Samsung drops plans for Galaxy S26 Edge following weak S25 Edge sales

midian182

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Rumor mill: Bad news for fans of Samsung's ultra-thin Galaxy S25 Edge handset. After numerous reports of poor sales following its release a few months ago, it appears that Samsung has cancelled its successor and will discontinue the current handset once stock is depleted.

Samsung heavily promoted the S25 Edge, highlighting its incredibly thin and light design. The fact that the Korean giant released the handset before Apple's iPhone Air was also a big bonus in the company's eyes.

But despite plenty of positive reviews, there were numerous reports of consumer interest being below what was expected, as well as poor sales figures.

According to Korea's Newspim, Samsung has now informed employees that it won't be launching an S26 Edge successor next year. It claims to have spoken to a Samsung official who said he doesn't know if the slim line will ever come back. "I think you can consider it to have essentially disappeared," he said.

There had been rumors that Samsung would drop the Galaxy S26 Plus model in next year's lineup in favor of the S26 Edge, but those plans appear to have been abandoned.

The S25 Edge sold 190,000 units in its launch month, around 83% fewer than what the Galaxy S25 managed. Newspim writes that sales of the S25 Edge had reached 1.31 million units as of August. In contrast, sales of the Galaxy S25, Plus, and Ultra reached 8.28 million, 5.05 million, and 12.18 million units, respectively.

While the S25 Edge was admired for its 1.4mm ultra-thin design, this came at the cost of compromises. At $1,099 at launch, it was $200 more than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which offers 200MP wide, 50MP ultra-wide, 10MP telephoto, and 50MP periscope telephoto lenses. The S25 Edge, meanwhile, is limited to 200MP wide and 12MP ultra-wide lenses.

The Ultra also has a larger capacity battery, a built-in S Pen (which the Edge does not support), and a slightly larger screen with anti-reflective coating. It has more RAM and storage than the Edge, too: up to 16GB RAM and 1TB vs. 12GB RAM and up to 512GB.

While one might expect Apple to be quick to mock Samsung's failure, it might feel its rival's pain. Sales of the iPhone Air are reportedly not what Apple expected. But Cupertino could get a boost from China, where the Air has just launched. CEO Tim Cook this week visited Beijing to promote the device.

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Maybe if manufacturers stopped teying to invent user needs for devices as an excuse to sell new models with more nonsense, then they wouldn't have made this in the first place, phones are more than thin enough already, and this is while losing functionality too, so this whole "lets make phones even thinner" shtick baffles me
 
I had an earlier edge phone it was OK but did not add a whole lot of value to the way I used my phone. The only benefit it had was being able to see messages along the edge of the phone while it was flat on a table, so you didn't need to pick it up during a meeting to see it. So it is understandable a higher price with very little additional functionality in an economy where money is tight. No surprise it didn't sell very well. I think they need 3 phones each generation Premium/Mid Range/Budget.

Hopefully they can refocus that engineering team to doing something more useful.
 
Most of this "thin" nonsense has to be because they aren't using ENGINEERS/tech heads to design the phones. They are using "stylish" types to design them.
No one wants a "sub" par phone with a smaller battery.
 
Everybody has battery anxiety or "will it last me the whole day", so the thin phone needs to have a battery life that is comparable to the "real" thing. It doesn't make sense to pay more for less. It just isn't 15 years ago when people were complaining about phablet phones being too big; we've gotten used to them.
 
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