The Galaxy S25 Edge is the thinnest Samsung S series phone ever at just 5.8mm. But a lot of people are focusing on the trade-offs that need to be made to get something so slim.
Yes, the Galaxy S25 Edge has a smaller battery than the regular S25. There’s no telephoto zoom. And it costs $1,099. But for Blake Gaiser, who is the director of smartphone product management at Samsung Electronics America, focusing on the specs over the user experience is besides the point of this device.
In fact, Gaiser describes the Galaxy S25 Edge as the “Goldilocks” of smartphones, giving you the same performance and camera quality of the best phones in something you can easily slip into a pocket and almost forget that it’s there.
“And so when I hear those naysayers, I'm like, okay, get your hands on the device, and then let’s see what your opinion is,” says Gaiser.
I had a chance to sit down with Blake on launch day for the Galaxy S25 Edge to talk about how Samsung got the device so thin and to weigh in on those trade-offs. Plus, we discuss what’s coming with Samsung’s foldables — including a possible triple foldable design.
The Galaxy S25 Edge is remarkably thin, but there’s some naysayers out there. So who is the target audience for this phone?
Blake Gaiser: There is actually a pretty good segment out there that’s right in between an Ultra owner or a Plus owner. They like the big screen, but they're not an S-pen user. They want a flagship camera, but they don't want the weight and heft that you get with the ultra.
So there are quite a lot of people out there who just want a light, tech-forward, fashionable device that has all the performance that you would expect from a high-end flagship phone.
So do you consider the Edge to be a true flagship?
Gaiser: We do consider it to be a flagship. It is a new innovation piece that we're bringing forth where we're taking out so much weight, so much thickness of this device, while not compromising on the things that are really important to our customers, such as durability, the performance of the chipset, having that flagship 200MP camera.
And so we do believe that this is that kind of Goldilocks for so many of our customers that is going to give them everything they want and not give them the things that they're not looking for.
What kind of reaction are you seeing from customers as they get their hands on it for the first time?
Gaiser: What's so amazing about this device is that I just kind of gave up on PowerPoint. I gave up on saying, here's the tech specs, here's why it's so cool. Before any of that, just hold it. Not only is it so thin, it has the full Plus screen to it. It almost doesn't feel real.
When I hear those naysayers, I'm like, okay, get your hands on the device, and then let’s see what your opinion is
Blake Gaiser, Samsung
And so it's like, once people get it in their hand, that hand feel is not just about thickness, it's not just about weight, it's about weight distribution, it's about how you can reach across the screen. And so when I hear those naysayers, I'm like, okay, get your hands on the device, and then let’s see what your opinion is.
So how did you make the Galaxy S25 Edge so thin?
We really designed this from the ground up to be thin. The goal was to be thin without compromise. We really didn't want to take things away from a device to make it thin. We could have done that years ago.
Everything about this device was focusing on that slimness. So making sure structurally it was going to be extremely durable. We're utilizing a titanium frame, we're utilizing Corning's Ceramic 2 glass. We're even putting in a vapor chamber cooling system that's larger than the Plus model.
So that way, we're able to utilize every single component as efficiently and effectively as possible and making sure that how we put it together gives you a really good balance in the hand. So it wasn't top heavy or bottom heavy, but yeah, every single detail was meticulously planned out to make this device.
The Galaxy S25 Edge doesn’t have a 3x telephoto zoom like the other S25 models. What do you think about that particular trade-off?
Gaiser: We are just so far ahead in our camera tech that people don't really understand the quality of their photos that they're getting. Not only is it things like optical zooms, but it's also the agentic AI that we have built in, from the chipset up, utilizing cognitive-aware engines so that your camera understands what you're taking photos of and is able to utilize AI to give you that perfect shot.
But when we're looking at the usage of our cameras with our customers, we know a couple of things. We know that the most popular zooms that our customers use are the 0.6X to get those really wide macro views, the 1X, 2X and 3X.
Is it nice to have the 100X Space Zoom at times? Absolutely. Sure. But is it something that you're going to use every day or even every month? When you're doing side-by-side comparisons, I think customers are really going to see that you're getting fantastic quality that meets or beats our competition.
Based on our testing the Galaxy S25 Edge battery life is a couple hours less than the regular S25. So what is that dividing line for giving someone enough endurance in a device like this?
Gaiser: I think enough battery life for most customers is just an all-day usage. You don't want to find yourself at lunch with an empty battery. And what we've seen with this device is that it has worked as well or better than the S24 base model and very close to the S25 base model.
And so as long as you can live with it from sun up to sun down without having any issues, we think that's a great experience. And personally, I haven't had much of an issue with the battery life whatsoever.
Did you think about exploring silicon carbide battery technology to get more capacity in the same amount of space?
Samsung's always looking at every new emerging technology that's out there. So it's something that we're definitely not keeping our eyes off of. But with that new chipset, with agentic AI helping with performance and efficiencies of these batteries, we really felt that going with our traditional lithium-ion battery was the right move for this device.
Since you bring up AI, what are the most popular Galaxy AI features with users so far?
The S25 Edge has everything that the S25 family has. And probably the most exciting one that people are utilizing the most is Audio Eraser, where you can just take noise and pull it out of the video. So whether it be construction noise or nature noise or general audience noise or music, you can customize the EQ that to give you the video that you want. And it's something that you can play with real time that we've seen a lot of people extremely happy with that one.
Is there potentially a tipping point where people are so excited about what they're seeing on Samsung phones and what you can do with Gemini that they might want to ditch their iPhones?
Gaiser: One of the things that we look at from a product standpoint is, how can we take clicks away from our customer? What we see is, after three or four clicks that you have to do, you kind of get overwhelmed or bored, or it's not worth it for you. So utilizing AI and multimodality to be able to do multiple things with just one voice prompt has been a real game changer. And we're just scratching the surface.
So imagine you want to find a restaurant. You're not exactly sure what kind of restaurant. You want to invite some friends. You want to be reminded and then get directions there. That's like 20 clicks for you to go out, search Google, find the restaurant, go into your text messages, text your friends, put it on your calendar, then go into Google Maps.
In your mind, what is the state of foldables right now? And how far can you push this category with the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7?
Gasier: You know, we have six generations out right now. Six years of learning how to make these very complicated, hard devices work beautifully. We're very proud of the state of our foldables.
But we also recognize that awareness of foldables isn't near what it is for a traditional smartphone. A lot of people, even to our surprise, don't even know that they exist yet.
I feel like a lot of your tech savvy listeners are going to say, how does nobody know about these devices? But it's very, very true. And One UI 8 and foldables, I think that [what] we're really excited about foldables is that with that different form factor of those devices, it allows us to do more with AI. Because it is a device that can do literally a lot more than a traditional smartphone can do.
I know that Samsung Display has teased a triple foldable before. What do you think of that particular form factor? Can you say whether or not you're exploring it?
Gaiser: I would love to tell you all that I know about these kind of things. But what I can say is that we're looking at every single possibility of what a phone's going to look like a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now. And what are the features and benefits of those different form factors? What we do know is that phones are going to evolve.
We are uniquely positioned with our displays, with our engineering, with all the different things that Samsung does to really push the envelope on new form factors. And I would expect, without knowing much of the future, that Samsung would be first to innovate within those spaces.
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