The future of ultra-thin phones doesn't look so good, despite the short time frame. A report coming from Taiwan claims that the apparent failure iPhone Air has has pushed a number of other companies to cancel their respective slim phones. Samsung could also join this list of brands that are playing it safe.
Most leaks suggest that Samsung has canceled Galaxy S25 Edge successor and will return to the mid-level Plus model next year. The apparent cancellation of the Galaxy S26 Edge doesn't paint a good picture, especially given Samsung's confidence in its product philosophy.
It's like thin-race déjà vu from almost a decade ago, when several Chinese brands released phones that were even thinner than the iPhone Air. This time, Samsung unveiled the thin phone before Apple, and now it looks like it was a one-off demo. I firmly believe that Samsung should have continued with the Galaxy S26 Edge.
A burst of fresh energy
Smartphone innovation is booming again. By the way, it all started with Samsung: folding phones now open like a book or close like a pocket folding phone. The beginning – the original Galaxy Fold – was almost nightmarish. 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 price of stickers is higher, but also because of their fragility and high repair costs. Our investigation uncovered a repairability issue with Samsung foldable devices, and most owners I spoke with had similar stories of costly repairs to share.
With a phone like the Galaxy S25 Edge, this isn't such an issue. However, you don't sacrifice durability. You're simply investing in a more stylish phone with a few cuts here and there. But there's a lesson to be learned here from the iPhone Air.
Apple's ultra-thin phone is, objectively speaking, even worse than the Galaxy S25 Edge in terms of what you get for the price. However, almost every owner I spoke to said they loved the phone. They bought it for what it was – a thin iPhone that was different from the rest.
The lack of an additional camera often comes up in disputes, but we have already gotten used to it. Samsung has already done better than the iPhone by offering a much larger main camera and a dedicated ultra-wide camera. The company simply failed to serve it on a freshly designed platter.
Samsung has a long-standing design problemand that reduced the appeal of the S25 Edge for many, including me. It was just thin, but didn't really stand out in terms of the “typical Samsung look”. The company should have pulled off an Apple-like trick and come up with an entirely new aesthetic language.
The Galaxy S26 Edge could be a prime candidate for such an upgrade. It wasn't supposed to be a mass market phone. It had to serve an audience that was looking for something outstanding, a device that would stand out from the crowd. The iPhone Air did just that, and the Galaxy S26 Edge was bound to follow in its footsteps.
Samsung was so close
The Galaxy S25 Edge, despite its thin waist, was pretty close to a regular phone. A regular phone in the same vein as the iPhone 17. However, some sacrifices had to be made. The two biggest drawbacks? The battery is smaller than usual and there is no camera with zoom. Perhaps faster wired charging and better thermal insulation.
Samsung only needed to fix those cuts on the Galaxy S25 Edge and provide a more refined body for the Galaxy S26 Edge. The brand didn't have to pull anything out of thin air. He just needed to use existing technology.
For example, silicon-carbon batteries could solve several problems at once. Take, for example, the new Honor 5000 series phones. Even though the waist length is only 7.7 inches, you get a massive 8,000mAh battery while keeping the screen size at a pocket-sized 6.5 inches. That's more than double the battery capacity of the Galaxy S25 Edge, which is 5.8 millimeters wide.
With a thickness difference of just 1.9 millimeters, silicon-carbon technology allowed Honor to pack a battery with more than twice the capacity. And yet the phone still supports 80W wired charging (almost twice that of Samsung), 50W wired charging, and 27W reverse wireless charging.
Samsung could achieve a similar result if it simply used this technology. Interestingly, despite its history of bold experimentation, Samsung continues to ignore silicon-carbon battery technology, especially in a form factor where it could prove crucial.
“Samsung is always looking at every new technology that comes out. So this is something we definitely can't take our eyes off,” Blake Glaser, director of smartphone product management at Samsung Electronics America, said recently. Tom's Guide.
When it comes to the front camera, Samsung has already proven that it can use two cameras while playing at the same level of subtlety as the iPhone Air, which only offers a single rear camera. If the Moto X7 Air is anything to go by, the phone, which is still just 5.99mm wide, can accommodate three rear cameras and a larger battery.
Missed redemption arc
Samsung is in a better position than any other smartphone maker to create a thinner phone, even more so than Apple. It can produce some pretty powerful Exynos processors. The company has a special division dedicated to the production of sensors for smartphone cameras. There is a display installed here, from which even panels for the iPhone are supplied.
Simply put, Samsung could implement its own technology stack into the Galaxy S26 Edge without worrying too much about the costs involved. And at the same time I played a safe flagship game with the vanilla Galaxy S26 and its Ultra variant. The next Edge model could be a home recipe hit, or even a test bed for its own technology.
But most of all, the Galaxy S26 Edge could be as spectacular as the original Galaxy Fold. The Galaxy S25 Edge became the proverbial “first pancake.” By correcting its shortcomings and improving them, the Galaxy S26 Edge could be a testament to Samsung's technical prowess.
Samsung's apparent move away from ultra-thin “edge” devices is not only bad optics for the company, it doesn't bode well for the rest of the brands in the game. If the two biggest players – Apple and Samsung – can't make a good thin phone, is there any point for smaller brands to even meaningfully try to implement the idea?
I guess we'll never know. Perhaps Samsung will think about all this in the future. Or maybe the Galaxy S26 Edge will go down in history as another example of “what could have been.”
