By Kavita Mistry 
As in almost every other thing in consumer technology, this too makes its way back to the fruity company at Cupertino. Go back to 2009-2010, and most of us were pretty used to our smartphones being a little on the thick side. The Nokia N97 was 15.9 mm ‘thin,’ the gorgeous HTC Hero was a healthy 14.4 mm, Sony Ericsson’s Satio was 13 mm, and even the iPhone 3GS was 12.3 mm. Yes, we had some devices like the Nokia E72 (10 mm) that were strikingly slim, but thin was definitely not ‘in’ when it came to smartphone design.
Then, in June 2010, Apple launched the iPhone 4 with the tagline of being ‘the thinnest phone ever‘, and the smartphone world signed up at the gym to shed those millimeters around their waists.
The race to be thin…and the bending gate that ended it for a while
The years that followed saw almost every brand trying its hand at making smartphones slimmer. Sony Ericsson had the Xperia Arc at 8.7 mm, and Motorola stunned the world with the Droid Razr at 7.1 mm. While launching its Optimus Black, LG made it a point to stress that the phone measured just 6 mm in some places. The race for thinness reached insane levels with phones getting close to 5 mm thin by 2014-2015 – Indian brand Micromax released the Canvas Sliver at 5.1 mm in 2015, getting Hugh ‘Wolverine’ Jackman on board to promote it.
Noticeably, however, by this time, flagship phones had stepped back from the race to be thin. There were many reasons for this, ranging from larger and higher resolution displays needing batteries, more powerful processors needing larger cooling chambers, larger camera sensors needing more space, and so on. The breaking point (pun intended), however, was ‘bendgate’, in which it was rumored that the super-thin iPhone 6 Plus was actually bending and breaking easily.
Whether it was true or not remains open to debate, but it made Unbox Therapy a star, and Apple bailed out of the thin race – the iPhone 7 series was slightly thicker than the iPhone 6 series – and as is often the case, others followed suit. It is not as if phones became very thick – they remained well below 10 mm in most cases, but the race to be the thinnest slowed down discernibly.
Being slim became a hygiene factor rather than a USP – its absence would be noted, but its presence was a given. The odd mm here or there did not matter as much as it did in the past. Slimness was stressed a little more in the mid-segment, where the likes of Vivo (the V series), Xiaomi (the Lite series), Motorola (the Edge series), and Realme used thinness as a style factor.
Getting slim back on the flagship menu, the Samsung way
Samsung is looking to change that with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. At 5.82 mm, it is easily the slimmest phone in the world at the time of writing. It is also the first ‘crazy slim’ phone in a long time that is unabashedly flagship, with a large 6.7-inch quad HD AMOLED display, 200 MP main sensor with OIS, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor (similar to the one seen on the Galaxy S25 Ultra), and all the Galaxy AI goodness that is available on other S25 series devices (although there is no S-Pen support). Keeping in mind the tendency of people to associate thinness with fragility, Samsung has used a titanium frame on the Galaxy S25 Edge and added IP68 dust and water resistance to the mix. The front is Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2, while the back is Gorilla Glass Victus 2.
Yes, it does come with compromises – the most notable being the relatively small 3900 mAh battery and the absence of a dedicated telephoto sensor – but make no mistake about it, the Galaxy S25 Edge is not the gadget equivalent of the stereotyped dumb blonde: drop dead gorgeous but with not much upstairs. This is a proper premium flagship with a premium price tag to boot – at Rs 1,09,999, it gets into the zone of the likes of the iPhone 16 Pro and the Pixel 9 Pro, and some even think it lurks too close to the likes of Samsung’s own Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Galaxy ZFlip series.
A slim form needs to be allied with a hefty function (reviewing coming up!)
Initial reactions to the Galaxy S25 Edge have been mixed. While most people have appreciated the slimness of the phone, there are many who have pointed out that it does not quite leap out at you. After all, no one was actually complaining about phones being thick, were they? “Who asked for this,” is a query that we have heard from many folks, who seem to assume that brand product decisions are driven purely by the reviewer and consumer request lists (Hint: they are not! No one had asked for a multi-touch interface or even for cameras on phones, had they?).
However, there is no hiding the fact that Samsung does have quite a challenge with the Galaxy S25 Edge – its most hyped feature is its slimness but it is not startlingly obvious unless you place the Edge next to another phone, and even then it does not exactly make the other phone look bloated in comparison. Samsung’s decision to go with relatively plain colors also means that the S25 Edge also makes the S25 Edge less easy to spot in a crowd.
So, in what seems to be an odd contradiction of sorts, the S25 Edge’s success could well depend on its performance rather than its much-hyped thinnness. Right now, it is the equivalent of Taylor Swift when she started out – a pretty face with a good voice, who needed to prove that she was much more than that; it is much more than a pretty face. It is not easy, but as millions of Swifties all over the world will testify, it can be done.
With the Galaxy S25 Edge, Samsung is looking to not just make a great thin phone but to make thin phones great again. Will it succeed? Only time will tell. As to how good the S25 Edge is, stay tuned for our review.