Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge is a design flex. At just 5.8 mm thick, it’s the kind of phone that disappears between couch cushions, gets lost under coffee table clutter, and apparently falls off our teardown schedule (it was released almost two weeks ago). But there’s nothing supernatural going on inside this device, as the laws of physics eagerly remind us: cramming flagship performance into a casing slimmer than a pencil leads to some fascinating tradeoffs.
When we finally pried the S25 Edge open, we found a phone that’s fighting on two fronts: it wants to be the most powerful phone Samsung makes, and it wants to look impossibly thin doing it. These goals are fundamentally at odds, and nowhere is that tension more obvious than in the thermal design.
Vapor Chambers, Graphene, and the Limits of Heat Dissipation
To fit the same Snapdragon 8 Elite chip found in the rest of the S25 line into the wafer-thin Edge, Samsung got creative. There’s a wider-but-shallower vapor chamber running just under the display, designed to spread heat across the screen, and a suspiciously graphene-looking thermal pad sitting on top of the SoC. The use of graphene for thermal management is nothing new, but the way they’ve used it here almost suggests a sense of desperation. The best this thermal pad can do is wick the heat away from the SoC, which it does exceptionally well, but without enough thermal mass, it really has nowhere to go. And it shows. The Edge throttles under load faster than its thicker siblings because of this.
Even the battery pulls double duty here. Our Lumafield CT scanner reveals how the vapor chamber directs heat to the cell itself, an increasingly common tactic in mobile design. But this strategy comes with a cost to battery longevity: the chemistry inside a lithium battery generally likes to stay below 30°C. That temperature is often exceeded during fast charge and wireless charging sessions or when the phone is under heavy processing loads, but tests suggest that the S25 Edge is struggling to dissipate heat even under average working conditions, which means the battery will be exposed to high temperatures for much longer periods of time.
A Battery Win, Wrapped in Elegance
Let’s talk about one thing Samsung absolutely got right again: the battery removal method. Introduced with the S25 line, the adhesive doubles as a wrapper that hugs the battery in a way that makes extraction gloriously simple. No glue-soaked spicy pillows, no isopropyl baths. —just peel, lift, and done. That’s a huge improvement for a component that fails in every phone, and it deserves serious praise.
It’s also worth calling out that the USB-C port is modular and held in with screws. We love to see it. Ports are wear-prone components, and modularity here is a clear win for repairability. This modular design in particular is both simple and elegant, and it wins high praise from our repairability engineers.
The Titanium Myth
Titanium is the buzzword of the year. Apple flaunts it, Samsung embraces it, and everyone assumes it’s making phones stronger. But material choice alone doesn’t make a phone durable; the structure matters. With the internals removed, the S25 Edge’s titanium frame fared well against bend stress, but failed on twist. The phone is sturdier when the components are installed, but not to the point of being able to withstand this type of shear stress. It shouldn’t be a problem in day to day use, but then again real world use cases tend to expose flaws that are very hard to predict. Time will tell how this phone fairs.
Repair Score: Caught Between Thin and Grim
Despite the surprisingly repair-friendly battery and port, this phone is held back by familiar Samsung obstacles. Parts are scarce. Guides are incomplete. And while we haven’t seen any evidence of parts pairing (a good thing), Samsung continues to collect user data through their repair program and limit the public availability of replacement components.
Worse, the heavy adhesive used to hold the screen in place makes disassembly harder than it needs to be and the lack of internal clips on the screen and back cover might streamline Samsung’s assembly line, but it precludes the possibility of reassembling the phone without adhesives, something that’s entirely possible on modern iPhones.
In short, first-time fixers will struggle with the most common repairs, and pros won’t enjoy the process.
So for now, the S25 Edge earns a provisional repairability score of 5 out of 10. If Samsung expands parts access and improves documentation, we’ll gladly revisit that score. Until then, the S25 Edge is a sleek reminder that Samsung may have gained ground over Apple in the race to a size zero device, but it’s fast losing the edge in repairability.
crwdns2944067:03crwdne2944067:0
Samgsung phones come with privacy issues, specifically saying that they'll collect and sell user information, which is unacceptable. A hardware maker has no right to own user's data.
Sam - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Not true. Post the proof.
SeriusΩmega - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Samsung does the battery removal method great, introduced with the S25 line, the adhesive doubles as a wrapper that hugs the battery in a way that makes extraction gloriously simple. No glue-soaked spicy pillows, no isopropyl baths. —just peel, lift, and done. That’s a huge improvement for a component that fails in every phone, and it deserves serious praise-something Motorola still won't do!
Anthony Sullivan - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0