With the return of questionable 2000s fashion choices in recent years, I guess it was inevitable: slim phones are back. I’m old enough to remember the original Motorola RAZR V3 in 2004, and just over twenty years later, Samsung capitalized on the design trend of the early 2000s with the new Galaxy S25 Edge. Only this time it really doesn’t make sense.
When the Motorola RAZR V3 was launched, it was an absolute marvel. People came down to the warehouse of the technology magazine where I worked just to look at it. Of course, it had one advantage that the Galaxy S25 Edge doesn’t: phones back then were largely ugly bricks.
But the RAZR V3 also delivered on its design promise. Due to its clamshell design, it measured less than 14mm when closed and was almost worryingly thin at its thinnest point. Its aluminum body and keyboard (made from a single sheet of metal) made it different and genuinely desirable.
The Galaxy S25 Edge really wants to be the modern equivalent of the RAZR V3. We know very little about its specifications, but rumors suggest it’s around 6.4mm thick, which seems about right based on our brief looks at the S25 Unpacked launch.
But there’s a problem: Smartphones now need to have powerful cameras, and annoying physics can’t make them the same size as the RAZR V3’s VGA module. So Samsung did the only thing it could and put a huge protruding camera module on the back.
What’s the point of having a 6.4mm thick body with big protruding cameras, if there’s no design innovation to make that work? I still don’t realize it. Samsung says the phone is a “culmination of Samsung’s most innovative technology” and is “wrapped in a form factor that’s sleek, powerful and unlike anything you’ve seen before.”
Unfortunately, the history of phones is littered with examples of designs that we hadn’t seen before, but that also didn’t make sense (see the new Nokia Design Archive). The main goal of the S25 Edge seems to be to burst the bubble of the rumored iPhone 17 Air. But for phone buyers, it seems that Samsung also forgot to do more than reanimate the corpse of a design trend that will have no real benefit in 2025, and that Motorola has already successfully revived in the Motorola Razr Plus.
The case against
I am sure that the Galaxy S25 Edge will be a technological marvel in many ways. It’s expected to feature a 6.7-inch display, and there’s a chance it could even be the first Samsung phone to feature a tandem OLED display.
It is also expected to include two cameras, which will likely be a main one (perhaps with a resolution of 200MP) and an ultra-wide angle one. Samsung could do without a telephoto camera by upscaling the resolution of the main camera and touting its AI-assisted cropping potential. It’s not as good as a telephoto lens, but it might be enough.
These kinds of specs make the RAZR V3 look like the dinosaur it is. But a truly classic phone captures the zeitgeist in a way that goes beyond specs and dimensions, and from what I’ve seen so far, I doubt the S25 Edge will achieve that.
Unlike 2004, most phone buyers use a case with their phone, particularly those that cost as much as the S25 Edge (probably somewhere between the S25 and S25 Ultra). Coupled with the camera bump, that largely negates the Edge’s claims of thinness or practical benefits.
Maybe I’m being too harsh, but the Edge also seems to represent the laziest interpretation of phone innovation. At CES 2025, I fell in love with the TCL 60XE, which can change its display from color to grayscale with the press of a button.
Sure, it’s not true e-ink and only works with certain apps, but it was a piece of design that took advantage of the needs of modern phones, namely the need to escape our always-on apps and a clever way to extend the lifespan. of the battery. . I didn’t see anything at the S25 Unpacked event that enticed me in the same way: just a flood of AI features and the S25 Edge.
Of course, I’ll reserve final judgment on the Edge until we have one for review. But so far, it seems like nothing more than an overheated design trend that won’t make much sense in 2025.