Why you just like the Galaxy S25 Edge greater than the specialists do

I’ll put on two hats at present — one as a reviewer and one as a shopper. That’s as a result of I’ve been on either side and know precisely how the 2 brains operate, and maybe make sense of how in a different way they every understand the identical product. That is precisely what we’d like at present, as a result of the gadget in focus is probably as polarizing in acceptance as these two minds themselves.

I believed it could be a great factor that being a reviewer will get me to check out so many telephones all year long. Whereas penning this story, although, I’ve come to appreciate that it’d really be working towards me.

You know the way it goes — when you may have expertise with so many telephones, you find yourself setting a number of benchmarks in your head. Which cellphone is best, which one isn’t, and the way precisely one differs from the opposite. And you utilize all that gathered judgment to assessment a contemporary cellphone.

This works generally, however ever since smartphones primarily haven’t modified rather a lot in a few years, when one thing totally different just like the Galaxy S25 Edge comes alongside, that sample falls off observe. The judgments don’t align properly with what a shopper may need; as a substitute, they stem from what expertise has educated you to count on.

This predictive judgment — quite than perceived judgment — typically works at odds with the cellphone you’re reviewing and places it in a foul mild with out regard for what customers may or may not really like.

Attending to play with so many telephones additionally dulls the publicity a bit. It makes reviewers much less delicate to the novelty a selected cellphone brings (on this case, the Galaxy S25 Edge) and pushes them to benchmark it towards telephones that won’t even be in the identical league. You don’t go along with the extraordinary anticipating the same old.

One side that even we reviewers generally neglect is that whereas our expertise consists of a variety of breadth, it severely lacks depth. Continually switching between telephones isn’t the identical as utilizing a single gadget for a number of months. My acceptance of the iPhone solely grew as soon as I lived with it long-term — a full yr of use as my major gadget. You possibly can solely get that type of depth once you use a cellphone for months at a stretch as a substitute of switching each few weeks.

And guess who will get that type of depth?

When your pattern measurement is small, determination fatigue fades into the background. This occurs to many people once we’re sitting in a restaurant watching a menu with 500 dishes and attempting to choose one. It’s not a straightforward determination. However with a smaller, curated menu, you can also make a alternative shortly. The identical factor applies once you’re standing in a retailer attempting to purchase a brand new smartphone.

If you’re selecting between simply the 2 telephones you’re holding in your arms, you aren’t benchmarking numbers. You aren’t battling telephones like YouTube fanatics attempting to see which one opens an app a microsecond quicker. What you’re optimizing for is real-world expertise, the in-hand really feel, the precise lived actuality.

Your alternative shrinks to these two telephones, free from the expectations a reviewer may carry from testing ten totally different smartphones launched this yr, or the data that one other cellphone is coming quickly. None of that issues to you.

The one factor that issues most is your private context. Critiques don’t have that. They’ve their very own context, however they don’t have yours. That’s precisely why most tech YouTubers use video modifying as the final word pro-level workload instance — as a result of that’s their actuality. As a person, it’s possible you’ll get a way of how a cellphone performs from these examples, however it gained’t totally map to your use case.

Perhaps you do business from home and don’t stress your cellphone’s battery with cellular knowledge all day or out of doors use at 100% brightness. In that case, you don’t want a beefy cell and might simply reside with the Galaxy S25 Edge’s battery life whereas having fun with its lightness to the fullest with out always cribbing about endurance.

The Galaxy S25 Edge was an costly cellphone at launch, priced at $1,100. And it might not be that a lot cellphone for that value. However at a reduced value — say $850 and even $600 (seldom open-boxed) — it immediately turns into a implausible deal folks need to soar on. And so they did.

Even when the cellphone didn’t discover many takers at full value, shoppers have been actively choosing it up and genuinely loving it at decrease costs.

Shoppers — the folks — are sometimes higher judges of the worth they’re deriving from a tool. The identical cellphone could not really feel ok at full value, however it turns into much more attractive when the pricing is correct. The Galaxy S25 Edge isn’t an ideal cellphone, per se. It does make compromises. However these compromises matter rather a lot much less once you’re paying much less.

Reviewers did have truthful considerations, which have been even proper on many fronts. However in the end, it’s the tip customers who must reside with the cellphone — not the reviewers, who’ve doubtless moved on to a different gadget since then. When shoppers persistently say a cellphone is nice throughout boards and again it up by spending their hard-earned cash, we reviewers ought to humbly recede.