Samsung’s Surprise Galaxy S25 Edge Beats iPhone 17 Air

A new super-thin smartphone is on its way, but no, it’s not the rumored Apple iPhone 17 Air, it’s the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, a surprise addition to the phones that made up the company’s latest product unveil.

Samsung held its latest Unpacked event in San Jose, California on Wednesday, Jan. 22. As it ended, credits rolled, and a sudden voice-over (by Paul Bettany, the actor best known as The Vision in WandaVision and other Marvel franchises) explained that it wasn’t finished after all.

Then Samsung’s massive screens at the SAP Center (home of the hockey team San Jose Sharks) were alight with a video of phone components snapping into place and, finally, the back and front clicking into place with punchy haste, to emphasize one aspect of the phone: its thinness.

So, what could we tell about the phone which Samsung is calling the Galaxy S25 Edge, beyond its svelte profile?

Well, it has two rear cameras, unlike the single snapper expected on the iPhone 17 Air, Apple’s predicted slim phone that’s thought to land this fall.

We know it’s real—Samsung just confirmed it, which is more than Apple has.

Samsung had units of the phone on show at Unpacked, though nobody was allowed to touch it. Several units stood side by side and showed a flat slab with the same rounded corners just introduced on the S25 Ultra.

What stands out in photos taken in the arena is that the cameras really protrude, perhaps emphasized by the phone’s thin profile.

The units were silver in color, so that’s likely to be one of the hues in the final range—though that’s not exactly a surprise.

And there’s a clue in the name. The fact that it says S25 indicates it will surely arrive this year, otherwise it’s way too long a time to tease us. And anyway, it must be here before this time next year when presumably we’ll be glued to our screens to see the S26 series.

The tease at the end of last January’s Unpacked was for the Samsung Galaxy Ring, which was on sale by August 2024.