Overgrown Samsung S25 can kill the precious small flagship phone niche

Overgrown Samsung S25 can kill the precious small flagship phone niche،

Not to be outdone by Apple and its plans to fatten up the iPhone 16, Samsung may also be preparing to increase the size of its Galaxy S25 screen. Unsurprisingly, the display diagonal now mentioned for the S25 is close to that announced for the S25. iPhone16.

Apple and Samsung have had a stranglehold on the US phone market for more than a decade, particularly in carrier lists. When a new Galaxy S series is launched, Apple's dominant market share often falls below 50%, and this trend reverses in the fall when the new iPhones are launched.

Wherever one goes, the other usually follows after a year or two, and examples of this mutual incentive to catch up are numerous. Samsung made its name with a long-distance periscope zoom camera, and Apple followed with its own cute little Tetraprism twist. Apple made a lighter, stronger phone frame last year out of premium titanium and, lo and behold, this year's Galaxy S24 Ultra comes with…titanium!

Apple is reportedly increasing the screen size of its iPhones this year and… well, you get the point, but don't expect the S25 Ultra to get any bigger, as Samsung's flagships are already brushing the benchmark. 7 inches.

Have flagship phones grown in size by a fifth of an inch every year?

Where does it stop?

If we only looked at a graph of constantly increasing screen diagonals, we would be misled about the actual growth in phone size. After all, going from the OG 3.5-inch iPhones to Apple's current 6.7-inch behemoth feels like a giant leap in overall dimensions.

Ditto for the progression of Samsung's Galaxy S range, which went from a simple 4-inch screen on the original S, to the 6.8 inches of the S24 Ultra, not to mention the giant 7.6-inch of the Z Fold 5. Those roughly 0.2 inches added to the flagship iPhone and Galaxy screens each year since their inception, however, has not translated into a corresponding increase in the size of the phone.

Yes, the difference in iPhone size since 2007 is significant, but not mind-blowing and certainly not a fifth of an inch of growth every year, and the same goes for the Galaxy S line. How come?

Glasses consumption reaches its limits

Choice or no choice

The only reason today's flagship phones are still quite manageable, despite the giant leap in screen sizes since the OG iPhone, is because manufacturers have managed to shave their bezels considerably. From the first hole-in-the-screen front cameras, or the iPhone notch, screens have enthusiastically encroached on the old frame area, leading to today's “all-screen” phones.

The iPhone mini is no more, but even the iPhone SE is expected to grow

This allowed us to take advantage of both large screens for browsing or watching TikTok videos, and relatively control the size of the phones. The Galaxy S line, however, already comes with minimal bezels all around. Even Apple is preparing to eliminate the The iPhone 16 has maximum bezels to accommodate larger screens without increasing the dimensions of the phone too much.

Long story short, Samsung's phones already have negligible bezels, and any diagonal screen bump would inevitably lead to a larger phone.

Would the Samsung Galaxy S25 put an end to small flagship phones for good?

The disappearance of the mini

The Galaxy S24 is already on our list of best small and compact phones. The potential growth in screen diagonal with the now proverbial 0.2 inch could very well knock the Galaxy S25 out of this ranking.

Recently we conducted a survey on what screen sizes people prefer and, somewhat surprisingly, the top answer wasn't in the category of today's giant flagships becoming rather difficult to handle .

On the contrary, the most popular phone screen diagonal was found to be between 6.1 and 6.4 inches. This is exactly where the Galaxy S25 will always find its place, but could we still list it in a roundup of the best compact phones of 2025? It remains to be seen, depending on the overall dimensions, that Samsung will manage to achieve.

One thing seems certain, however, the last bastions of small flagship phones are crumbling before our eyes, and we may soon witness not only the demise of the mini, but also the end of the small but powerful phones that many are still very fond of .