Thin phones are making a comeback, with Apple rumoured to be lining up an iPhone 17 Slim (name TBC), but Samsung has beaten its bitter rival to market.

I was sceptical when I first got my hands on the Galaxy S25 Edge. Why do phones need to be thin again? They originally got thicker to have better battery life, be less fragile, and have better thermal management; all good reasons.

I loved my slender Galaxy S6 back in 2015, but it ran very hot and had terrible battery life that left me in the lurch several times.

I’m pleased to say the S25 Edge fares better than that - you’d hope as much a decade later - but Samsung has built a phone with some compromises to slim it down, and I can’t look past its poor battery life, something I predicted would be an issue earlier this month.

The S25 Edge takes the build quality, chipset and main camera of the S25 Ultra and the screen size and quality of the S25 Plus, but then tops it off with worse battery life than not only the regular S25, but most of the phones I’ve used and reviewed in the last few years. Is that a trade off you’re willing to make?

The S25 Edge can get me through a full day of use from taking it off the charger at 7am, to roughly around 15 percent after a day of only moderate use by 10pm. It hasn’t died on me after a week of using it as my main phone, but I’ve regularly ended a similar day with 40 to 50 percent battery still in the tank with phones such as the iPhone 16, OnePlus 13 and Samsung’s own S25 Plus.

After two or three years of use and battery degradation, I have concerns about the S25’s battery life over time. Samsung has also left out the 45W fast charging found in the S25 Plus and S25 Ultra, so this phone also tops up slowly despite costing £1,099.

That’s a lot to pay, especially when its thinness means there is also no telephoto camera lens, something Samsung includes on Galaxy phones that cost hundreds less.

Samsung has opted for a 3,900mAh battery, smaller than the one in the regular S25. The firm hasn’t embraced the advanced silicon-carbon batteries with higher capacities you’ll find in OnePlus and Honor phones, leaving the lithium cell here floundering by evening time.

But despite these flaws, the S25 Edge is a joy to use. Samsung has built the frame from titanium, just like its £1,249 S25 Ultra, making it feel incredibly solid and lightweight. After using the Edge, the Ultra feels like a thick joke of a phone. The Edge spoils all other phones, frankly, as it’s a mere 5.8mm thick. Any other phone looks like a brick in comparison.

Yet it’s the weight that impresses most. At 163g despite its large 6.7-inch screen, the Edge isn’t too heavy to use one-handed, even if my thumb can’t reach the top of the screen. Want a large screen to doomscroll on without your hand getting tired? This is the phone for you.

Performance is near flawless thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset, the same one in all the S25 phones. Because it’s something there’s little room for proper thermals, and the phone got hot when I bulk updated my apps or fired up a full-on mobile game such as Call of Duty, but the performance hung in there for a half hour session. If you’re really into mobile gaming though you should look elsewhere, as it nukes the tender battery.

I love this phone’s display. It has a pin-sharp 3120x1440 resolution, an adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate and gets very bright in direct sun so you can always see what’s going on. Paired with the extreme thinness, it feels like a phone from the future.

Streaming video looks great, apps pop thanks to Samsung’s preference for vivid colour reproduction, but the screen misses out on the S25 Ultra’s anti-reflective coating, something I feel Samsung should include at this price.

The main camera here is excellent, the same 200MP sensor from the S25 Ultra. It can shoot in 12MP, 50MP or 200MP, and shots at maximum resolution look particularly good. Samsung saturates colours a tad more than I would like, but in general I didn’t need to edit snaps from this lens to be happy with them. It’s the least you’d expect from a phone this pricey. Macro shots are also superb.

As there’s no telephoto, you get an ultra-wide alongside it. I personally don’t use these lenses much, but it’s good to have just in case.

I’m less enthused by all the AI stuff Samsung has crammed into the Edge, but this is the case with all the other S25 phones too. Lucky you can mostly ignore it all or turn it off, if you don’t want it to try and rewrite your emails for you or summarise your notes.

The live translation tool is genuinely useful for your next trip abroad though, and the circle to search feature for quickly Googling what’s on screen is especially handy.

I prefer to shout about Samsung’s excellent software support. The S25 Edge is set for seven years of Android and security updates to take this phone well into 2032. That’s brilliant, though you’ll definitely need to replace the battery in a few years if you really want this phone to last you into next decade. The phone runs Android 15 currently, and I'm a fan of the look and deep customisation options of Samsung's One UI 7 overlay.

This all makes the Galaxy S25 Edge a tantalising phone that it’s a little tricky to recommend. If you don’t care about battery life, fill your boots. I guess power banks exist, and the phone didn’t actually die on me while I was out and about during my testing. But at £1,099, it’s worth considering other, cheaper phones have battery life that can be literally twice as long.

The lack of a telephoto camera will annoy some but probably not the majority of smartphone buyers, and if you buy the Edge on contract you might not think it’s too expensive, either. I applaud Samsung for pushing the boat out a bit with a thinner phone, even if I’m not yet convinced we need one. If it was my money, I’d wait till the company can figure out better battery life.