SAMSUNG Electronics Co. on Monday rolled out a slimmed-down Galaxy S25 Edge smartphone, kicking off a wave of drastically thinner handsets expected to launch this year.
The company’s latest device, which goes on sale in the US on May 30 for $1,099, is 5.8 millimeters thick and weighs 163 grams, making it about 30% thinner and 25% lighter than the S25 Ultra, the company’s highest-end smartphone. The new handset is about as light as the base-model S25, but includes more premium features like a titanium frame, 200-megapixel rear camera and high-end artificial intelligence capabilities.
“The amount of weight we’ve pulled out of this device and the slimness of this device is just dramatic,” Blake Gaiser, the company’s head of smartphone product management for the Americas, said in an interview. “We’ve been hearing from our customers over the last few years that weight and hand feel is something very important to them. As phones are getting bigger and heavier, they’ve really been looking for something that would just disappear in their pocket.”
The launch comes months ahead of Apple’s slimmed-down iPhone 17 model. That device is expected to come in at around the same thickness as the Galaxy S25 Edge and is planned to have a single back camera, compared with two on the new Edge handset. Gaiser said he’s “very confident our customers and others” will find the S25 Edge “very compelling.” Samsung teased the new phone in January without revealing its specifications, price or release date.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. (Bloomberg)
The phone has a 6.7-inch screen, matching the screen size on the S25 Plus, as well as 12 gigabytes of memory, and storage options of 256 and 512 gigabytes. At $1,099, it’s $100 more expensive than the Plus model and $200 cheaper than the S25 Ultra. Samsung said it always intended to launch the handset at this price point and that tariffs weren’t a consideration in this case. The company manufactures devices for the US market in South Korea, Vietnam and India rather than in China, where Apple has long made the majority of its phones.
Still, to make the device one of the thinnest in the industry, there are some tradeoffs: The S25 Ultra has a larger 6.9-inch screen and supports the S Pen stylus. The S25 Edge also lacks a 1-terabyte storage option and telephoto cameras for optical zoom. Users may not care too much about the camera specifications given they’re probably buying this phone for the design, but they may be concerned about battery life.
Having less space to include a larger battery pack could affect how long the device can be used on a single charge, though Samsung claims the S25 Edge is capable of all-day battery life. The internal battery is rated at 3,900 milliampere-hour, or mAh. That compares with 4,000 mAh capacity on the base S25 model and a 5,000 mAh pack inside the S25 Ultra. Samsung said AI optimizations are embedded in the software to make the battery last longer than last year’s entry-level Galaxy S24.
The S25 Edge was initially set to debut in April, but its release was delayed, in part due to leadership changes at Samsung. Co-Chief Executive Officer Han Jong-Hee, who oversaw the company’s consumer electronics business, died suddenly in March following a cardiac arrest.
The success of the S25 Edge is crucial for Samsung, as its pivotal semiconductor division has faltered in recent years. In the first quarter, strong sales of Galaxy S25 series helped offset declines in the chip division. During an earnings call last month, Samsung executives said they plan to drive growth through flagship smartphones as the company navigates a challenging global environment marked by shifting tariff policies and economic uncertainty.
When smartphones like the original iPhone arrived nearly two decades ago, companies fought to make their handsets thinner than the competition. It was a key marketing point, especially for older devices like the iPhone 6. But, in recent years, companies abandoned that approach to focus on improving battery life, adding better cameras and inserting more powerful processors. Now, Samsung and Apple are going in the other direction — at least as potentially niche alternatives to their main sellers.
The Galaxy S25 Edge, which will come in black, silver and blue, won’t be tied down to retail-store tables with security wires as is normal for pricey devices. Instead, the company is planning to include what it calls security adhesive that adds minimal weight and size to the phone. That way, potential buyers can try out the product in their hand and pockets as if they owned it, Gaiser said. –BLOOMBERG
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