Samsung’s obsession with megapixels is hurting its flagship phones

Hold the megapixels, give me a third camera.

May 24, 2025 - 18:30

Samsung’s obsession with megapixels is hurting its flagship phones

There are oh, so many strange things about the new Galaxy S25 Edge. Yes, it’s thin, and yes, it’s made from a durable mix of titanium and top-tier Gorilla Glass, but once you get past that, I am simply confused. It has a small battery that’s not silicon-carbon, slow charging with no magnetic ring for Qi2 accessories (shocker), and, wait for it, only two cameras. That’s one fewer camera than the standard Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus carry, and half the number of the top-tier Galaxy S25 Ultra. The last time we saw a non-folding Galaxy device with only two rear cameras was back on the Galaxy S10e.

Yet Samsung’s all-new, razor-thin flagship packs three times the megapixels of its more affordable siblings. Its two sensors combine for a remarkable 212 total megapixels, which would be enough resolution to put almost any triple-camera device on our list of the best Android camera phones (provided the software was just as good, of course). On the dual-camera Galaxy S25 Edge, however, the balance is off. There are so many megapixels packed into its primary sensor that everything else feels like an afterthought, and that’s not good enough for a phone that costs this much. Here’s why.