Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge Impressions: Nobody Asked!

[Music] All right, this is it. Your official first look at and hands-on with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. Samsung's ridiculously thin addition to the S25 lineup. So, this is delayed a bit and the rest of the lineup has been out for a while since earlier this year, but I just know somewhere out there there was somebody who was waiting for the thinnest possible version of an S25, just the minimum Z-axis dimension. This person totally exists. And good news for this person, it does actually seem to be a pretty good phone for as thin as it is if you're into that. So, what I was really wondering about this phone when it was first revealed or teased was how are they going to position this? Is this going to be some ultra high-end phone where they make a huge deal and hype up how thin it is and they broke physics to make this possible? And it turns out the answer, which kind of makes sense, is it's it's right between the base S25 and S25 Plus and the S25 Ultra. So, the theoretical customer for this phone is making like a half step up from the base phones, but not going all the way to the Ultra. So, you can think of this S25 Edge here as basically an S25 Ultra light, if that makes sense. It still has the titanium rails from the Ultra phone. It's in one of three stunningly vibrant colors, black, silver, or slightly bluish silver. But then they also took the primary camera, the 200 megapixel huge sensor from that ultra phone, plus all the software and image processing that comes with it. Then the second camera is a 12 megapixel ultrawide. No telephoto here. And then it has the screen from the S25 plus. So it's a 6.7 in 120 Hz 1440p AMOLED display. And then the whole thing is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite just like the rest of the lineup. And with all that power and the custom NPU and all the software features that we expect all the rest of Samsung's phones to have. So, it feels when you're using it, you know, very familiar software-wise, which is great. But when you make a phone this thin, 5.8 mm thin to be exact, well, you know, of course, there are some obvious trade-offs you have to make. Samsung's not immune to physics. So, there's no way around it. There's just less room inside the phone. So, that means less room for internals, like a telephoto camera, which is missing. And there's also less room for battery. So, we're back down to a 3,900 mAh battery with 25 watt charging. 3900 in an Android phone back in the day used to be a lot, but now with as powerful as these phones have gotten and with as bright as these screens have gotten and as big as they are, this is like bordering on worryingly small. Just for context, the S25 Plus, which is the same size, is 4900 mAh. And that's not to mention all the other stuff I got to test when I get it. things like cooling. Like I I just don't expect this to have the same level of heat sink and cooling as the thicker phones. But also, now that I've held it, as much as I hate to admit it, there is also kind of some upside to this ultra thin design, too. Hear me out. So, the phone obviously looks incredible. I mean, this is a sleek and modern design. It's impressive. I also think the camera sort of has this floating island design. It's actually my favorite design in the entire S25 lineup. So, with no case on it, this phone looks really good and also underrated. It's much lighter than most flagship phones. So, the official spec on paper is 163 g, which is it's basically the same as the small base S25. And so, just holding a phone this big in the hand that's that light, there's something about it. It's much more convincing holding it than watching a video. If you can get into a store and hold it, you'll see. But, it's one of those things that I can't quite translate through the screen. I definitely felt a certain way watching a bunch of videos of this phone, but now that I've held it, you know, I was swayed a little bit, not going to lie. Now, I also like that the sides are flat. And then, even though the whole point is to be super razor thin, they did keep some of those small things that I think they could have gotten rid of, like the physical SIM card tray is still here. I think the buttons on the phone are actually slightly smaller just because of how thin it is. But then also the 25 watt charging speed is the same speed as the regular S25s. And they kept 15 watt wireless charging as well. On the front, it's actually the same Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 as the Ultra phone, but without that fancy anti-reflective coating on the Ultra. Some people like me who have used the Ultra will miss that, but a lot of people won't actually notice. And then inside it's 12 gigs of RAM and either 256 or 512 gigs of storage. And the starting price $1099. So again, right in between the plus and the Ultra. So some thoughts. Okay, first of all, and a lot of you have already typed this out in the comments, and I can see them below the video already with my psychic powers, but people aren't asking for thinner phones. Like, we know this already. Matter of fact, most people are asking for a slightly thicker phone to get more battery life, and this is the opposite. So, I expect this phone to have worse battery life than all of the rest of the S25s. I'm not sure how much worse yet. I got to test it. So, get subscribed to see the full review when it comes out. But I can pretty much guarantee it will be worse. Second of all, though, there's also rumors of uh an iPhone 17 Air, an ultra thin iPhone coming out at the end of this year as well. I wasn't sure how they would position that phone, but I'm now a little more confident they'll probably also do a sort of middle of the lineup thing. Um, but you know, Samsung's is out first, so they can say that they did it before Apple, and that means a lot to Samsung. I think both phones will have some battery issues to deal with, but Samsung did actually keep an ultrawide camera and a physical SIM card tray and the same exact chip as their highest end flagship phone, which it looks like the iPhone will not do any of those things. Then the other thing is we all know the stats. Almost everyone puts a case on their phone. So instant reaction is just like, oh, why would I get a thinner phone like this when I'm just going to put a case on it and it's just going to end up feeling like any other regular phone? But I do actually think that with how crazy thin and light they've made it, this is one of those phones that you put a thin case on it or, you know, maybe even a Dbrand skin or something like that, but it's still actually going to feel thinner and lighter than a normal phone with a case on it. So, if you're one of those rare people who is actually looking for specifically a thinner phone or a lighter phone, but not necessarily a smaller screen, then okay, yeah, this is theoretically for you. Matter of fact, before I review this phone, this is this is the exact customer who I think it seems like it's aimed at. This is someone who is going to upgrade to a Samsung phone somewhere in the lineup and liked the idea of going all the way up to the Ultra cuz the camera looked really nice, but they don't want to carry this big thick ultra phone with the S Pen they'll never use. So, they'll get this. and they also like the idea of the ultra camera but don't mind having a worse ultra wide and no telephoto and less battery or just someone who sees a cool commercial, thinks it looks shiny and thin and just buys it anyway. But anyway, stay tuned for the full review. Should be coming out at some point soon. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace.


CMF Phone 2 Pro: Budget Phone of the Year!

- So there are some mixed thoughts on the looks of this phone. That makes sense. There's also some mixed thoughts
on the specs of this phone and that also makes sense, but I don't think there's any
mixed opinions on one thing. It's a damn good deal. This is the CMF Phone 2 Pro. So for those of you keeping track, that means that the budget
phone brand, Nothing, has an even more budget
sub-brand called CMF that is making a Pro
version of its second phone, even though there is no
non-Pro version, okay? So it's a little bit confusing, but the bottom line you should know is they've built a budget phone with a pretty distinct design and a set of features versus
trade offs to retail at $279 or if you're in India, 20,999 rupees. At this point, I'm pretty sure they're
only using the word pro because of the triple cameras. I feel like that makes
it like an honorary pro, like it looks like a Pro phone kind of. That's kind of the only
pro thing about it. But I think the point here
mainly is that this looks and feels like a lot higher end of a phone than it actually is. Like it is a big, bright, high
refresh rate, AMOLED display with a fingerprint reader underneath. It's thin, the bezels are
pretty even all the way around. It's not too obtrusive with
a little hole punch cut out for the selfie camera and it's actually really light despite having a 5,000
million power battery. And then this plastic back piece, which I'll get more into in a second, feels kind of metallic on the bottom half while the other colors are actually entirely metallic feeling. So is it ugly? Uh, okay, I'd say it
depends on who you ask. It's obviously unique-looking with the flat back and
the metal camera rings. Me personally, I don't
exactly think it's beautiful, but luckily I don't have to look at the back of
my phone very often. So let's just call it personality. But you gotta admit there's
a whole mob of people who have been looking at
slab phones year after year, looking the same over and over again. So tame, not really taking any risks, not even really having colors lately. But this, this is personality. I mean look at this, look at this orange and it's also modular again, kind of. So here's the thing. So the CMF phone last
year was also modular. It had the screws that came out
the back, the back came off. There were attachable
accessories, which is cool. This year it's also modular, but doesn't work with basically
any of the accessories from that last CMF phone
except for the lanyard. So they're sticking with the modular idea but not the previous modules. But the way it works is now
there's still four screws on the back of the phone, plus the thumb screw in the bottom corner. You take those all out with
the not included screwdriver, but the whole back of the phone doesn't actually come off anymore. Instead, there's just this
add-on accessory back. So this back just slaps onto the phone, then you put the screws back in and now the back of the
phone has camera lens mounts and the strongest MagSafe magnet array I've actually ever seen. So the magnets, they're a no brainer. Go ahead and stick all
kinds of accessories onto the back of the phone. MagSafe accessories, other
random magnetic stuff, CMF-made accessories also stick. They made this wallet
that holds a few cards and then also acts as a vertical kickstand when you fold this piece here down. Pretty nice. And then unlike the Apple MagSafe wallet, which I kind of had beef with 'cause I felt like it would fall off way too easily for a wallet, this one actually feels locked
onto the back of the phone 'cause these magnets are so strong. The phone doesn't have wireless charging, but it's still convenient to be able to throw it up on your
dash or on a desk mount or anything else like
that just to hold stuff. And then the camera mount. Okay, so this is another crazy idea that honestly may only last one year, but the idea is this plastic ring around the primary camera
is a mounting point for a couple of external lenses. So CMF actually made two
lenses, a macro and a fisheye that literally just pop onto
the back of the phone like this over the best camera,
that primary 50 megapixel. So the idea is cool, the
personality is very real. I think if I was dailying this phone, I would just leave the white
back on my phone all the time so I could always use the magnets and if I ever wanted
to attach accessories, I could just pop it on. Now the actual lenses CMF has made, I would just say, you know, they're fine. They accomplish what they're
supposed to do, okay? There are other phones
that can take comparable or even better macro photos with a built-in macro camera, and the fish eye, you
know, it's a unique look. Maybe you're into that. It's just fun. The main camera by itself, even without the attachment
lenses is just fine. It's got this warmish, pinkish
cast on a lot of photos and it definitely over
exposes a lot of the time, but it doesn't have any
horrible, catastrophic issues. As someone who takes a lot of pictures, these two attachment lenses
have me thinking like, oh, what if they also made
like an 85 millimeter or like a portrait photo
lens or something like that. But I don't wanna get my hopes up because that may never exist. And you know we get
these two, that's cool, but will we ever see anyone
else making lens accessories for this phone? Probably not. Also, there's no place
to hold these lenses so you get them, you take
'em out the packaging and they're just kind of loose and they're very easy to fingerprint and kind of hard to clean and it just, the more you
have to deal with that, the less you actually want to
carry them around with you. But using this phone, I just wanna make one thing very clear. This is the best software in any new phone under about 400 bucks. It is just so clear. I know there are clean
1U iPhones that are cheap and you know, some Redmi phones at this price point, et cetera, but this is one of those things that came from OnePlus to Nothing and now to CMF by transitive property, it's just great software chops. Same as the more premium Nothing phones, smooth animations everywhere, a few extra features here and there, some custom widgets, you know
the dots motif is everywhere, but it's definitely not too overwhelming. It's also not filled
with ads at this price. I mean this is what you
interact with every day. This is when you're using a phone, what makes it easy to forget
that it's such a cheap phone. None of the features here in Nothing OS 3.2 are artificially removed from the cheap phone,
like nothing is locked to just the higher end
chip or anything like that. It even has the extra button
they added on the side for the essential space to open that early stage AI
info collection tool thing that they started building. If I never turn this phone
around, you might look at it and think it's a Nothing 3a Pro because they're just that close. And this display I think
is the real strong point. This really seals the
deal with what I said, like it's a big 6.77 inch panel, 1080p, adaptive 120 hertz, AMOLED. It's super responsive. It has a 480 hertz touch sample rate. It gets plenty bright. This one literally up to 3000 nits in HDR, but 1300 nits full screen
brightness outdoors and it even has 2160 hertz PWM dimming. So I think I like
everything about this screen at this price. Literally the only thing
I'm not a huge fan of is the pre-installed screen protector, just 'cause it has this little cutout around the selfie camera and it's not that smooth. But look, one of these phones is $279 and the other one is $459. That's not bad. Now there's a reason I
haven't really talked about the rest of the
specs with this phone just because honestly
they're not that high on the list of reasons why I would get it. But in case you care, it's running a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Pro and I'd say it's perfectly
fine for the job. It benchmarks right
around the Snapdragon 865 if you remember that. It's about a 5-year-old flagship chip and it's fine enough to
handle some occasional games or heavy multitasking, but also it's totally
fine just scrolling around and doing regular social media stuff. It also has eight gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage with a micro SD card
slot for expanding it. There's also 128 gig version
of this phone outside of the US that's even cheaper. It does not have wireless
charging like I mentioned earlier, but it does add back NFC. The last CMF phone did not have that. This one does, so it can
do contactless payments and all that good stuff. The haptics are pretty good. The single speaker on
the bottom is terrible, but it also is IP54 rated so it can get splashed and be fine. And then there is a 5,000
million power battery, which for a phone this thin, I feel like is actually pretty impressive. It's also 33 watt charging and battery life has been very good. And then of course on the back,
there's our triple cameras because it wouldn't be a Pro
phone without triple cameras. Now if you're thinking all
right, it's a cheap phone so there's pretty much no chance the cameras are actually really good, but they're probably just good enough in regular lighting to get a pass, and maybe the triple cameras
are kind of just a stunt to get people to see it as more Pro, and then you'd be right. The primary camera is a 50
megapixel sensor with no OIS and yeah, it's fine. Don't expect to have your mind blown. It works but like I
said, some pink casting, it's not gonna do any miracles. Not a lot of depth of field
or fast shutter speeds because of the lack of OIS. The telephoto is also only
2X, so it's not a huge zoom and it's also on a much smaller sensor so it's sacrificing a lot of light and quality for not a lot of zoom. And then the ultra wide
is in fact much wider than the main camera, so that's good. But it's also a tiny sensor and it's just eight megapixels so it's just kind of
more of a fun to have, which I'll accept. I'm glad it has an ultra wide at all. But between the software and the display and then all the fun choices they've made with the modularity,
it's a great fun phone but it almost makes me wonder what it would've been like if there was a genuinely high-end version of this available too. And then I think maybe
we've already seen that. I dunno if you remember the
Moto Z back a couple years ago with the Moto Mods. That was kind of similar, attaching things to the back of the phone that were fun and functional
and gave it real character. In the meantime though, for $279, I honestly wish this had like
all of the bans in the US 'cause this would be even
easier to recommend if it did. But especially elsewhere, I think this is the best
budget phone out this year. I'm a fan. There's been a lot of action in like the mid-range phone price, like the $400 space, the iPhone 16E, the Pixel 9A, everything in there. But for sub 300, this is where it's at. Subscribe to see if anything else better
comes out this year though. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace. (mid-tempo beats music)