After a decade of smartphone brands pushing the limits of what flagship phones can do, Samsung and Apple tried something different. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge and iPhone Air both measure less than six millimeters thick, an impressive feat. They also both cut out a ton of features and hardware to get there.
These phones have shorter battery life, fewer cameras, and decreased performance compared to the typical flagship—all while commanding flagship price tags. By this point, you’re probably wondering who is actually buying these slim phones. What kind of buyer is willing to pay more for less? Look no further, because I didn’t just buy one of 2025’s weirdly thin phones. I bought both.
I’ve now had the Galaxy S25 Edge in my pocket for roughly six months, and added the iPhone Air to my other pocket nearly two months ago. Both are deeply flawed. Samsung didn’t have the courage to cut out enough, and Apple may have removed too much. Even still, there isn’t another pair of phones on the market I’d rather carry.
The iPhone Air’s smaller screen helps it lean into the thin-and-light design
Samsung tries to do too much with the Galaxy S25 Edge
When designing the Galaxy S25 Edge, Samsung used the Galaxy S25 Plus as a baseline. The former has the same display, processor, and general chassis design as the latter. There are pros and cons to this approach. Big-screen phones are more popular—that’s why almost all “mini” phones have vanished from the market—and the Galaxy S25 Edge’s 6.7-inch AMOLED display keeps it competitive.
The large screen also ends up limiting how tiny the Galaxy S25 Edge can feel in the hand. While it’s only 5.8mm thick, the phone is still 158.2mm tall and 75.6mm wide. The thinness aids maneuverability and makes one-handed operation easier, but it still feels like a big phone. Apple used a different strategy for the iPhone Air, which splits the middle between the brand’s big and small iPhones.
The iPhone Air sports a 6.5-inch OLED display panel; that’s a screen size we haven’t seen on an iPhone since the iPhone 11 Pro Max in 2019. It was a genius move on Apple’s part. The iPhone Air feels more spacious and premium compared to the iPhone 17, but far more compact than Plus or Max phones. It’s a few millimeters shorter and narrower than the Galaxy S25 Edge, further creating a small in-hand feel.
In terms of display quality, both the iPhone Air and Galaxy S25 Edge are visually excellent. At 513 pixels-per-inch (ppi), the Galaxy S25 Edge’s screen looks sharper than the iPhone Air’s display, which has a pixel density of 460ppi. The iPhone Air is slightly brighter, but there’s a difference of 400 nits between the phones. When using them out in the real world, neither phone can sustain its peak brightness for long before overheating dims the screen.
By far, the most underrated aspect of the iPhone Air and Galaxy S25 Edge’s design is their weight. Samsung made the Galaxy S25 Edge weigh 163 grams, and it’s impossible to understate how light that is for a 6.7-inch smartphone. The iPhone Air isn’t far behind at 165 grams, but it’s also smaller overall. I’ve found that both phones are easier to handle, like in a full set of hands or in my pocket on a run, due to not only their thinness, but also their lightness.
Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge is the all-around performance winner
The iPhone Air has power limitations you’ll notice in daily use
In our iPhone Air review, we pointed out that since the A19 Pro chip powering it is throttled, it really isn’t a major upgrade over the base A19 chip in the iPhone 17. Benchmarks put the iPhone Air slightly ahead of the Galaxy S25 Edge in single-core CPU performance, and slightly behind in multi-core CPU performance. However, my real-world usage of the iPhone Air painted a bleaker picture.
The iPhone Air’s throttling is something you’ll notice in daily use, and Apple knows it. There’s even an Adaptive Power mode enabled by default that makes “performance adjustments,” including “lowering display brightness, allowing some activities to take longer, or turning on Low Power Mode at 20%.” I love the transparency, and for perspective, this mode is on all iPhone 17 models. You’ll simply notice the effects more on the iPhone Air due to its tight performance and thermal threshold.
Benchmark
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge
iPhone Air
Geekbench 6 (single-core)
3,016
3,668
Geekbench 6 (multi-core)
9,588
9,365
3DMark Wild Life Extreme (score)
5,769
3,816
3DMark Wild Life Extreme (FPS)
34.55
22.90
Certain tasks make the iPhone Air heat up vigorously, and performance grinds to a halt. I ran into this while downloading lossless songs from Apple Music—it’s a niche use case, but not unexpected either. The phone became hot to the touch, UI animations slowed, and battery life burned. In other situations, I’ve had the iPhone Air lock up and freeze entirely, to the point it wouldn’t even respond to a hard reset.
Say what you want about the Samsung phones, but I have no similar stories about the Galaxy S25 Edge. I’ve tested a handful of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite phones this year, like the OnePlus 13, and the Galaxy S25 Edge performs similarly to all of them. In my testing, the Galaxy S25 Edge decisively beats the iPhone Air in graphics-based tasks, like mobile gaming.
I have to wonder how the iPhone Air will perform a few years down the line, running more demanding versions of iOS, if it’s already struggling to handle my daily tasks on day one. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S25 Edge’s performance stability does give me confidence it’ll last through Samsung’s seven-year Android OS upgrade promise.
Somehow, the iPhone Air consistently delivers better battery life
Even with a smaller capacity, optimizations make it shine
I didn’t expect the iPhone Air to be the winner in battery life, and at first, it wasn’t. Phones take time to optimize and index after they’re first set up, which is why battery life is usually awful the first few days you use them. With the iPhone Air, it felt like the phone took a week or two to learn my habits and adjust battery life accordingly. Once I got through the growing pains, the iPhone Air began delivering downright outstanding battery life.
I consistently get around six hours of screen on-time from my fully-charged iPhone Air. On some days, the stamina is better. This week, I used 114% of the iPhone Air’s battery in a single day with nine hours and eight minutes of screen-on time. I didn’t even notice, as I simply placed my phone on a wireless charger at my desk while working.
By comparison, the Galaxy S25 Edge’s battery life is bad enough that I have to think about it. The phone has a larger battery capacity than the iPhone Air, but there’s a catch. Remember, the Galaxy S25 Edge includes the same display and chip as the Galaxy S25 Plus. That’s despite the former having a battery that’s 1,000mAh smaller than the latter. Presumably, the Galaxy S25 Edge’s hardware simply draws more power than its battery is built to handle, resulting in shorter battery life.
The Galaxy S25 Edge often gives me an hour of screen on-time in exchange for between 30% and 40% of battery life. It’s a major disappointment that translates to only three or four hours of screen time per charge. Without magnetic Qi2 charging to make midday power-ups a breeze, the shorter battery life significantly hampers the experience.
The iPhone Air and Galaxy S25 Edge both have incredible cameras
They just don’t have a lot of them
The most clear downgrade for both the iPhone Air and Galaxy S25 Edge didn’t end up affecting me at all. There’s one key reason for that—these phones have excellent main cameras. Samsung threw the 200MP camera from the Galaxy S25 Ultra onto the Edge, and it’s capable of taking sharp and detailed images. Meanwhile, Apple pulled its trusty 48MP sensor from other iPhone models to use as the Air’s only shooter.
I’ve taken the iPhone Air and Galaxy S25 Edge to capture everything from sporting events and concerts, and I never felt like I was missing out. Samsung’s thin phone is more versatile, packing a 12MP ultrawide lens with a 120-degree field of view in addition to the main camera.
From first to last: Galaxy S25 Edge 1x, iPhone Air 1x, Galaxy S25 Edge 2x, iPhone Air 2x, Galaxy S25 Edge 0.6x.
Leaving the telephoto lens behind for the first time in years was easier than I thought. With main cameras as good as they are on these phones, there’s always a workaround. Want a zoom shot? Move forward. Need a wide shot? Move back.
I can’t live without some of the iPhone Air’s missing features
But the Galaxy S25 Edge may have included too many
After months of testing, it’s obvious the iPhone Air and Galaxy S25 Edge are too flawed to recommend for most. The iPhone Air feels like it was made to prove a point rather than to be an excellent smartphone. There were too many corners cut, increasing the likelihood that at least one missing feature is a dealbreaker. Personally, I can live without more cameras, better performance, longer battery life, and stereo speakers, but the loss of video output over the USB-C port really stings.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge has the opposite problem. It tries to pack a bunch of flagship features into a device that isn’t large enough to include the battery capacity needed to consistently power them. Those extra features won’t do you any good when the phone dies around lunch time.
And yet, I prefer carrying both to the alternative. I don’t regret going all-in on thin phones, but I hope Samsung and Apple find a middle ground between the two extremes that are the Galaxy S25 Edge and iPhone Air for future models.
