The future of ultra-thin phones doesn’t look so good, despite their short lifespan. A report from Taiwan claims that the apparent failure of the iPhone Air has caused a number of other companies to discontinue their respective slim phones. Samsung could also join the list of brands playing it safe.
Most leaks suggest that Samsung has canceled the successor to the Galaxy S25 Edge and will return to the mid-range Plus model next year. The apparent cancellation of the Galaxy S26 Edge does not reflect well, especially for Samsung’s confidence in its product philosophy.
It’s like déjà vu of the slimming race of almost a decade ago, when some Chinese brands made phones even slimmer than the iPhone Air. This time, Samsung has developed a slim phone before Apple, and now it appears to be a one-off flagship model. I strongly believe that Samsung should have gone ahead with the Galaxy S26 Edge.
A breath of fresh energy
Smartphone innovations are once again experiencing a creative upswing. By the way, it was Samsung that started it all, with foldable phones that now open like a book or close like a pocket case. The beginning – ̦ the original Galaxy Fold – was almost a nightmare. Fast forward to the Galaxy Z Fold 7, and it feels like the future.
But foldable phones are an expensive investment. Not only because the sticker price is higher, but also because of their fragility and high repair costs. Our investigation revealed an issue with the repairability of Samsung foldables, and most owners I spoke with have similar stories to tell about costly repairs.
With a phone like the Galaxy S25 Edge, this isn’t a big problem. You don’t sacrifice durability. You’re simply investing in a more stylish phone, with a few compromises here and there. But here’s a lesson to be learned from the iPhone Air.
Apple’s super-slim phone is – objectively speaking – an even worse overall package than the Galaxy S25 Edge, measured in terms of price. Still, almost every owner I spoke to said they love the phone. They bought it for what it was – a slim iPhone that stood out from the rest.
The lack of a second camera is often discussed in the debate, but people have gotten used to it. Samsung has already done better than the iPhone by offering a much larger main camera and a dedicated ultrawide camera. The company simply failed to serve it on a fresh designer plate.
Samsung has an ongoing design problem, and that has diminished the S25 Edge’s appeal for many, myself included. It was simply slim, but not really outstanding in terms of the “typical Samsung look”. The company should have pulled a similar trick to Apple and invented an entirely new aesthetic language.
The Galaxy S26 Edge could have served as a prime candidate for such a revamp. This shouldn’t be a mass market phone. It was intended to serve an audience that was looking for something out of the ordinary, a device that stood out from the crowd. The iPhone Air did just that and the Galaxy S26 Edge simply had to follow in its footsteps.
Samsung was so close
Despite its slim waistline, the Galaxy S25 Edge came pretty close to a normal phone. A normal phone in the style of the iPhone 17. However, there were a few drawbacks. The two biggest flaws? A smaller than usual battery and a missing zoom camera. Maybe also faster wired charging and better thermals.
Samsung just had to fix these paper cuts with the Galaxy S25 Edge and deliver a more refined package with the Galaxy S26 Edge. The brand didn’t have to pull anything out of thin air. It simply had to embrace the technology that already exists.
Silicon-carbon batteries, for example, could have solved several problems at once. Take the new Honor 5000 series phones, for example. Despite a waistline of just 7.7 inches, you get a huge 8,000mAh battery, while the screen size is a pocket-fitting 6.5 inches. That’s more than twice the battery capacity compared to the Galaxy S25 Edge, which is 5.8 millimeters wide.
With a difference in thickness of just 1.9 millimeters, silicon-carbon technology allowed Honor to install a battery with more than twice the capacity. The phone still supports 80W wired charging (almost double that of Samsung), 50W wired charging, and 27W reverse wireless charging.
Samsung could have achieved a similar feat if it had simply embraced the technology. It’s interesting that despite Samsung’s history of bold experimentation, it’s still ignoring silicon-carbon battery technology, especially in a form factor where it could prove crucial.
“Samsung is always looking at every emerging technology out there, so we definitely don’t let that slide,” Blake Glaser, head of smartphone product management at Samsung Electronics America, recently told Tom’s Guide.
As for the front camera, Samsung has already proven that it can boast dual cameras while playing with the same thinness as the iPhone Air, which only offers a single camera on the back. If the moto
A missed redemption arc
Samsung is better positioned to make a better, slim phone than any other smartphone maker out there, even better than Apple. It can make pretty powerful Exynos processors. There is a dedicated camera division that produces smartphone camera sensors. It has a display unit that has even provided panels for iPhones.
Simply put, Samsung could have built an in-house tech stack into the Galaxy S26 Edge without worrying too much about the costs involved. And at the same time played the safe flagship game with the vanilla Galaxy S26 and its Ultra variant. The next Edge model could have been a hit home or even a test bed for in-house technology.
But most importantly, the Galaxy S26 Edge could have been a statement piece just like the original Galaxy Fold. The Galaxy S25 Edge was the proverbial “first pancake.” By addressing its shortcomings and building upon them, the Galaxy S26 Edge could have become a testament to Samsung’s technical excellence.
Samsung’s apparent killing of the ultra-thin “Edge” Vision is not only bad optics for the company, but it also doesn’t bode well for the rest of the brands in the game. If two of the biggest players – Apple and Samsung – can’t make a good slim phone, is there any reason for the smaller brands to even meaningfully try the idea?
I guess we’ll never know. Maybe Samsung will think about it again later. Or perhaps the Galaxy S26 Edge will go down in history as the next case study of “what might have been.”
