Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge: the ultra-thin phone killed by its own thinness

The Galaxy S25 Edge was Samsung's attempt at a headline thin flagship, announced in January 2025 and launched on May 23 that year. Its selling point was the frame: the thinnest phone Samsung had ever built. The price of that thinness was an internal trade-off — the battery was cut to 3,900mAh, well below the rest of the S25 line, and the price stayed high, at KRW 1,496,000 for the 256GB model and KRW 1,639,000 for 512GB. It was a phone marketed on being thin, and everything else was squeezed to pay for it.

Buyers did not reward the thinness. Per Korean reports, the Edge sold roughly 190,000 units in its first month against 1.17 million for the S25, and by August it had reached about 1.31 million against 8.28 million for the S25 and 12.18 million for the Ultra. Even as Samsung talked up the line, production had already been cut and stock was being discounted — Android Central reported a 40% Amazon discount about five months after launch. A senior Samsung executive was quoted as saying of the Edge, 'It's practically gone.'

The line was quietly retired. Samsung halted production once stock ran out, and the Galaxy S26 Edge — the successor that had been in development — was cancelled before it could launch. The Edge brand, which Samsung had used for curved-screen flagships a decade earlier, was retired again as a failed experiment in thinness. A phone built to be the thinnest in the room turned out to be a phone most people did not want to carry.