The last part is the problem with the edge: it has a trivial 3,900 mAh battery capacity. This is the smallest in the Galaxy S25 series, 100 mAh smaller than the compact Galaxy S25. Samsung has done some smart optimizations to maximize the battery life of this small unit, but it can only do that. The Galaxy S25 Edge isn’t great enough battery life, just a $1,100 phone.
I’ve been traveling with Google I/O for the past week and I have to remember to charge for the afternoon on most days. When I left the charger, I consciously decided to avoid using my phone to avoid draining the battery. I usually have only 4 hours of screen time before the end of the day before the device reaches 15%. Please note that using average light used, this phone can only last about a day. Again, if your needs are light, you hardly need to spend $1,100 to get a great phone.
During my 10 years of reviewing phones, I often hear complaints from people around me when companies introduce smaller phones with smaller batteries. I also heard complaints about the phone getting bigger and bigger. The S25 is still big at the edges – the feet with smaller claws still have a hard time reaching the top of the screen – but the larger size doesn’t bring the benefits of a larger battery. It raises a question, who is this?
Photo: Julian Chokkattu
If you lament the same thing, your clear winner is a fold-flip phone. Devices like the Motorola Razr Ultra and Galaxy Z Flip6 will match, and even if there isn’t a little better battery life than the edge, you can fold them up and store them in your pocket or wallet. No need to sacrifice screen size. Or just get the beautiful and compact galaxy S25, which will last longer than the edges.
Attached price
Samsung positioned the Galaxy S25 Edge as a power user who wanted many of the features of the Galaxy S25 Ultra without the massive screen and weight. But the edge compromise isn’t just the worst battery life: it charges slowly, doesn’t have an S Pen stylus, and doesn’t have a telephoto zoom camera. However, it does have some benefits on the cheap S25 and S25+, such as the ability to capture 4K video at 120 frames per second.
The results of the 200-MP main camera and the 12-MP Ultrawide camera are bright and colorful. You won’t find too much to complain about. However, I’ve been trying to enlarge a lot of lenses and, despite the good quality of the 2x digital zoom, things quickly worsened with further zoom choices. It is rare to find a smartphone over $1,000 without a 3x or 5x optical zoom camera today, which is very missed here.
