Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge Feels Absurdly Thin—at the Cost of Battery Life

The phone’s edges are so thin that it might affect how you hold it for a long period, because there’s just not much for your fingers to grab. Time will tell. But once the wonder of the thinness fades away, you’ll start wondering about battery life. The S25 Edge has a 3,900-mAh battery capacity, 100 mAh less than what’s in the smaller Galaxy S25. It’s a laughably small capacity compared to similar-sized phones these days.

Still, Samsung says it’s done a lot of work to optimize the display’s power, and with the efficiency of the 3-nanometer Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset inside, you should get “all-day” battery life. This run time supposedly outlasted the Galaxy S24 but fell short of the S25 in Samsung’s tests. With average use, you can probably eke out a day, but power users may have to tote along a battery pack. Nothing like slimming a phone down, then forcing you to carry around a portable charger.

It’s worth noting that Samsung isn’t using silicon-carbon battery technology, which offers denser batteries in a thinner design found in new devices like the OnePlus 13.

Edge of Tomorrow

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

This is the big question: Do you want a thin phone? Or a slightly thicker phone with a beefier battery that could last two days? I’d bet most people will say the latter. Samsung says its research found that people who bought its Ultra phones found the phone too big and heavy, but didn’t want to downsize to the Galaxy S25+ or S25, as they didn’t want to lose out on some features. Opting for the Edge means they’ll have a feature-rich phone, but with the worst battery life in the entire Galaxy S25 lineup. It’s a little perplexing. The Edge doesn’t even support the fast charging speeds of the S25 Ultra, tapping out at 25 watts wired and 15 watts wireless.