Sitting at my desk in the Trusted Reviews offices yesterday afternoon, I heard the doorbell. It was a courier, and he handed me a small, nondescript package. A package that I’d been waiting for all day; a package containing the ultra-slim Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge.
After unboxing the phone, marvelling once again at how thin and light it is and showing it to a couple of colleagues in the office, it immediately became my ‘main’ smartphone. I transferred all my apps, logged into my banking services and got the home screen layout just right so I could crack on with testing.
While I’m, of course, not yet ready to deliver my final thoughts, here’s how my first 24 hours with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge shaped up.
Pick up the Galaxy S25 Edge, and you’ll probably want one
Even after handling the Galaxy S25 Edge at a Samsung event a week ago, I was still enamoured with its ultra-slim design. At 5.8mm thick, it’s striking, and tipping the scales at 163g, it’s an absolute treat to hold and use. I found myself constantly marvelling at the phone, looking at it from all angles.
And, despite having the same angular design as the rest of the Galaxy S25 collection, I found it way more comfortable in the hand – even with that large 6.7-inch QHD+ AMOLED screen. It wouldn’t poke into my palms quite as much as the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, my go-to phone at the moment, does.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the S25 Edge has ruined my previously positive experience with the S25 Ultra. Even after just 24 hours, the Ultra feels thick and noticeably heavy, to the point where I wonder how I’ve used this phone for the past few months.
Of course, you adjust to whatever you have, and it’s likely that after using the phone for a week, I’ll no longer notice its particularly thin and light nature – but I’ll have to report back on that in my full review.
Performance has also been solid over the past 24 hours with nary a stutter to be seen, but considering it packs the custom Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, that’s not a surprise. The bigger challenge, I expect, will be keeping the slim chassis cool during longer gaming sessions. I’ve not had a chance to boot up Genshin Impact just yet, but I’m interested to see how it does.
I will say, not everybody in the Trusted office was quite as impressed with it as I was. Two colleagues independently said that “it’s thin, but that makes more sense on bigger tech like tablets and laptops”, while another questioned its value proposition when you can get cheaper phones with more advanced tech – and that’s true. There are trade-offs to making a phone this compact.
In the camera department, for example, the S25 Edge lacks the dedicated telephoto lens present in the rest of the S25 collection. That’s not wholly unsurprising given telephoto lenses need physical space for magnification, but it does mean that, despite costing just £150 less than the S25 Ultra, the £799 S25 can take a better zoom shot – in theory, anyway.
In practice, the S25 Edge’s 200MP primary lens does a reasonably decent job with digital zoom up to the 5x mark – there’s a benefit to all those extra pixels, after all. I’ve not shot enough to deliver any kind of verdict, but I haven’t been as disappointed as some might assume so far.
The biggest trade-off, however, has to be the 3900mAh battery.
Battery life could be an issue
When I saw that the S25 Edge had a smaller battery than the more compact Galaxy S25, I was immediately worried about battery life. How could the phone power a 6.7-inch QHD+ screen for long periods with a small cell?
Samsung claims that the S25 Edge can last for 24 hours… 24 hours of video playback, that is. That’s not what the vast majority of users will solely be doing on their smartphones.
Reader, it seems my fears may have been warranted.
I charged the S25 Edge to 100%, and took it off charge at around 3pm yesterday afternoon. I went out for a couple of hours in the evening, using the phone sporadically to reply to WhatsApps, take a handful of photos and listen to Spotify on my hour-long journey home and, by 10pm, my battery had dropped to 65%.
When I went to bed at around 1am, the phone had 54% charge left with only an hour and 15 minutes of screen time.
I didn’t charge it overnight like most would, just so I could get a taste of how long the phone could last, and to my surprise, it drained a whopping 24% overnight. I woke up to just 30%, and by midday, the phone was begging for a charger, sat at 5%.
That might’ve been acceptable five or ten years ago, but battery longevity in smartphones has come a long way in the past few years. This could be the phone that reintroduces the dreaded battery anxiety for many – especially considering I didn’t really use the phone that much, with just over two hours of screen time in total since its last charge.
Of course, there are trade-offs to having such a thin and light design, and it could very well be that battery life takes a bit of a hit in other slimline phones – like Apple’s rumoured iPhone 17 Air. We’ll just have to wait and see for now.
A promising start
Even with the rather lacklustre battery life I’ve seen so far, I’m certainly not writing the S25 Edge off.
That lightweight, ultra-slim build will undoubtedly be the thing that some cherish most, especially compared to phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra that seem almost brick-like in comparison. The display is also fantastic, and battery aside, it has been a treat to use so far.
I’m certainly looking forward to keeping my SIM in this phone for the next week – keep an eye out for my full review coming very soon.
