Samsung Galaxy S26 FE Review: Same as Before, but for More Money | WIRED

Overview

Samsung’s Fan Edition (FE) range is designed to give you a near-flagship experience at a discounted price. Last year’s Galaxy S25 FE won plaudits as one of the best cheap phones, shaving off the superfluous and coming in at

650. Samsung upgraded the processor in the Galaxy S26 FE, but little else has changed, and the price has climbed to

700.

With a polished look, a lovely big display, a versatile triple-camera system, and decent battery life, the Samsung Galaxy S26 FE is a perfectly good phone in isolation. The trouble is, it doesn’t look as tempting when you factor in the price and competition. And Samsung has quietly downgraded the USB port.

Details

You could easily mistake the S26 FE for one of Samsung’s flagship phones. It has the same glass back with the triple-lens camera island at the top left, the same aluminum frame, and the same flat all-screen frontage broken only by the punch-hole selfie camera. The colors are slightly different. I got a tasteful pale green Pistachio review unit, but it also comes in dark gray Graphite and indigo Blueberry.

It’s a well-built device with an IP68 rating that can survive a dunk in fresh water. I find the camera island a little annoying because it stops the phone from lying flat. The under-screen fingerprint sensor is also too low for me, but I suspect that’s muscle memory from another phone, and it seems responsive when I manage to hit the right spot.

Although unchanged this year, the 6.7-inch OLED screen is very good and supports a smooth 120-Hz refresh rate. It’s a shame this isn’t an LTPO display, because that would have let the refresh rate automatically adjust from 1 to 120 and save battery life. The peak brightness of 1,900 nits is also much lower than the regular Galaxy S26 (3,000 nits), but I found the display legible outdoors. You’ll likely only feel the difference in direct sunlight and maybe with bright details in HDR movies.

The main improvement over the S25 FE is Samsung’s Exynos 2500 processor, which brings slightly better performance and power efficiency than the Exynos 2400 in the S25 FE, but falls well short of the Exynos 2600 (used in the rest of the S26 range outside the US). For most folks, this is a perfectly fine performer. I had no issues with everyday use, casual gaming, browsing, shooting photos and video, and messaging. The only time I ran into problems was playing Wuthering Waves, which dropped frames, glitched, and then crashed, but it’s a very demanding game.

The 128 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM in the base model S26 FE feel stingy to me, but I take a lot of photos and play a lot of games (Wuthering Waves is 40 GB alone). I’d like to see 256 GB and 12 GB as standard. Unfortunately, the 256 GB model costs an extra $100, and it still has only 8 GB of RAM.

While the 4,900-m Ah battery is the same as the S25 FE, you will likely squeeze a bit more life from it because of the processor upgrade. It got me through most days with around 20 percent remaining by bedtime and could maybe stretch to two days with light use, but I’d plan on charging nightly. An hour of Monument Valley 2 claimed 10 percent, but just 20 minutes of Wuthering Waves drained 7 percent. When it’s time to recharge, there’s 45-watt wired charging or 15-watt wireless charging. Sadly, though it is Qi 2-compatible, there are no magnets for easy docking.

One perplexing downgrade is the USB-C port, which dropped to USB 2.0 from the S25 FE's USB 3.2 (Gen 1). That means file transfers max out at 480 Mbps, and it doesn’t support wired De X (wireless De X is still available). More importantly, it lacks Display Port Alt Mode, which means you can’t use it with virtual display smart glasses (I tested with the Viture Beast) or plug it into a TV.

Samsung’s One UI 9 feels clean, and it’s very customizable. Naturally, it’s infused with Samsung AI, but I appreciated features like Call Screening, and I actually quite like the Now Brief, which lets you create custom cards that pull relevant info on the weather, health progress, and videos you might be interested in, combined with calendar events—creating a personalized feed that shifts throughout the day.

Sadly, Samsung has preinstalled a bunch of bloatware. Its own suite of apps, I understand, but Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Spotify, Netflix, and Perplexity? I’m sick of this pernicious practice. The argument that these third-party app deals subsidize a low price falls apart when Samsung charges $700 for this phone. Let me decide what apps I want.

The camera system in the S26 FE is exactly the same as last year’s. It has a good 50-megapixel main lens, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and an 8-megapixel telephoto. On the front, there's a 12-megapixel selfie camera. It’s about what I’d expect for a midrange phone.

Snapping shots in daylight with the main camera resulted in lovely photos I’d be happy to share. There’s plenty of detail, decent sharpness, pleasing dynamic range, and vibrant but not over-the-top colors. Samsung’s automatic Night Mode helps with low-light performance, as long as you hold still. The 2X zoom crops from the main camera and mostly does a good job.

If you want to get closer, the telephoto supports 3X optical zoom. It’s not as sharp as the main camera, but it’s nice to have for capturing distant subjects. You can zoom in further digitally, up to 30X, but I recommend you don’t, as the results are very muddy. The ultrawide is okay if you need to cram more in, and does a good job of color matching, but expect more noise, and it lacks autofocus. The selfie camera is passable but also can’t autofocus.

Video quality is good with the main camera (4K at 60 fps or 8K at 30 fps), and it has solid stabilization to reduce shakiness, including horizontal lock to keep a fixed orientation even if you rotate the phone (though you must turn it on before you start recording). Samsung includes handy editing tools to remove unwanted audio, and the new My Fan Cam feature helps you automatically frame subjects and crop to focus on them. It’s worth playing around with and seems to work with any videos you have, not just the ones you shot with the phone.

700 for the 128 GB model, the S26 FE is a tough sell. I’ve seen the regular S26 discounted to this price. Accept a slightly smaller screen, and you get better everything (a faster processor, more RAM and storage, and a better telephoto camera). If you’re wedded to the big screen, wait for a sale, and you can get the S26+ for around

100 more. You could also save

100 or more on last year’s S25 FE and not lose very much. The Samsung Galaxy A37, Google Pixel 10a, Motorola Moto G Stylus, or Nothing Phone 4(a) Pro are all at least

200 cheaper.

The 256 GB model, at

800, seems like an even worse deal. The regular S26, which starts with 256 GB, is cheaper than this. The Pixel 11 is a far more interesting phone, and only

100 more. Ultimately, the Samsung Galaxy S26 FE isn’t a bad phone. I’m just struggling to find a reason you should buy it at this price. That said, Samsung likes to run promotions, and you can expect discounts in time, so if you like the look of it, keep an eye out for a deal.

Key Takeaways

Samsung’s Fan Edition (FE) range is designed to give you a near-flagship experience at a discounted price
With a polished look, a lovely big display, a versatile triple-camera system, and decent battery life, the Samsung Galaxy S26 FE is a perfectly good phone in isolation
You could easily mistake the S26 FE for one of Samsung’s flagship phones
It’s a well-built device with an IP68 rating that can survive a dunk in fresh water
Although unchanged this year, the 6