It’s a technological marvel how thin some phones can get while still offering competitive specs. Take the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, a 5.8mm phone that weighs just 163 grams but has the same chipset as the much thicker S25 Ultra, while still featuring a main camera with the same 200MP resolution as its thicker counterpart. The thinner form factor ultimately costs it a telephoto lens and good battery life, but the S25 Edge is still a solid phone, all things considered, especially since it also gets the latest One UI 8.5 features.
The Galaxy S25 Edge may be thin, but it’s not the thinnest phone on the market. The iPhone Air, released in late 2025, is already thinner, and even a ~$240 Infinix Hot 60 Pro+ is only slightly thicker, at 6mm thick instead of 5.8. If you want to go even slimmer, there are still phones much thinner than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, some even from Samsung itself.
1. Apple iPhone Air
The iPhone Air is a good hundred dollars cheaper than the Galaxy S25 Edge ($999 versus $1,099), and it shows in some of the decisions Apple has made. The iPhone Air has a wide camera similar to the iPhone 17 Pro, but the telephoto and ultra-wide cameras are completely absent, whereas the S25 Edge has both a wide and an ultra-wide camera but lacks a telephoto lens compared to the S25 Ultra. The iPhone Air also records 4K video at up to 60 fps without the ProRes encoding found in other iPhone models, while the S25 Edge can record 8K video.
Besides this higher video resolution, the main cameras of both phones are competitive, and neither has a clear advantage over the other. This is also true in many other areas, including the performance of both phones. The S25 Edge has a much larger 3,900 mAh battery compared to the iPhone Air’s 3,149 mAh, but numerous independent tests have shown the phones last about the same amount of time, with neither having impressive battery life.
2. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
If a phone panel had to be that thin, it would simply be impossible to contain everything required of a good phone, at least with our current technology. However, since the phone is twice the width of a normal phone when unfolded, Samsung has twice the surface area for its components. This is how the Galaxy Z Fold 7, although thinner than two USB-C ports, manages to accommodate the main camera of the S25 Ultra alongside the missing telephoto lens of the S25 Edge, plus a 4,400 mAh battery (500 mAh more than the S25 Edge) and storage options that go up to a terabyte.
3. Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold
The Galaxy Z Trifold achieves this thinness by relying on the same principles as the Fold 7 and other foldables. If twice the width of a normal phone means Samsung has more space and can afford to make the phone thinner, then it stands to reason that a tri-fold would achieve even more absurd levels of thinness, which it does.
As for its specs, it’s pretty much the same as a Fold 7, except for a larger internal screen and a few other subtle differences. Ultimately, the Galaxy Z Trifold accommodates more storage options despite being thinner than the S25 Edge, retains its telephoto lens, and has a 5,600 mAh battery that’s larger than that of the Galaxy S25 Edge and the Galaxy Z Fold 7.
4. Oppo R5
While there are plenty of thinner foldable phones out there, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge and iPhone Air are the undisputed kings of ultra-thin panel phones released in recent years, and few come even remotely close to their sub-6mm thinness. However, despite being a panel phone and released in 2014, the Oppo R5 is thinner than the iPhone Air and Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge.
In 2014, many smartphone manufacturers were competing to make the thinnest phones possible, a trend that seems to be making a comeback today. Oppo’s R5 was among the best ultra-thin phones if one only cared about thinness. The phone achieved this by being one of the first smartphones to ditch the headphone jack, a trend that today’s ultra-thin smartphones, including the Galaxy S25 Edge, are following.
As for its specs, its performance was poor even by its time, and it lacked many features to keep it as physically thin as possible. In addition to lacking a headphone jack, the phone lacked an SD card slot and could support only a single nano-SIM.
5. Vivo X5 Max
There are a lot of things a phone loses in the quest for the ultra-thin we associate with high-end phones. We saw phones start losing their headphone jacks about a decade ago – although there are still some really good phones with headphone jacks in 2026. In recent years, we’ve seen camera bumps get bigger and bigger as companies continue to develop ultra-thin phones. Both of these make sense; with less workspace, components that require more space simply cannot fit.
However, this may not be entirely true. A 2014 phone, the Vivo X5 Max. Unlike the Oppo R5, which also cut out its headphone jack, the Vivo X5 Max retains two SIM slots, with one of them also allowing for a microSD card.
The phone also has barely a camera bump, further accentuating how ahead of the curve it was in terms of thinness. Still, the X5 Max is an incredibly outdated phone, with nothing going for it other than its thinness. You might not be able to find one on your own, but the X5 Max shows that if Samsung or Apple really wanted their flagships to have headphone jacks, they could make it happen.
