Samsung Galaxy S26 FE review

We’re used to seeing a new Fan Edition Galaxy S smartphone every year, but the Galaxy S26 FE is launching under different circumstances from its predecessors.

It’s part of a lineup that’s supposed to offer features from the latest Galaxy S flagships at a cheaper price, but it arrives at a time when every smartphone is becoming more expensive because of the ongoing AI boom.

The Galaxy S26 FE is $100 costlier than the Galaxy S25 FE but doesn’t offer any substantial upgrades. It’s got a newer Exynos chip, newer versions of Android and One UI out of the box, and new Galaxy AI features (which will come to the Galaxy S25 FE with the One UI 9 update).

Then again, yearly upgrades are no longer in vogue, and people looking at the S26 FE will likely be using an older and/or cheaper Galaxy device or thinking of switching to Samsung from another brand.

The Galaxy S26 FE has the premium design we have come to expect from Samsung’s high-end phones. With Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the front and back and an aluminum frame, the phone feels reassuringly solid in the hand.

At 7.4mm thick, the S26 FE is closer to the S26 and S26+ than the S26 Ultra. It’s slightly heavier than the S26+ at 193g, but there’s nothing to complain about here. It has just the right amount of heft while remaining impressively thin.

Like the other S26 models, the S26 FE does away with the individual camera rings at the back. All the camera lenses are placed inside a single island, but unlike those on the other models, the S26 FE’s lenses sit almost flush with the island.

Unfortunately, that does little to reduce how much the phone wobbles when placed on a flat surface. To eliminate the wobble, Samsung would need to use a horizontally centered camera island or a camera plateau similar to the one on the iPhone 17.

Samsung is reportedly planning to adopt the latter for the Galaxy S27 series, but it may only use it for the Ultra and Pro models. That means the Galaxy S27 FE may not get it either.

The glossy finish on the back is also disappointing. It doesn’t just make fingerprints more noticeable — it also makes the Pistachio variant I used for this review look less premium than it could.

Also unchanged from previous FE models is the IP rating. The Galaxy S26 FE is fully dust-resistant and rated for water resistance at a depth of up to 1.5m for 30 minutes. It’s the same level of dust and water resistance we have seen on every Galaxy S phone since 2016.

The Galaxy S26 FE’s 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X HDR10+ equipped display is carried over from the S25 FE and S24 FE. It’s got a 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 1,900 nits, which is 700 nits lower than the other S26 models.

Is it a bad display? No. But would it have been nice to see a panel of a similar calibre to those on the non-FE Galaxy S26 models? Absolutely.

Still, what you get is pretty good. The display offers strong contrast and deep blacks, brightness levels that are more than adequate even under harsh sunlight, and smooth animations and scrolling thanks to the high refresh rate.

The one thing that might bother some people is the bottom bezel, which is still thicker than the top and side bezels. It’s unfortunate that we’re still talking about non-uniform bezels in 2026, but Samsung clearly thinks they’re fine unless you’re buying one of its more expensive flagship models.

The Galaxy S26 FE has a stereo speaker setup, with one dedicated speaker and the earpiece doubling as the second. Its performance falls somewhere between the non-FE Galaxy S26 models and Samsung’s flagship foldables.

The S26 FE’s speakers aren’t as punchy or bass-heavy as those on the S26 Ultra, but they don’t sound as lacking in those areas as the speakers on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, whose thin design negatively affects audio quality.

They also aren’t as loud as the S26 Ultra’s speakers, but they’re more than sufficient for watching the occasional video in a small or medium-sized room. I think most people will be satisfied with the audio quality the Galaxy S26 FE’s speakers deliver.

The S26 FE has a familiar camera setup: 50MP main, 12MP ultrawide, and 8MP 3x telephoto cameras at the back, along with a 12MP front camera.

Only the main and front cameras feel like they truly belong on a high-end phone. The main camera takes photos with excellent detail, wide dynamic range, and natural colors in daylight.

Indoor photos taken in good lighting can be slightly softer, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary for a phone camera.

Low-light performance is okay, at least when automatic Night mode kicks in. Some noise remains, and depending on the subject, the sharpening can be a little aggressive.

The ultrawide camera is fine in daylight but leaves something to be desired indoors and in low light. Its low-light shots can also have a different color temperature from those taken with the main camera.

Like previous FE models, the S26 FE punches above its weight when it comes to zoom photography, or at least comes close to the zoom performance of Samsung’s $2,000 Galaxy Z Fold smartphones.

In daylight, 3x photos have a decent amount of detail, and the results remain usable at up to 10x zoom. Anything beyond that is a watercolor-like mess, but that’s to be expected from the meager 8MP and 10MP sensors Samsung uses for the 3x telephoto cameras on its phones.

Indoors, you really should stick to 3x zoom, as anything beyond that tends to border on unusable. The same goes for low-light conditions.

The selfie camera is quite solid. Selfies have good detail and colors both in daylight and in well-lit interiors. Skin tone accuracy can be hit or miss, but it hits the mark more often than not.

The Galaxy S26 FE records good videos with its main camera, offering plenty of detail and good dynamic range. The ultrawide camera captures a decent amount of detail as well.

The same applies to the telephoto camera, but its footage tends to look washed out. This becomes particularly noticeable when switching between the telephoto and the other cameras while recording.

Speaking of switching cameras while recording, Samsung continues to restrict that ability at 4K resolution to 30 fps. That’s because 4K 60 fps video is supported only on the main and selfie cameras. If you want access to all three rear cameras and a 60 fps frame rate, you have to stick to Full HD.

Samsung’s Exynos 2500 chip debuted inside the Galaxy Z Flip 7 last year and has now found its way into the Galaxy S26 FE worldwide.

This is in keeping with Samsung’s recent practice of using the Exynos chip from the previous generation of Galaxy S flagships in its latest Fan Edition phone.

Most of the time, the S26 FE feels every bit as fast and smooth as the non-FE models. The Exynos 2500 isn’t the latest chip, but it’s still powerful enough to handle anything you can throw at it, whether it’s using AI features or playing the latest games.

However, there are some hiccups here and there that are less common on the Galaxy S26 and S26 Ultra. For example, there can be a bit of stutter when exiting the camera app. This can happen on any phone, no matter how powerful, but it’s a little too frequent on the S26 FE.

The phone also occasionally took longer than expected to finish processing photos. None of these issues are deal-breakers, though.

The S26 FE handles gaming very well. Whether it’s something demanding like Call of Duty: Mobile or one of the gazillion tower defense games out there, the Exynos 2500 has what it takes to deliver a solid experience.

The phone does get pretty warm rather quickly when you’re doing something demanding, but that’s to be expected from the combination of thin designs and powerful chips these days. It doesn’t get so hot that you have to stop using it, though, and that’s probably because of a vapor chamber cooling system inside.

Oh, before we move on to the next section, it’s important to note the USB downgrade from the S25 FE: the S26 FE has a USB-C port limited to USB 2.0 speeds instead of the USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds supported by its predecessor.

I’m not sure that is a deal-breaker for most people, but it’s worth keeping in mind if you regularly transfer large files over a cable.

Having the latest versions of Android and One UI out of the box is one of the few substantial upgrades the Galaxy S26 FE brings to the table.

As with previous FE phones, you get almost the same set of features and functionality as the other S26 models in the lineup, in addition to the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Fold 8 Ultra.

I say almost because, for some reason, one of One UI 9’s new Galaxy AI features — Call Brief — isn’t available on the S26 FE. Call Brief displays events and other contextual information on the call screen when it finds something relevant to the person you are calling.

Call Brief is available on the Flip 7 despite that phone using the same Exynos chip, so I can only assume Samsung deliberately left the feature out of the S26 FE.

Every other Galaxy AI feature seems to be available. That includes My FanCam, which lets you reframe an existing video around one person and create a new clip focused on them while leaving everyone else outside the frame.

(For a closer look at My FanCam and some of One UI 9’s other highlights, check out our list of the first things you should try on the Galaxy S26 FE.)

Apart from Call Brief, the only feature missing compared to the other S26 models is support for DeX over a USB-C-to-HDMI cable, owing to the USB 2.0 interface.

Wireless DeX is supported, however. You also get all the usual features Samsung fans have come to know and love over the years, along with everything else introduced in One UI 9.

Samsung is promising seven years of OS and security updates as well, like it has for every Galaxy S phone launched since 2024. Hopefully, one of those updates will bring Call Brief to the S26 FE. If the feature is available on the Galaxy Z Flip 7, it should be available here as well.

Samsung hasn’t upped the battery capacity on the S26 FE, so you still get a 4,900 mAh cell of the traditional lithium-ion variety.

That means efficiency improvements of the newer Exynos chip (built on a 3nm process instead of the previous generation’s 4nm) and software optimization are left to deliver any battery life gains.

In my experience, the S26 FE can comfortably last a full day of mixed use over Wi-Fi and mobile data. Even on a day when I played a console-quality action game (Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown) for an hour and watched YouTube for nearly 50 minutes, the phone made it through close to 24 hours with around 5.5 hours of screen-on time.

Remove gaming from the equation, and the S26 FE can stay alive until the next morning. But that’s about it. Don’t expect two days of use except with extremely light use or battery life as solid as what you get on the S26+ or S26 Ultra.

You can, however, expect excellent charging speeds with a 45W charger. Half an hour of charging takes the battery to between 65% and 70%, while a full charge requires just under 70 minutes.

The S26 FE supports 15W wireless charging, which is too slow in this day and age. It also supports reverse wireless charging, but it won’t work with any Galaxy smartwatch launched since 2024.

The Galaxy S26 FE is a good phone. But because of its higher price, it’s difficult to recommend wholeheartedly.

It has a premium design, a good AMOLED display, fast performance, capable main and selfie cameras, all-day battery life, fast charging, the latest software, and seven years of updates. It gets the fundamentals right.

The problem is that most of this was also true of the Galaxy S25 FE, and the S26 FE’s $100 price increase isn’t backed by enough substantial upgrades.

Unfortunately, higher prices are quickly becoming the new norm across the smartphone industry, even when the upgrades don’t get any bigger.

If you’re okay with that new reality and are upgrading from an older or cheaper Galaxy device — or switching to Samsung from another brand — you can go for the Galaxy S26 FE. It’s a well-rounded phone that should serve you well for several years.

But if getting the best value is your priority, the Galaxy S25 FE remains an excellent alternative when available at a meaningful discount. It delivers a very similar overall experience and will receive One UI 9 with all the same features as the S26 FE.

The S26 FE’s faster chip, newer software out of the box, and additional year of support are valid reasons to pay extra. But if those advantages don’t matter much to you, there isn’t much reason to spend considerably more.