Galaxy S25 Edge Teardown - (The iPhone 17 Air already won?)

Rumor on the street is that Apple's going to come out with a smartphone even thinner than this new S25 Edge. The Edge is sitting at 5.8 millimeters thick and the new Apple 17 Air, if the rumors are true, is 5.5. Not including the camera bumps obviously. For some reason we just pretend that part of the phone doesn't exist. Today we'll tear apart this new S25 Edge and speculate on how Apple might be trying to do the same, but better. Getting her open is actually pretty easy. Samsung has installed these super thin Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the back, but with enough heat, the waterproofing adhesive underneath the glass softens and I can slice it away with my jerry-rig knife while lifting it up with some patience and a suction cup. Keep in mind that the glass and titanium are extremely hot at the moment and it kind of hurts to hold onto, but my mom didn't raise a quitter. With the glass removed, the S25 Edge looks pretty regular on the inside, except for instead of thick black plastics, the inner plastic layer is thinner and has cutouts for things like the boxy lower microphone diaphragm to poke up through. There are 19 screws holding the inners to the frame. These will all vary in length and color, so try to keep them organized. And definitely don't sneeze at any point during the repair procedure. There is one Lego style ribbon connecting the loincloth style wireless charger to the motherboard. The S25 Edge can wirelessly charge at 15 watts, but it does not have the internal circle magnets to lock the wireless charger into place like the iPhones do. I also think it's interesting that the wire inside this copper coil narrows in diameter as it nears the center of the circle. This probably has something to do with science. I'll unplug the battery just like a little Lego. The display ribbon, the charging port ribbon, and the signal wire ribbon are all held in place with the same Lego style connectors. At first I thought these connectors looked more slim than usual, but after grabbing my regular sized S25 Ultra and popping off the motherboard plate and taking a closer look, both phones match, which is good. It means Samsung is reusing the same technology they have in other phones instead of having to invent a whole new method of connecting connectors. I imagine Apple will do the same. However, the regular S25 Ultra is 2.4 millimeters thicker than the S25 Edge, and we need to find out where those 2 millimeters got subtracted from. Coming down to the loudspeaker stereo plastics, we can see that the vibrator motor that sits above the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is super thin...and that's a start. The loudspeaker itself at first glance does not appear to have any balls inside. But after looking under a third flap on the top side, we do see that the S25 Edge does still indeed have balls. So far there are no major compromises or concessions. There are two more Phillips head screws holding in the 25 watt USB-C port. This guy is interesting since there is no housing on the port itself. It's just the bare pins and uses the titanium frame of the S25 Edge as the housing to guide your charging cable onto the pins. It's rather creative and does help save space. I can pop out the SIM card tray and remove one more screw that holds the lower daughterboard, which has the microphone and loudspeaker contact pins attached to it. Surprisingly, the water resistance of the S25 Edge looks normal on the inside. Samsung is using the normal waterproofing mesh over the loudspeaker opening, but instead of it being parallel with the phone frame, it's tilted at an angle. The microphone membrane looks pretty regular as well. And when it comes to the battery, I think Samsung's new removal method is the best in the industry. There's actually no adhesive and no prying and no electricity required. Just pull up the four flaps on each side like you're unwrapping a present on Christmas morning, and voila, the battery is out, ready to be swapped or recycled. And Samsung definitely gets a thumbs up for that. This is a new technique that started with the S25 series, and I'm here for it. Samsung's batteries are now the easiest to take out, and the Google Pixel batteries are by far the most difficult. This Edge battery has been downgraded to 3,900 milliamp hours, but that's still more than an iPhone 16 Pro. With our battery out, we get our first look at the vapor chamber. And this is what dissipates heat from the processors and the battery while it's charging. It's super wide and super flat. We'll see how the processors connect up with it in a second. The upper stereo speaker has more waterproofing mesh over its opening. And surprisingly, it also has plenty of balls, as we can see through a transparent blue window on the top side. I'll unplug the front facing selfie camera and pull the motherboard away from the frame, revealing copious amounts of thermal paste which we'll get to in a second. If you remember, the S25 Ultra did not have any thermal paste inside. The 12 megapixel wide angle camera does not have any optical image stabilization. But the 200 megapixel main camera, while being reengineered to be slightly thinner, does still have DOIS, which is a good thing. Now, to get this thing shaved down to just 5.8 millimeters thick, Samsung had to remove slivers of frame wherever possible. And if we pop back into the 2 millimeters thicker S25 Ultra, we can see about the same size of Except for that, this Ultra still has a portion of the aluminum frame that sits between the chamber and the processors. With the Edge, that portion of frame has been removed and the processors are directly in contact with the vapor chamber via thermal paste, which in my mind will help with the thermals overall. So there's nothing to be worried about there. Comparing the two motherboards, we can see where most of the thickness savings were accomplished. Both the Edge and the Ultra's motherboards are double stacked, but the middle layer, you know, where the ice cream sits in an ice cream sandwich, is much thinner on the S25 Edge. It's really cool seeing them side by side like this. And I imagine Apple, when they follow Android's lead later this fall, will do something very similar with their own motherboard. Finally, we reach the titanium frame, or better said, the titanium and aluminum frame, since it looks like Samsung has again used an aluminum subframe combined with a plastic intermediary layer, which in turn very securely binds the titanium exoskeleton to the phone. Very similar with what we saw in the Ultra earlier this year. And in my opinion, that extra rigidness from the exterior titanium is what kept this phone alive. If Samsung had attempted to build this Edge entirely from aluminum, I probably could have snapped it. At least that's what I tell myself at night. I'm not weak, just the titanium is too strong. I also noticed that the light and proximity sensors are underscreen cameras, sitting right below the selfie camera as they peek through the pixels on the AMOLED display. Fingers crossed that it all works when I put it back together. Overall, I'm pretty glad that Samsung is pushing the limits with this new Edge line. Unique ultra premium products that a few people purchase are what pave the way for regular people to have nice things. For example, back in the mid 19th century, aluminum was more valuable and premium than gold, and was reserved only for kings. But thanks to technological and metallurgical innovations, now humans can barely be bothered to find a recycling bin for their pop cans. So 5 years from now we'll be shocked that we were shocked at the thinness of this Edge, which surprisingly still works. If you want to add those wireless charging magnets to the back of your Edge, or just want to level out the atrocious camera bump, while at the same time protecting your thousand dollar investment, my channel sponsor dbrand has you covered with their thinnest case ever – the S25 Edge Ghost Case. With the lifetime warranty against yellowing, dbrand of course also has thicker phones covered as well. I'll put a link down in the description. And yeah, a case and screen protector will make your phone slightly thicker, but at least now it'll probably survive unscathed until your next upgrade. And still feels like real glass. Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.