The Galaxy S25 Edge requires paying more for less – it’s no shock Samsung’s slim phone flopped
Poor sales have reportedly convinced Samsung to discontinue the Galaxy S25 Edge and dump the line. A warning sign for the iPhone Air?
Skinny phones have had a moment in 2025 and, judging by reports suggesting the Galaxy Edge line is done after one release, that moment might be short lived.
A report from Samsung’s South Korean homeland says the Galaxy S25 Edge has been discontinued after less than six months on sale, following poor sales that fell “far” short of internal expectations. According to Newspim Samsung will simply allow the current supply to run out, and has already informed staff there’ll be no sequel.
The report also quotes an unnamed Samsung official as saying: “I don’t know if the slim line will come back, but it doesn’t look easy at the moment. I think you can consider it to have essentially disappeared.” Despite the phone being aggressively marketed with pre-order offers, Samsung was selling “fewer units than the company anticipated” out of the gate, according to a report from The Elec in June. That report said Samsung was already cutting production, a month after its May 2025 launch.
I’m not trying to be wise after the fact here, but I saw this coming a mile off. A premium priced phone (£1,099) that compromised basics like battery life and camera functionality compared with the S25+ (£999) and the S25 standard (£799) had little chance of becoming a good seller, let alone a top seller. It asked too many sacrifices from consumers with only one, marginal benefit to counter.
In Stuff.tv’s review we pointed out “Samsung has done the S25 Edge dirty by fitting it with a meagre 3900 mAh battery. That’s as small as you’ll find on any S25 model, despite having to power a 6.7in display here. The 6.3in Galaxy S25 has 4000mAh while the larger (but thicker) S25 Plus has 4900 mAh.”
Heavy usage tests saw the phone survive 12.5 hours, while the S25 notched over 15 hours and the S25 Plus was just shy of 17 hours in the same tests. Charging speeds lagged too.
It was a similar story for the cameras. Both the standard S25 and S25 Plus offer a 10-megapixel telephoto lens with a 3x optical zoom. The most expensive Ultra variant carries a pair of telephoto lenses. The Galaxy S25 Edge had to skip it entirely due to the enforced space constraints of its slimline chassis.
The upside of this, for a phone that is more expensive than the S25 and S25 Plus? A saving of 1.2 to 1.3 millimetres. So, tell me. Would you sacrifice all day battery life and a good telephoto camera for 1.3 millimetres of pocket space? While paying more money for the privilege? Some of you may say “yes”, but I don’t think it’d be many.
Worrying signs for Apple?
It’s not clear yet whether Apple’s iPhone Air will suffer a similar fate, with its single 48-megapixel camera lens compared to the dual camera on the iPhone 17 and the triple lens array on the iPhone 17 Pro range. Our reviewer described the absence of the Ultrawide camera on the iPhone Air as “a big miss”.
The iPhone Air also has the shortest advertised battery life (in terms of video playback) listed for the iPhone 17 range. Battery life was “bang average” our reviewer said, while MagSafe wireless charging is just 20W – 5W slower than the other models in the range. Our reviewer thought the mono speaker was just “OK”, while also commented on the propensity of the device to run hot during mundane tasks. Worth paying more than the price of vanilla iPhone 17? Not for me. I’d be surprised if the iPhone Air returned in 2026.
Chris Smith
