Samsung’s obsession of megapixels damage the flagship phones

That is to, so many weird things about the new Galaxy S25 Edge. Yes, it is thin, and yes, it is made of a durable mixture of titanium and top tier gorilla glass, but once you get past it, I’m simply confused. It has a small battery that is not silicon carbon, slow charging without magnetic ring for Qi2 accessories (shocker), and wait for it, just two cameras. There is a fewer camera than the standard Galaxy S25 and S25 plus, and half the number of top-tier Galaxy S25 Ultra. The last time we saw a non-folding galaxy unit with only two rear cameras was back on the Galaxy S10e.

Still, Samsung packs brand new, cylinder flagships three times megapixels of their less expensive siblings. The two sensors are combined for a remarkable 212 total megapixel, which will be enough resolution to put almost any triple camera device on the list of Best Android -Camomphones (Provided the software was of course just as good). However, on the double-camera galaxy S25 edge is the balance of. There are so many megapixels wrapped in their primary sensor that everything else feels like a thought, and it’s not good enough for a phone that costs so much. Here’s the reason.

Before I start complaining, let me get one thing clear: Galaxy S25 Edge’s 200MP Primary camera is good – excellent, even. The 12MP Ultrawide camera is well, solid at best and usable at the absolute worst. We’ve seen both of these cameras before, the former on Top-Tier Galaxy S25 Ultra, and the latter on the more available Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25 Plus. That combination is both the good news and the bad news.

On the bright side, we already knew that Samsung’s 200MP primary camera was very good. It hit impressively sharp shots during my review of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, even when it was by default, it was discontinued for a more manageable 12MP. It also handled my optical crop needs brilliantly, which is good since I turn in to 2x almost by default – sorry, fans of the wide focal length. However, the primary camera is on Galaxy S25 Ultra was just one piece of a rounded layout. It knew when he was to distribute the responsibility to Samsung’s couple of Tele sensors, and borrowed a hand with extra details as needed, but eventually tread back for much of the zoo work.

Samsung also made a fairly large (for Samsung) fuss to bring a brand new, reinforced ultrawide camera to the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It ditched the previous 12MP sensor that we had all gotten used to for a super-sharp 50MP version with the same lovable 120-degree field of view. Of course, this seemed like the new direction for Samsung’s most premium flagship. This is not the case on the Galaxy S25 edge. Despite costing almost as much as the Galaxy S25 Ultra and only had two cameras, Samsung decided that its lower resolution 12MP Ultrawide sensor was good enough.

And at the end of the day, maybe it is. Maybe the fact that its 50MP ultrawide sensor bings to 12MP as standard finally controlled Samsung in this way. However, I can’t help but feel disappointed with the Galaxy S25 Edge’s sensational lack of flexibility. Although they have a full 212 megapixels at their disposal, the phone can only turn from 0.6x (ultrawide) to 10 times zoom before calling it one day. There is less area than the less Galaxy S25 duo with the triple camera layout, and it only matches Galaxy Z Flip 6which achieves the same max — zoom despite having a primary sensor of 50 MP.

Then, as if to make life more confusing, Samsung offered some reason behind the decision under our first Galaxy S25 Edge orientation. It declared that users spend most of their time between 0.6x zoom and 5x zoom, so it decided to focus on that area. It determined that a massive primary camera supported by AI processing was a more effective way to do it than sticking to the flexible trio that worked brilliant, thicker camera or not. So with a strict zoom limit in mind, Samsung gave us two cameras and called it one day.

To illustrate my point – or maybe prove me wrong – of course, I decided to take a small zoom test. I grabbed the shiny new Galaxy S25 edge, the closest rival, the Galaxy S25 Plus, a similar priced double camera phone in Motorola Razr UltraAnd the best option with two cameras like Apple stock in the iPhone 16. Then I found a simple small garden scene that I pass by every single day, and I let every camera do their stuff. How to shook my fast test out:

The Ultrawide angle is, for my eye, the Galaxy S25 edge’s biggest weakness. It does not deliver a terrible shot, but it does not stand out as particularly good, either – it’s just fine. Of course, I largely expected this to be the case, as it works with the same sensor as the Galaxy S25 plus siblings, so it makes perfect sense for the two shots to get out almost identical.

However, Motorola’s 50MP Ultrawide sensor smokes the pair of them. If you zoom in at Razr Ultra’s result, you will notice piles more details, whether in the bricks, the green of the plants or all the way back to the bench that we get closer in just a second. Motorola’s pantone-certified colors are also even punchers than Samsungs not something I ever thought I would say. Unfortunately, the cool color profile of the iPhone 16 gets the result to look a little death from comparison, even though the details are fine. Apple can probably stand to bring a higher resolution ultrawide sensor to Base iPhones, but it’s a debate for another day.

The Galaxy S25 edge jumps to 1x zoom, the standard view, and looks much more competitive thanks to the huge primary sensor. There are many details in the plants and you can pick out a few birds on the hanging poster on the left. It still lands roughly in the middle regarding color profile, with the icy iPhone at one end and Motorola’s Pantone partnership on the other. That being said, I think Razr Ultra offers a slightly sharper look on the bird poster to the left despite the lower 50MP resolution.

At 2x zoom, the 200MP primary sensor really comes to its right. For my eye, the central crop simply keeps a much more resolution than the Galaxy S25 Plus’s 50MP camera can match before switching to the tele for longer distances. Razr Ultra packs decent sharp foreground details too, especially if you zoom in on the plants on the left, although I can’t help but feel like it gets the bench and chair in the background to look a little too artificially worked out. The central crop from Apple’s 48MP primary camera is also by far the softest of this set, with plants that lose details to the left and right, and the arbor over the bench turns into a mixture of pink and greens when you get close.

On 4x zoom, which no-man’s land for these cameras, Razr Ultra’s warm profile begins to make a lot of heavy lift. Although it starts to lose some sharpness, the lively greens and light strings are losing their eye into thinking that it is a better image than Samsung’s relatively flat colors. This time, the Galaxy S25 Edge and Galaxy S25 Plus show different strengths. The more expensive flagship looks better for the contrast-see on the fine lines of the leaves of the left-moving triple camera version shines with better details through the wall of Ivy behind. Both Samsung devices also present a more natural look at the bench, since Motorola’s processing has overpaped it too much.

Last but not least, we have 10 times Zoom – Galaxy S25 Edge’s upper limit. Although I may not like this is where Samsung’s $ 1100 flagship calls it ends, I think it again offers the best details of the gang. Both Samsung images look like the most colored accurate, while the edge shows sharper details in the brick’s walkway and better contrast in the bushes behind the bench. Something with Razr Ultra’s finished product looks a little too dark, as if the saturation was pumped up again. Finally, the iPhone 16 offers, well, just not a very good shot, and is a little too bright and soft from top to bottom.

The problem here is that this is where my zoom comparison stops. Despite having a $ 1,100 phone in his hand with a 200 MP primary camera, Samsung has no interest in letting the combination of sensor crop and digital zoom going beyond a perfect average length. I could have continued to go up to 30 times zoom with the Galaxy S25 Plus and Razr Ultra, see what a 3x telecommunications sensor and motorola’s 50MP primary camera can do, but the Galaxy S25 Edge said no.

I don’t want to lie – I thought I would get to this point and feel justified in thinking that Samsung had made a terrible decision for his Galaxy S25 -edge cameras that would prevent me from calling it one of one of Best Samsung phones about. That is still the case, but it is not as cut and dry as I might have expected. Although I am thoroughly disappointed that the Galaxy S25 edge will not zoom past 10x, I simply cannot argue with the fact that it is sharp across all focal lengths as it covers. I would like to post some of the example the shots I showed above, and there is nothing I can say about all the other devices, at least, certainly not iPhone 16.

From that perspective I get it. I understand why Samsung La 200MP and a small digital zoom make all the heavy promise. I can even admit that if the edge passed 10x zoom, I would probably be less inclined to put out the shots I caught because they are usually not very impressive.

However, I still do not like to spend so much money on a relatively flexible camera. Although Samsung is right, and most will spend the time between 0.6x and 5x zoom, it is not an exclusive rule. There will be times, like a concert or while bird watching, when 15x, 20x or even 30x zoom is a must, and this $ 1100 phone will fail them. When it does, these users will look at their friends with Pixel 9 pro, iPhone 16 pros, or even Samsung’s own Galaxy S25, and be a little envious of the money they saved and the camera’s flexibility they earned.