The smartphone world's getting excited for the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, and the rumored iPhone 17 Air that will similarly be a super-thin version of a flagship phone we know and love. But nobody — not even we tech journalists — can handle either of these phones yet.
Fortunately, Tecno, a Chinese phone maker, has come to MWC 2025 with its Spark Slim concept, a super-skinny phone you can already try out. Which, of course, I did as soon as the conference hall opened.
The headline spec of the Tecno Spark Slim is its 5.75mm (0.23 inches) thickness. For reference, the Galaxy S25 Edge is tipped to be about 6mm (0.24 inches) thick, and the iPhone 17 Air 5.5mm (0.22) thick.
With the curved screen and soft ceramic back panel, the phone basically melts into your hand like an open foldable phone, but without the huge palm-spanning area of those devices' inner screens.
Despite the slim design, Tecno's managed to fit a 5,200 mAh battery inside the phone, which can be charged at up to 45W. That's a larger capacity than you get in regular-sized phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra (5,000 mAh), and shows that despite the obvious focus on a slim design, Tecno didn't ignore the other needs a phone user has.
That continues with the other specs. The Spark Slim features a 6.78-inch AMOLED screen with a 3K resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate for smooth and detailed scrolling. It's rated as 4,500 nits at peak brightness, too.
On the back of the phone are two 50MP cameras, with a 13MP selfie camera and a punch-hole on the front. Decorative lights around the back cameras add even more personality to the Spark Slim.
But perhaps the wildest thing the Tecno representatives explained to me was that the 144-gram (5.07 ounces) weight of the phone is heavier than the original version of this concept.
The company had to add more weight to the Spark Slim in order to make it feel better to use, which is a mind-boggling piece of design work.
Sadly, I now have to tell you that the Spark Slim is not commercially available.
At least not yet. Tecno's primarily focused on developing phone markets such as Africa, and a phone like this would be way too expensive for regions like that. But the company apparently hopes that there's enough demand for the Spark Slim to make it worth releasing a production version.
We still don't know much about the Galaxy S25 Edge, other than it's a real device that's likely going to be launched in the next few months. And the iPhone 17 Air is still just the stuff of rumors, even if we hopefully see it this fall along with the other iPhone 17s.
But Tecno has more than proven that the slim flagship phone is already here, and that Samsung and Apple both have plenty of room to grow, if their slim phones' specs are as far behind Tecno's as the rumors suggest.
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