With the return of dubious fashion choices for the year 2000 in recent years, I guess it was inevitable: thin phones are back. I am old enough to remember the original Motorola Razr V3 in 2004 and a little over twenty years later, Samsung exploited the design trend in the early 2000s with the new Galaxy S25 Edge. But this time, it doesn’t really make sense.
When the Motorola Razr V3 was launched, it was a real wonder. People went down to the reserve of the technological magazine for which I worked just to look at it. Of course, it had an advantage that the Galaxy S25 Edge did not: the phones at the time were largely of the ugly bricks.
But the Razr V3 also held its design promise. Due to his valve design, he measured less than 14 mm once closed – and was almost disturbing at the finest point. Its aluminum body and keyboard (made from a single metal sheet) made it different and truly desirable.
The Galaxy S25 Edge really wants to be a modern equivalent of the Razr V3. We know very little about its specifications, but rumors suggest that it has a thickness of about 6.4 mm – which seems correct according to our brief previews of the launch of the S25 Unpacked.
But there is a problem: smartphones must now have powerful cameras and annoying physics cannot give them the same size as the VGA V3 VGA module. Samsung therefore did the only thing he could and stuck a huge module of a protruding camera in the back.
What is the point of having a 6.4 mm thick box with large protruding cameras, if there is no design innovation for it to work? I’m still not wise. Samsung says that the phone is “the culmination of Samsung’s most innovative technology” and that it is “presented in an elegant, powerful and different form from everything you have seen before”.
Unfortunately, the history of phones is full of examples of designs that we had never seen before, but which also had no sense (see the new Nokia Design Archive). The main objective of the S25 Edge seems to be to burst the bubble of the iPhone 17 Air, according to the rumor. But for telephone buyers, it seems that Samsung has also forgotten to do anything other than resuscitate the corpse of a design trend that has no real advantage in 2025 – and that Motorola has already successfully resumed with The Motorola Razr Plus.
The case against
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I am sure that the Galaxy S25 Edge will be a technological wonder in many ways. It should contain a 6.7 -inch screen – and it is possible that it is even the first Samsung phone to have an OLED TANDEM screen.
It should also contain two cameras, which will probably be a main one (perhaps with a resolution of 200 MP) and an ultra-large. Samsung could get out of it without telephoto by putting the emphasis on resolving the main camera and praising its AI -assisted reframing potential. It is not as efficient as a telephoto lens, but it could be enough.
These kinds of specifications are the dinosaur razr v3 looks like. But a truly classic phone captures the air in a way that goes beyond specifications and dimensions-and from what I have seen so far, I doubt that the S25 Edge succeeds.
Unlike 2004, the majority of phones buyers use a case with their phone – especially those that cost as much as the S25 EDGE (probably somewhere between S25 and S25 Ultra). In addition to the camera bump, this largely cancels the allegations of slimming or the practical advantages of the Edge.
I may be too hard, but the Edge also seems to represent the most lazy interpretation of telephone innovation. In CES 2025, I was seduced by the TCL 60xe, which can pass its screen from color to gray levels by simply pressing a button.
Of course, this is not the real E Ink and only works with certain applications, but it is an element of design that meets the needs of modern phones, namely the need to escape our applications Always active and an intelligent means of extending the battery life. . I have not seen anything during the S25 Unpacked event which seduced me in the same way-just a tidal wave of AI features and the S25 Edge.
Of course, I will reserve my final judgment on the Edge until we have one for exams. But so far, it looks like nothing more than a heated design trend that does not make much sense in 2025.
