The saga of Samsung’s ultra-thin Galaxy S25 Edge has taken a couple of interesting turns, and not necessarily the good kind. We’ll start with the good news first. It was recently reportedly that management struggles at the company may have delayed the phone’s launch to the May-June period.
Now, it seems Samsung has locked on a release date, and it’s sooner than expected. A reliable leakster (via SamMobile) has claimed that the phone will be announced officially on May 13. Previously, it was heavily rumored to arrive midway through April, before the corporate shuffle happened.
As far as the announcement goes, it will reportedly be an online-only affair, sans any glitzy launch event. The bigger mystery is whether it will go on sale the same month, or the next, and how much it is going to cost due to recent geopolitical events.
The Galaxy S25 Edge is expected to offer a 6.7-inch OLED display, while Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC keeps things ticking under the hood. The shell is reportedly made out of titanium, while the cross-section profile is said to be under six millimeters.
The upcoming phone is rumored to offer a huge 200-megapixel primary camera accompanied by a 12MP ultrawide lens. Unfortunately, due to its thin profile, the battery size could be even smaller than the one fitted inside the mainline Galaxy S25.
Politics spoiling the party
The more pressing dilemma, however, is the pricing situation. So far, the majority of insider reports and industry analysts have predicted an asking price between the Galaxy S25+ and its Ultra variant. That would mean a sticker price north of a thousand dollars.
The industry, however, got a shock within the past couple of days as President Donald Trump announced a sweeping set of new tariffs. Notably, these tariffs are hitting regions that are manufacturing hubs for Samsung and Apple, such as Vietnam, China, and India. As per experts, a price hike is nearly inevitable due to the tariff situation.
“Apple, Samsung, Google and other players rely on complex, deeply integrated networks all outside of the US,” CounterPoint Research said in a statement shared with Digital Trends. “Moving manufacturing stateside isn’t happening overnight (or ever) without massive government subsidies and round-the-clock availability of skilled labor, and even then, prices will soar because of a lack of cost arbitrage.”
The impact won’t be spread evenly, and how it reflects on the final price will also vary on a per-brand basis. In Samsung’s case, over half of its phones are assembled in Vietnam, which just got hit with the highest tariff among all the target nations, at 46%, as per Korea’s Chosun News.
“Still, industry experts agree that Samsung and Apple will have no choice but to raise smartphone prices in the U.S. due to the tariff fallout,” adds the report. It would be interesting to see how Samsung balances the tariffs as the regional supply chain grapples with higher costs.
Coming back to the Galaxy S25 Edge, it was already going to be a pricey phone. With the new tariffs hitting nearly all the assembly hubs for Samsung, it would be interesting to see whether the company absorbs the higher manufacturing costs or passes them on to the average buyer.
There’s a chance that Samsung might put an introductory price on the table for a limited time to drive uptake, and then raise it a few months later.