delhi’s summer heat only made things more challenging.

In our sessions with BGMI and Genshin Impact, the heating was noticeable enough to impact the experience. That said, lowering the graphics settings helped ease the issue considerably so think of this as a heads-up if gaming is part of your daily use.

Battery life is another area where the slim design places limits. To be fair, for what Samsung set out to achieve with this form factor, the battery life is acceptable. But compared to standard phones or the Ultra and Plus variants there’s definitely a step down.

The 3900mAh battery delivers about 5.5 hours of screen-on time with an active internet connection, regular calling, and everyday use. For such a slim device, that’s not a bad number but it’s tough to call it flagship-grade. Unfortunately, the 25W charging cap doesn’t help the situation either something we’ve highlighted in our other S25 reviews as well.

Camera

The Galaxy S25 Edge comes equipped with a dual-camera setup on the back, completely omitting long focal length lenses. That omission is understandable—given the ultra-thin design, there simply isn’t room for large camera modules, and telephoto systems are typically too bulky to fit without compromising the sleek form factor.

The ultrawide camera is carried over from the S25 and S25+ models, but this time it gets a notable upgrade with the addition of autofocus, enhancing its versatility for both wide landscapes and close-up shots.

The selfie camera on the Galaxy S25 Edge uses the same 12MP sensor found across the entire S25 lineup, so there are no surprises on that front. It delivers consistent results in line with its siblings.

The Galaxy S25 Edge’s main camera delivers excellent results in good lighting sharp images with wide dynamic range, accurate color tones, and natural-looking colors, much like the S25 Ultra, thanks to shared hardware and software. Even 2x zoom photos hold up well, with minimal sharpness loss despite the lack of a dedicated telephoto lens.

The ultrawide camera performs decently but isn’t quite flagship-tier. It shows some softness and limited dynamic range, though autofocus adds versatility for both wide shots and close-ups. The macro mode is effective, but automatic switching between lenses when shooting close can be inconsistent thankfully, you can turn it off.

Low-light performance, however, is where the Edge falls short. The camera doesn’t reliably trigger Night mode automatically, and unless manually selected, you’ll often get soft, noisy images with clipped highlights and imbalanced contrast. The 200MP mode also underwhelms in sharpness sticking to the default 12MP binned mode yields far better results overall.

We did miss having a telephoto camera on the Galaxy S25 Edge especially given how often we shoot content. A telephoto lens helps capture distant details that simply aren’t reachable with standard or ultrawide lenses. And with the S25 Ultra offering one of the best telephoto systems in the industry, its absence on the Edge is definitely felt.

The Galaxy S25 Edge offers the same video recording capabilities as its S25 siblings. The main camera supports up to 8K at 30fps, with a Pro mode that unlocks 24fps recording in both 8K and 4K. The ultrawide and selfie cameras top out at 4K at 60fps.

Video quality gets a boost this year with upgraded 10-bit HDR recording, replacing last year’s 8-bit standard. There’s also a new Galaxy Log mode for those who prefer to color grade their footage manually.

OneUI adds a handy AI-powered audio eraser tool in the Gallery app, letting you adjust the volume of specific sound types like speech, music, wind, crowd noise, or nature sounds after recording.

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge feels like it’s carving out or rather, rejuvenating a category of its own. It strikes a compelling balance between aspiration and execution, making it a solid recommendation for many buyers. That said, potential users should be aware of the compromises, especially around battery life and thermal performance.

The Edge is clearly built for someone who’s tired of bulky phones and wants something sleek, distinctive, and premium. But if you’re fine with a more traditional flagship experience and don’t mind the extra weight, the Galaxy S25 Ultra remains the obvious choice.