Samsung On The Galaxy S25 Edge's Tiny Battery And Why It Was 'the Right Move'

The biggest downside of the Galaxy S25 Edge is its tiny battery, but Samsung still thinks it was “the right move.”

Galaxy S25 Edge is a device designed around being much thinner than the average. At 5.8mm, it’s certainly thinner than most, though it’s also not breaking any records. That thin profile came with some sacrifices, and those were a hot topic in an interview with Tom’s Guide.

Blake Gaiser, the director of smartphone product management at Samsung Electronics America, sat down with Tom’s Guide to discuss the Galaxy S25 Edge. Gaiser called the Edge a “Goldilocks” device in that it delivers a flagship experience, but while being much thinner and lighter. He also explains that, in regards to the removal of a dedicated telephoto lens, it was sacrificed essentially because people don’t use it as often.

…when we’re looking at the usage of our cameras with our customers, we know a couple of things. We know that the most popular zooms that our customers use are the 0.6X to get those really wide macro views, the 1X, 2X and 3X. Is it nice to have the 100X Space Zoom at times? Absolutely. Sure. But is it something that you’re going to use every day or even every month?

The next question was around the biggest controversy in this device, the battery. The Galaxy S25 Edge has a mere 3,900 mAh battery inside, small by basically any standard. By comparison, the standard Galaxy S25 which has a much smaller screen has a 4,000 mAh battery. Tom’s Guide asked about the battery, citing its own tests that showed a minimal difference from the base S25, as well as asking about why Samsung didn’t use a silicon-carbide battery for extra capacity.

Gaiser says that customers just want “all-day” usage, and that using lithium-ion was “the right move for this device.”

I think enough battery life for most customers is just an all-day usage. You don’t want to find yourself at lunch with an empty battery. And what we’ve seen with this device is that it has worked as well or better than the S24 base model and very close to the S25 base model.
And so as long as you can live with it from sun up to sun down without having any issues, we think that’s a great experience. And personally, I haven’t had much of an issue with the battery life whatsoever.
Samsung’s always looking at every new emerging technology that’s out there. So it’s something that we’re definitely not keeping our eyes off of. But with that new chipset, with agentic AI helping with performance and efficiencies of these batteries, we really felt that going with our traditional lithium-ion battery was the right move for this device.

Gaiser’s explanation is a bit lacking on the “why,” but that’s marketing speak for you. One can easily argue that a silicon-carbide battery – or literally any sort of battery upgrade – would serve the Galaxy S25 Edge’s “new chipset” and “agentic AI” just as well, if not better, but that doesn’t change that it’s too late to swap anything out at this point. The 3,900 mAh battery is what it is.

The Galaxy S25 Edge is available now.