I replaced my Samsung S25 Ultra with the Edge model for two weeks – here’s my buying advice

The moment I unboxed the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, I knew I was in trouble. While I had already spent a few hours fiddling with the phone a few weeks ago, going through my everyday routine with a device that’s significantly thinner and, more importantly, lighter than any other phone I’ve recently tested has been revolutionary.

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With the S25 Edge, it’s the little things: how the phone’s lightness makes magnetic cases harder to accidentally detach from mounts, how much more burdenless it feels to hold up a 6.8-inch screen when my other hand is hanging on the subway railing, and how the phone hurts a little less when I drop it on my face in bed.

If there’s one big takeaway from testing the S25 Edge these past two weeks, it’s that thin and light phones have spoiled me in every way but one. Unfortunately for Samsung, that one drawback is enough to convince any user to look elsewhere. Let me explain.

Your first impression of the S25 Edge will likely be the same as mine and the many others who experience an ultra-thin phone in 2025. It’s an engineering marvel, with a lightweight (163 grams) build encased in the same titanium material that keeps the more expensive S25 Ultra model protected from bumps and scratches.

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While the 6.8-inch display shares the same specifications as the S25 Plus model, the hand feel is completely different. It almost feels wrong not to be burdened by holding a big-screen phone, but that’s the ultra-thin phone experience, and I have been sold on that aspect since Day 1.

Samsung said it pulled a lot of design cues from its Z Fold line when designing the S25 Edge, and I believe it. I’ve used every Samsung foldable phone since the first generation in 2019, and have always wondered how nice it would be to split the foldable screen in half but retain the slimness. The S25 Edge is effectively that, making almost every other phone I’ve tried to pick up since testing it feel outdated.

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I’m less enthusiastic about the lack of an anti-glare screen, which is one of the most underrated features on the S25 Ultra model. Sure, the S25 Edge’s peak brightness of 2,600 nits makes it just usable in broad daylight, but the presence of glare and reflections is felt, especially as the summer sun starts to beat down more often. 

It’s unfortunate because the S25 Edge is a phone that’s destined to be nimble and carried around. Instead, I often find myself using the phone less when outdoors.

Fortunately, whenever I use the phone, it operates with grace. I can’t pinpoint one thing for the solid performance, so I’ll credit the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, the smoother animations of One UI 7, and the 12GB of RAM, which is sufficient for hybrid AI tasks, mobile gaming, and loading various social media feeds.

Just this weekend, I used the Gemini Live camera-sharing feature to inquire about how to deal with a wall of poison ivy on my backyard fence, while streaming Spotify to a Bluetooth speaker, and texting my wife about dinner plans. This was all on LTE data, by the way, and the S25 Edge handled it all without many hiccups. I did notice the back of the phone, where the processor is housed near the camera module, frequently getting warm to the touch.

That leads me to believe that while Samsung put some effort into building a functional thermal cooling system in the S25 Edge, it still has too little real estate to field something effective for modern-day usage. Any power user can easily rile this device up.

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On the camera front, the S25 Edge comes with a 200MP wide-angle lens and a 12MP ultra-wide. I was originally disappointed that Samsung couldn’t throw in a dedicated telephoto lens — even the standard S25 model has one — but in practice, I didn’t find myself missing the far-distance sensor. In most cases, the 2x optical-level crop from the 200MP (so long as you turn the resolution on in the viewfinder) delivered just the right amount of detail, color reproduction, and range that I needed for anything further out.

Samsung says the 200MP camera on the S25 Edge is Ultra-level but not exactly the same as the one found on the more expensive flagship. That said, I didn’t notice a dramatic difference in image and video quality when comparing the two phones. In fact, there were moments when I preferred the output from the S25 Edge, which doesn’t oversaturate colors as much as I’m used to from Samsung phones. 

The biggest question mark going into testing the S25 Edge, and really for every other thin phone moving forward, is how its battery fares. From my two weeks of testing, the battery life on the S25 Edge is subpar, though that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The writing was on the wall; it’s a large-screen phone (6.8-inch AMOLED) with a powerful processor (Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite) and a battery capacity (3,900mAh) that’s smaller than that of the smallest S25 model (4,000mAh).

Suffice to say, the S25 Edge made battery anxiety a thing for me again, with my review unit consistently dropping to 10-20% power by late afternoon. Coming from just about any other phone in 2025, the dip in endurance was immediately noticeable when I first used the device two weeks ago. 

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Even after it’s gone through a few cycles of learning my usage patterns, and moments when I’d have to nerf the settings to 60Hz refresh rate and turn on power-saving mode, I’m still nowhere near all-day battery life. This is a deal-breaker for me, and will likely be for anyone else who’s often away from an outlet or doesn’t want to carry a portable battery everywhere they go. It doesn’t help that the S25 Edge caps out at 25W wired charging, falling short of the 45W rating on the S25 Plus.

Had Samsung been more willing to flex its ingenuity muscles and embed a silicon-carbon battery — popular among Asian smartphone manufacturers for its increased energy density — you may be looking at one of the best phones of 2025. Instead, this is a big case of “what if,” with the biggest winner being Samsung itself, which now gets to tell Apple that they made the ultra-thin phone first. Take that for what you will.

ZDNET’s buying advice

I’ll reiterate that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is this close to being my dream phone, with the design and hardware being almost as good as one can hope for at $1,099. But the lackluster battery life is the ultra-thin phone’s Achilles’ Heel. Samsung should’ve been aware of this downside going into the manufacturing process, and the clearest solution (silicon-carbon batteries) has existed on the market for at least the past year.

As a result, you’re looking at a futuristic phone that’s held back by an old-school problem. 

Of course, if you find the below-average battery life to be a worthy trade-off for a lightweight yet powerful handset, then the S25 Edge is as good as it gets right now. I’ve lost count of the number of iPhone users who bought into the idea of a thin phone just seconds after I handed them the S25 Edge. But if you want something safer, longer-lasting, and somehow more capable, consider the S25 Plus (discounted to $749 at the time of writing), and you won’t regret it.