The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge doesn’t have a telephoto lens, and I’m surprisingly okay with that
Let’s start with the obvious: the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is an impressively thin phone. I’ve held its 5.8mm chassis in my hand and marveled at its svelte titanium frame, but if I’m being honest, its allure was somewhat dampened for me by what I thought at first was a glaring deficit: the lack of a true telephoto lens.
Now, though, after spending a little time with the new Android handset and assessing its unusual set of features, I see things a little differently, and I believe that ultimately consumers will, too.
First of all, here’s what you get camera-wise in the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge:
On the front is a 12MP wide-angle selfie camera that, somewhat surprisingly, features a 5-degree wider field of view than any other Galaxy S25 phone (85 degrees as opposed to 80 degrees FoV). Have more friends who want to gather ’round and ogle your ultra-skinny phone? Now you can get them all into the frame.
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It’s the rear camera array where things get interesting. First, you have the 12MP ultrawide camera (120 FoV). This lens will accommodate dramatic wide-angle shots and macro photography and is, as I see it, table stakes for any good flagship camera system.
The remaining lens is the S25 Edge’s most impressive. It’s essentially the same 200MP sensor you find on the $1,299.99 / £1,249 / AU$2,149 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Stuffing that lens into a phone that shares many of its specs with the base Galaxy S25 Plus is unexpected and quite an accomplishment when you consider this is a 5.8mm, 163-gram smartphone.
Not surprised then relieved
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Even before I first saw the S25 Edge in person and long before I learned the full spec sheet, I assumed the phone would not include a decent telephoto lens. After all, there’s surely not enough space for a pericope, which needs a prism, a right angle, and enough space to accommodate the optical zoom technology. However, when I learned the Galaxy S25 Edge would start at $1,099.99 / £1,099 / AU$1,849 without any kind of telephoto lens, I was disappointed.
The 200MP sensor has changed my perspective, not only because it’s an excellent camera that you’ll use to shoot mostly high-quality binned photos (usually in the 12MP or 50MP range) but because of what you can do with that sensor to create a zoom effect.
“2x optical zoom quality” is how Samsung describes what you’ll get with the S25 Edge. What it means is that in 2x zoom mode, the phone shoots at the full 200MP resolution of the main camera sensor, and then it crops into the best pixels for a “zoom”. The nice thing about this is that Samsung isn’t manipulating pixels as it does with the 10X digital zoom. This is all pure artisanal pixels that will essentially make it feel like you were twice as close to your subject.
Zoom versus useful compromise
I’m not gonna lie. I will always prefer more optical zoom. I loved the old 10x optical in the Galaxy S23 Ultra even though it was just 10MP and I rely heavily on the 5X optical zoom lens on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It’s also worth noting that Apple does a similar bit of sensor cropping for the 2X zoom range on its Pro cameras.
What the 6.7-inch Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge offers, though, is a good compromise. The phone is not just a stretched and squished Galaxy S25. It’s a hybrid that melds a beautiful thin design with the best sensor in the S25 lineup, one shared only by the pricier Ultra.
So while I miss the bigger zoom, I think the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge may have found a photography sweet spot. Of course, I’ll know for certain when we get to test the phone.