The Galaxy S25 Slim still baffles me for these three big reasons
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Just when you may have thought mobile tech leakers had nothing left to reveal on the Galaxy S25 family ahead of next week's first big Unpacked event of 2025, the living legend that is Steve Hemmerstoffer dropped a bomb on us all, providing our first clear (and reliable) look at what was probably supposed to be Samsung's secret ace up its sleeve this year.
Of course, the S25 Slim had been in the news for a good couple of months prior to this unprecedented leak, creating a sort of mystique and some expectations that the first-of-a-kind device might not be able to live up to.
Don't get me wrong, I was personally delighted by the simple but decidedly eye-catching design when I covered the breaking news story of its reveal yesterday, but now that I've had the time to sleep on it, I'm more bothered than captivated by a few key details.
Why so big?!
When I heard the first rumblings on the potential Galaxy S25 Slim screen size, I basically refused to listen. There was simply no way Samsung could ever be so clueless as to add a surprising and entirely new fourth model to its main high-end smartphone lineup with the exact same 6.7-inch display diagonal as the S24 Plus and S25 Plus.
Apart from essentially rendering the S25+ obsolete just a few months after its release, that also made little to no sense to me for another big reason. Emphasis on "big." That's right, I don't see much of a point in rolling out yet another gargantuan Galaxy flagship regardless of its waist size.
Hey, guess what, the S25 Slim looks suspiciously similar to the S25 Plus.
A skinny Android powerhouse with a panel around the 6.2-inch sweet spot of the "vanilla" Galaxy S24 or even below that mark was what I expected Samsung to go for and try to defy current industry trends, but alas, it appears that the S25 Slim is even bigger than initially predicted. Specifically, taller and wider than the Galaxy S25 Plus overall, which means that its screen size is all but guaranteed to sit dangerously close to the S25 Ultra at around 6.8 inches.
That's a lot of screen real estate, which is obviously not a problem in and of itself. But it makes it extremely hard for the Galaxy S25 Slim to play the whole elegance card and thus clearly distinguish itself from its cousins (or are they step-siblings?), not to mention the teensy-weensy issue that crops up when you consider this unnecessarily large number alongside an alarmingly small one.
Say it isn't so!
Because I always expected the Galaxy S25 Slim to adopt the compact and stylish design route, I promised myself that I wouldn't let any battery capacity rumor shock me. But while I was certainly willing to give Samsung a chance to prove that a 6-inch or so ultra-high-end handset with a 3,500mAh cell could work just fine in this day and age, making the S25 Slim bigger than the S25 Plus and equipping it with a sub-4,000mAh battery would be an epic fail.
The 6.2-inch Galaxy S24 is starting to look cooler and cooler with its 7.6mm profile and 4,000mAh battery. | Image Credit -- PhoneArena
Mind you, we're talking about a device likely to measure 159mm in height and 6.4mm in thickness (with the camera bump not factored in). Something like the Oppo Reno 13, meanwhile, stands at 157.9mm tall, rocks a 7.2mm waist, and packs a monstrous 5,600mAh battery.
Samsung's own Galaxy A36 mid-ranger is tipped to come with a reasonably thin 7.4mm profile, a remarkably large 6.6-inch or so screen, and a fittingly hefty 5,000mAh battery very soon. I refuse to go on any further on this point because I refuse to believe that the Galaxy S25 Slim will settle for a smaller battery than the five-year-old Galaxy S20, but since there's rarely this type of smoke without fire in the rumor mill, I can't get too excited for Samsung's eventual fourth member of the S25 family either. Which brings me to my final point...
Why so late?!?!
There's definitely nothing wrong with spacing out your smartphone launches and not rushing unfinished products out of the factory, but what exactly is so special and groundbreaking about the Galaxy S25 Slim that we (reportedly) have to wait three or four more months for it?
The S25 Slim will likely not and should definitely not make a cameo appearance at next week's Unpacked event. | Image Credit -- Samsung
Unless I'm missing something big, I also don't think this is a device that would warrant an official preview or teaser at the January 22 Unpacked shindig, as a number of tipsters and leakers have called for in recent weeks. What is Samsung going to do, fully detail the S25, S25 Plus, and S25 Ultra, then show us a glimpse of a fourth phone that looks almost exactly the same and hype it up as some sort of major breakthrough?
That would be incredibly silly, and in a way, it would rub salt in a wound that's likely to make a lot of hardcore Samsung fans feel quite a bit of pain and shame when the iPhone 17 Air comes out. Yes, I am going there, and while I still don't believe that Samsung can be accused of copying Apple with the Galaxy S25 Slim, this thing is starting to look more and more desperate and half-baked, with no clear purpose, target audience, or a convincing selling point. But hey, it's (relatively) thin, and it's not like you're going to cover up that waist with a chunky case anyway, now, is it?
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