Slim phones are coming in 2025 – but does anyone really want them?

The world of technology can be a funny old place sometimes. For the past few years, I've bemoaned a distinct lack of innovation and design ingenuity on the part of major phone brands.

Now, in the blink of an eye, it seems like two of the biggest have made major changes. We've already seen the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge teased earlier this year, while rumours about the iPhone 17 Air suggest that 2025 is going to be the year of the slim phone.

But I can't really understand why. All of the talk about these handsets suggest we could see two devices measuring around 6mm thick. That's absurdly slim, and a really impressive design feat, but it doesn't sound all that ergonomic.

I'm currently using an Honor Magic V3 handset which is around 4.5mm thick when unfolded. And frankly, the idea of hanging onto a single panel device only a hair or two thicker than that is preposterous.

Of course, there are other factors at play. I have no doubts that the move is also designed to spread out the R&D costs arising from the design of foldable phones over additional handsets. Those also require slim panels, but having two handsets making use of the technology would effectively half the cost of development.

Another question mark is the price. There really is no telling how expensive these handsets could be given that it's effectively an entirely new product class. Given that they're likely to have some downgraded specs in order to fit the chassis – we're expecting some cameras to be missing, and smaller batteries to be the norm – I can't imagine too many users who would be willing to pay over the odds.

It's certainly going to be an interesting year. I'm really excited to see manufacturers innovating again, and I really do hope that this spurs some extra thinking from their R&D teams. I just hope that they aren't hedging all of their bets on this design.