Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge Review: Slim, Sleek, But Living On The Edge

Galaxy S25 Edge Reception And Sound Quality

The S25 Edge’s stereo speakers sound loud and clear, which is surprising when you consider this phone’s limited internal volume. Obviously, there’s no headphone jack here – those days are long gone. But the S25 Edge supports USB Type-C audio devices (digital accessories only) for wired listening, plus aptX HD, LDAC, and enhanced SSC (Samsung’s newest proprietary codec) over Bluetooth for high-quality wireless playback.

Galaxy S25 Edge Performance

Despite its slim profile, the Galaxy S25 Edge is a powerhouse. Samsung was able to shoehorn Qualcomm’s flagship 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy SoC into that 5.8mm thin body. For those keeping track at home, that’s Qualcomm's 8-core chip with the faster clock speeds, not the regular 8-core version, or the 7-core variant designed for thinner devices. It’s paired with 12G of RAM and either 256 or 512GB of storage.
As you’d expect, the S25 Edge is fast and smooth no matter what you’re doing. It ran our standard roster of communications, social media, and productivity apps without skipping a beat. In our benchmarks, the S25 Edge delivered similar results to other Snapdragon 8 Elite devices. On the flipside, sustained performance suffers, with the S25 Edge dropping considerable performance over thermal saturation, as we'll show you shortly.

This doesn’t really come as a big surprise considering this handset’s slim design. Even with a 10% larger vapor chamber than the S25+, the S25 Edge exhibits significant thermal throttling. While that’s better than Samsung’s own Galaxy Z Fold6 and Z Flip6 folding phones, it’s worse than Motorola’s Razr Ultra (2025). Then again, the Galaxy S25 Edge isn’t targeted at hard-core gamers, so we doubt this will matter for most people.

Galaxy S25 Edge Geekbench Results

GeekBench is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real-world processing workloads in image processing and particle physics calculation scenarios. We tested all of the smartphones featured here with GeekBench's single and multi-core workloads.

GeekBench 6 includes new ways of testing multicore configurations and uses higher-resolution assets. As you can see, the S25 Edge performed quite well in this test.

Galaxy S25 Edge PCMark For Android Results

UL's PCMark for Android is an excellent suite of tests if you want to benchmark a wide range of tasks on a handset -- things like image and video editing, as well as lighter-duty, everyday workloads such as email and web browsing. When you see the test running live, it's clear the scripted application tests are carefully selected and tuned to make use of the mobile platform in a very controlled way.


Here the S25 Edge shows similar performance to the rest of the S25 lineup, slotting just above the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Galaxy S25 Edge AnTuTu 8 Benchmarks

AnTuTu’s latest benchmark returns a number of metrics ranked with somewhat nebulous scores, rather than frame rates or time to complete. Here we're running the latest version of AnTuTu across multiple Android devices. AnTuTu returns four top level performance results which are all included here: CPU, RAM, 3D, UX (or User Experience), along with a total score.


According to AnTuTu, the S25 Edge offers an notable increase in performance vs. previous generation Android handsets, slotting below the OnePlus 13 in terms of its overall score.

Galaxy S25 Edge Graphics And Gaming Benchmarks Results

Now, let's take a look at how the S25 Edge stacks up in GFXBench, which has been one of the standard mobile graphics/gaming performance benchmarks for years. To ensure that display refresh (v-sync) and resolution aren't limiting factors, we're comparing off-screen test results here. GFXBench tests OpenGL ES graphics workloads and we're specifically testing OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0, as well as Vulkan in the latest iterations.

As usual, we're seeing great performance from Snapdragon 8 Elite-equipped devices like the S25 Edge. This phone delivers excellent scores in these graphically rich, gaming-oriented benchmarks.

Galaxy S25 Edge 3DMark Sling Shot Benchmark Tests

UL's 3DMark Sling Shot is a newer benchmark module that's been added to the 3DMark mobile suite. Unlike previous gen 3DMark mobile tests, Sling Shot is a much more advanced OpenGL ES 3.1 and Metal API-based benchmark that employs more advanced rendering techniques, like volumetric lighting, particle illumination, multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold 3DMark Wild Life Benchmark Tests

Galaxy S25 Edge Additional Features And Battery Life

The remaining specs clearly slot the S25 Edge into the flagship category, and include sub-6GHz and mmWave 5G, CAT 20 LTE, tri-band WiFi 7 (802.11be), Bluetooth 5.4 (LE), NFC, UWB, A-GPS / GLONASS, Galileo / BDS positioning, plus the usual collection of sensors. A linear vibration motor and ultrasonic in-display fingerprint sensor complete the package, providing nice haptics and quick, reliable biometric unlock.