Thin Phone Battle: iPhone Air vs. Galaxy S25 Edge

Although purely anecdotal, I've seen reports of people going into Apple retail stores intent on buying an iPhone 17 Pro -- with its improved camera system, vapor chamber cooling system and of course that bright orange color -- and then walking out with the slim iPhone Air instead. And when Samsung announced the Galaxy S25 and S25 Ultra, what caught everyone's attention was the tease of a thinner model that was subsequently released as the Galaxy S25 Edge. If you're unexpectedly considering a thinner phone, this seems to be the year to do it.

So how do these two slim phones compare? If you press them together, are they combined much thicker than a regular iPhone 17 or Galaxy S25? I'm here to do the math and compare features.

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• iPhone Air: $999. The iPhone Air takes the place formerly held by the iPhone 16 Plus, making it the only model with a screen larger than the iPhone 17 that isn't an iPhone 17 Pro.

• Galaxy S25 Edge: $1,100. The S25 Edge joins the S25 and S25 Ultra in this year's Galaxy lineup.

The iPhone Air includes fewer features than the iPhone 17, such as the number of cameras. But it includes a larger display, an A19 Pro processor and is configured with 256GB of storage to start. Plus, Apple has always applied premium pricing for thin design changes. The original MacBook Air fit into an inter-office envelope and cost $1,799, despite being underpowered compared to the rest of the MacBook line. (Over a few generations, it would eventually become Apple's entry-level affordable laptop at $999, where it still resides.)

The Galaxy S25 Edge's higher price (of $101) could be an attempt to capture more dollars from customers who are looking for a phone that will set them apart, but we're already seeing occasional steep discounts on it, like this $300 drop.

In both cases, it's worth noting that the pricing has held up against the Trump administration tariffs so far.

Now it's time to go deep -- as in, just how thin is the depth of each phone?

No phone manufacturer describes its phones as bulky or chunky, even for extra-large models like the iPhone Pro Max. Yet the difference between the depths of the iPhone Air and S25 Edge and the standard phones of each respective family is stark.

Not counting the camera assembly, which Apple calls the "plateau," most of the iPhone Air's body is 5.64mm thick. The S25 Edge, at its narrowest point, is a hair thicker at 5.8mm. (Both companies list only the thinnest measurement, not including the cameras.) Compare that to 7.9mm for the iPhone 17 and 7.2mm for the Galaxy S25.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is actually thinner when open, at 4.2mm, but it also has more surface area to spread out its battery and other components. Other foldables from Chinese companies Huawei, Oppo and Honor also boast thinner bodies than the iPhone Air or S25 Edge, but only when opened.

And when you press the two thin phones together, do they really match up to the typical phone slab you're carrying now? Combined (and again, not including the camera bumps), the iPhone Air and S25 Ultra are 11.44mm thick, which is more chunky than either the iPhone 17 or Galaxy S25, and even the iPhone 17 Pro Max at 8.75mm. But if you wanted to get closer to an old-time feel, the original first-generation iPhone in 2007 sat at 11.6mm.

Surprisingly, less depth translates to only a little less weight compared to the other models in each lineup. The iPhone Air weighs 165 grams versus 177 grams for the iPhone 17, while the S25 Edge pips in at just 163 grams but gets barely undercut by the Galaxy S25 at 162 grams.

How big is each phone in the hand? While both are pretty similar, the iPhone Air is slightly shorter and narrower at 156.2mm tall and 74.7mm wide, compared to the S25 Edge's dimensions of 158.2mm tall and 75.6mm wide.

Apple calls the iPhone Air's 6.5-inch OLED screen a Super Retina XDR display. It has a high resolution of 2,736x1,260 pixels at a density of 460 ppi (pixels per inch) and can output a maximum of 3,000 nits of brightness outdoors and just 1 nit minimum in the dark.

Samsung packed a larger 6.7-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen into the S25 Edge, which translates to a high-resolution display measuring 3,120 x 1,440 pixels at 513 ppi. Its brightness goes up to 2,600 nits.

Both phones' screens feature adaptive 120Hz refresh rates for smoother performance.

So far, many of the specs have been close enough to weigh each phone fairly evenly. But then we get to the cameras.

The iPhone Air includes a single rear-facing 48-megapixel wide camera with a 26mm-equivalent field of view and a constant f/1.6 aperture. In its default mode, the camera outputs 24-megapixel "fusion" photos that are the result of an imaging process where the camera captures a 12-megapixel image (using groups of four pixels acting as one larger pixel for better light gathering, called "binning") and a 48-megapixel reference for additional detail.

Apple also claims the iPhone Air can capture 2x-zoomed (52mm-equivalent) telephoto images that are 12 megapixels in dimension and represent a crop of the center of the image sensor.

The S25 Edge includes two built-in rear cameras, a 200-megapixel wide and a 12-megapixel ultrawide. There's no dedicated telephoto camera, so the S25 Edge also offers a 2x-zoomed crop that shoots photos at 12 megapixels in size.

The front-facing selfie cameras on each phone are quite different. The iPhone Air introduces a new 18-megapixel camera with an f/1.9 aperture. But the increased resolution over the S25 Edge's 12-megapixel selfie camera isn't what's notable. Apple calls it a Center Stage camera because it has a square sensor that can capture tall or wide shots without physically turning the phone, compared to the 4:3 ratio sensors in typical selfie cameras. It can adapt the aspect ratio based on the number of people it detects in front of the camera: a traditional portrait orientation when you're snapping a photo of yourself, for example, or switch to a landscape orientation when two friends stand next to you in the frame.

When it comes to concerns, the battery life of thin phones tops the list. The insides of most phones are packed with as much battery as will fit, so making a phone slimmer naturally means removing space for the battery. With either model, you end up sacrificing battery power for design. But how much?

Apple doesn't list the iPhone Air's battery capacity, but claims "all-day battery life" and up to 27 hours of video playback. It also sells a special iPhone Air MagSafe Battery add-on that magnetically snaps to the back of the phone and works only with the iPhone Air. In her review, CNET's Senior Tech Reporter Abrar Al-Heeti drained the battery in 12 hours over a phone-intensive day, but did end a more typical day with 20% remaining.

The S25 Edge includes a 3,900-mAh battery that Samsung claims will play up to 24 hours of video playback. (Come on, phone manufacturers, our phones aren't televisions left running in the background.)

In her S25 Edge review, Al-Heeti noted that the phone also generally lived up to Samsung's own "all-day battery life" boast, saying, "Ultimately, you'll get less juice out of that slimmer build, but S25 Edge offers just enough battery life to make me happy…But the S25 Edge has shifted my priorities. I'm enjoying the sleek form factor so much that I'm willing to make some compromises, even if that means I have to be sure to charge my phone each night, which is something I tend to do anyway."

It's worth noting that both phones support fast charging when using a 20-watt or higher wired power adapter, going from zero to around 50% charge in 30 minutes.

The iPhone Air is powered by Apple's latest A19 Pro processor, the same one found in the iPhone 17 Pro models (compared to the A19 in the stock iPhone 17). Apple doesn't list the built-in memory, but we suspect it includes 8GB of RAM (which is recognized as the minimum amount to run AI features such as Apple Intelligence). The base storage configuration is 256GB, with options to order the iPhone Air with 512GB or 1TB capacity. It ships with iOS 26, the latest version of the operating system that Apple released widely this week.

The S25 Edge runs on a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, the same one that powers the other S25 models. It includes 12GB of RAM and is available in storage capacities of 256GB and 512GB. The phone comes preinstalled with Android 15.