Polling by YouGov has found that what people want most from their smartphones is better battery life. So why are Apple and Samsung pitching you skinnier but potentially battery-compromised phones?
I want to hold these skinnier phones in my hand and see if I’m bowled over by the difference, especially once you add a phone case. It could dent your enthusiasm, though, knowing that these new designs may be motivated most by Samsung and Apple’s desperation to sell you something new – anything.
Can you tell the difference?
Samsung acknowledged it really doesn’t know if you want a skinnier phone.
Blake Gaiser, head of smartphone product management at Samsung Electronics America, says the company is making a limited number of S25 Edge devices and they won’t be sold everywhere.
He said it’s a test of whether you want what he called a “Goldilocks device” – not as fancy as Samsung’s top-tier model at $1300, but jazzier than other high-end Samsung phones.
Samsung says the S25 Edge is 5.8mm thick, not including the protruding camera lenses on the back of the phone, and assuming you don’t use a case. For comparison, Samsung’s new S25 (non-thin) phone is 7.2mm and the iPhone 16 is 7.8mm.
Eyeballing my ruler, I can barely see the difference between 6mm and 7mm.
Gaiser said the new model’s size and weight “makes a huge difference in your hand” – and some early reviewers said the same.
But the trade-off of slimness is a lower capacity battery than that of comparable new Galaxy devices, which typically means shorter battery life. That could be too big of a compromise for some of you.
Apple’s rumoured new 5.5mm deep iPhone Air will also reportedly have drawbacks, including wimpier battery life. To compensate, Apple will sell a case with a backup battery built in, the Information reported.
Gaiser said Samsung made the phone more efficient to go easy on the battery. Apple plans to do the same with its new models, Bloomberg News reported.
Skinny phones are born of desperation
Ultimately, the motivation behind slimmer phones is jolting smartphone sales, which are lower today than they were in 2017, according to figures from research firm IDC.
You know why. Smartphones don’t change much from year to year, and they’re good enough now to hold on to them for a long time.
That makes a smartphone like a car and a fridge – products we rely on but don’t upgrade often. That’s not great for Samsung and Apple, so they’ll try anything to get you excited about something new.
Trying out skinny phones, even if you don’t embrace them, could also give Apple and Samsung a chance to test wild technologies that you might like, like phones that fold open to reveal more screen real estate.
The concept hasn’t yet caught on widely because the devices cost a fortune and most of us aren’t sure why we’d want one. (Apple is aiming for its first folding smartphone by 2027, Bloomberg News reported.)
Myriam Joire, a technology journalist and podcaster, says skinny phones could catch on, as lighter, slimmer laptops did following Apple’s introduction of its MacBook Air in 2008. But she said Samsung and Apple didn’t need to make so many trade-offs.
She said Chinese phone brands like Xiaomi and OnePlus, which are hard to buy in the United States, use novel battery technology created for electric cars to make slim phones with great battery life, and at significantly lower prices than higher-end phones from Samsung and Apple.
Apple and Samsung, Joire said, “are not innovating anymore because they have no competition” in North America.
