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I'll say it: the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is the best-looking phone of the year so far

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge takes the company’s ultra-simple design philosophy to its logical endpoint – it’s a strikingly simple and cool-looking phone that, in my opinion, looks better than the rest of this year’s releases.

May 16, 2025 - 15:16

I'll say it: the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is the best-looking phone of the year so far

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is here. After months of waiting, we’ve finally had our first look at the long-awaited thin and light addition to this year’s Galaxy S25 lineup.

While our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge review has a full rundown of the phone’s specs, pricing, and availability, I want to take a second to recognize what I think is the phone’s best feature – its design.

To cut to the chase, I think the Galaxy S25 Edge is an extremely good-looking device – in fact, I think it’s the best-looking smartphone of 2025 so far.

That might come as a surprise to some, given that the Galaxy S25 Edge is actually pretty plain-looking. It’s impressively thin at just 5.8mm, but construction-wise, two slabs of glass, titanium rails, and a dual-camera island on the top-left corner of the rear panel are pretty much all you get.

However, I think this simplicity is one of the phone’s greatest strengths. While other simple-looking phones like the iPhone 16e and Google Pixel 9a have been released this year, none have merged form and purpose quite as elegantly as the Galaxy S25 Edge.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge on display the January 22, 2025 Galaxy Unpacked event. — The Titanium Silver color option was first teased at the January 2025 Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event (Image credit: Future/Lance Ulanoff)

Here on TechRadar’s phones desk, we’ve gone back and forth about the state of phone design in 2025, running polls, penning features, and wondering whether the trend of minimalism will prevail.

After all, it’s been a few years now since the convergence of flagship phone design around simple, flat designs – I’m sure some folks would struggle to tell the difference between the Galaxy S25 and Sony Xperia 1 VI, for instance, and the recently launched Google Pixel 9a is maybe the simplest-looking handset we’ve ever seen.

The latest rumors suggest that this trend could be about to change. The iPhone 17 series has been heavily tipped to bring radical design changes to the table, and where Apple goes, the phone industry typically follows.

In a way, these latest rumors make me even happier to see that Samsung has stuck to its guns with the Galaxy S25 Edge.

The phone’s central concept – and what people will look for when they first pick one up – is its thinness, and by following its own ultra-minimal design language, Samsung has shown confidence that this engineering prowess is enough to make the phone stand out.

As our US Phones Editor Philip Berne puts it, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge “isn’t a phone you should experience on paper”. Having gone hands-on with the device myself, I agree that there’s a certain je ne sais quoi about it – I actually found it quite enthralling to hold for the first time, and I think users will appreciate the lack of visual distractions on a device that’s built around ergonomics.

After the wobbly launch of One UI 7 and several months of radio silence on the Galaxy S25 Edge before its launch on May 13, it’s genuinely encouraging to see Samsung show confidence and competence in launching what really amounts to quite a simple product.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge in black, blue, and silver — You say boring? I say elegant (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

But even beyond the context of Samsung's year so far and the wider phone industry, I’m a straight-up fan of the way this phone looks.

In particular, the Titanium Silver color option is an absolute knockout, and had me thinking the phone was an all-metal construction during my first encounter. It’s shiny, industrial, and oh-so-stylish.

As for the other colors, I appreciate the way the understated Titanium Jetblack option complements the phone's minimal dimensions, and the remaining Titanium Icyblue color was already my favorite of the base Galaxy S25 options, so I’m happy to see it make the jump.

Ultimately, this is all a matter of personal opinion – we take design into account in our lists of the best phones and best Samsung phones, but aesthetics are certainly more subjective than something like comfort or durability.

With that, I want to know what you think – let us know what you make of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge’s design in the comments below.