Samsung Galaxy S25 FE reviewed: it should be better

Not just a “fan edition”, the Galaxy S25 FE is supposed to be more wallet-friendly, but feels like a minor update to last year and less like the mid-range Galaxy S25 we had hoped for.

It might be difficult to believe, but it’s near the end of the year, and my what a year it has been. Phones are beginning to end their 2025 run, and manufacturers are getting ready for the 2026 season, as you might be, too.

Crazily, it’s been over six months since the Galaxy S25 range launched, a model that offered one of the year’s best phones in the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Since then, we’ve seen Samsung go from strength to strength, unleashing the first properly thin phone in the S25 Edge, and easily one of the year’s best gadgets, the super-thin foldable Z Fold 7.

There are lots of exciting things to talk about in the world of Samsung phones. So what’s next?

Well, as the company has done for the past year or two, it’s time to take a look at the more economical approach to its flagship phones, launching one final Galaxy S for the year 2025 in a variation designed to be a little more affordable. Is the Galaxy S25 FE a success?

Design

While we’re still not sure whether FE stands for “Fan Edition”, “Fiscal Edition”, or “Flagship Economical”, the idea remains the same as it has been since Samsung launched this concept: a mid-range variation on the flagship range released earlier in the year.

For those keeping score at home, that means the S25 FE is a less expensive variation on the Galaxy S25 range from 2025, which included the pen-equipped Galaxy S25 Ultra and the super-slim Galaxy S25 Edge.

The S25 FE is neither of those — you won’t get a pen, nor will you get a 5.8mm thickness — but you will get a fairly slim smartphone sporting a glass and aluminium body measuring 7.4mm, not far from the iPhone 16’s 7.8mm. The look is fairly premium, and it’s a nice enough handset that stands up on its edges.

It’s still a touch slippery, glass front and back and all, but it’s a nice feeling device overall.

Features

Inside, Samsung is using one of its own chips to power the phone, an Exynos 2400 paired with 8GB RAM and a choice of either 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB storage, depending on how much you want to buy. Google’s Android 16 arrives on the phone out of the box, as does Samsung’s One UI interface.

There are three cameras on the back, too, including a 50 megapixel F1.8 wide, a 12 megapixel F2.2 ultra-wide, and an 8 megapixel F2.4 3X telephoto, while the front sports a 12 megapixel selfie, a minor update on last year’s 10 megapixel camera.

You won’t find a 3.5mm headset jack on this phone, but you will find a Type C USB cable for charging, data, and if you need it, wired headphones. Meanwhile, wireless is covered using 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5, Near-Field Communication (NFC) for Google Pay and Samsung Pay, plus 4G and 5G, the ways to be mobile these days, particularly in Australia.

All of this sits behind a 6.7 inch Full HD+ (2340×1080) AMOLED 2X screen sporting a refresh rate of 120Hz (maximum), and protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus+.

The phone also sports IP68 water and dust resistance, a fingerprint scanner in the screen, a 4900mAh battery, and support for wireless charging.

In-use

Like other Android phones, particularly those made by Samsung, there isn’t a lot you need to know in using the Galaxy S25 FE.

It’s a phone that comes with Android 16 out of the box and Samsung’s One UI, and outside of Google’s own original flavour of Android, One UI is probably one of the nicest variations of that theme around.

That means using the phone is a breeze, and I’ll also get a smidge of AI, because it’s 2025 and every phone seemingly has AI. Whether you use it or not is a totally different topic, but some JDs there if you want to fiddle. You know, if you’re bored.

If you’re not bored, however, you’ll find the S25 FE is a phone, as well as being able to do nearly anything else you expect your handset to cover, logging in using a fingerprint scanner or facial security, and getting on with it all (as we are in this review).

Performance

That includes running apps and generally performing decently, thanks to a capable spot of processing.

Even though Samsung sports the “FE” moniker for this variation, the company is still looking for decent performance, albeit not exactly the same.

Instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon chips from the flagship models, you’ll be getting a variant Samsung’s Exynos 2400 instead… and things aren’t quite the same. In fact, aspects are just downright confusing.

In terms of actual performance benchmarks, this year’s processor feels slower than it should, achieving similar speeds to what Nothing has in its Phone (3), and around the same in some ways to the Pixel 10, but coming off lower than last year’s S24 FE.

Yes, you read that right: this year’s S25 FE shows up in our benchmarks as marginally being outperformed by last year’s S24 FE.

It gets a little confusing when comparing it to other Samsung models, too.

Keep in mind that the FE range is usually on par with the main Galaxy models released earlier in the year. They’re not the same, but can get close without paying quite as much.

Yes this year, the S25 FE isn’t on the same level as the Ultra powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, it’s also slower than the S24 Ultra from the year before. Fortunately, there’s a little more where it counts compared with earlier models, beating the Galaxy S23 on performance and everything before it, but it’s just not the leap we expected the hardware to be.

The S25 FE doesn’t have the edge that either the Galaxy S25 Edge or any other S25 model sported earlier, and that’s a shame. Last year’s S24 FE did have the Exynos 2400e variant, so the performance is more or less the same. It’s just not really much of an upgrade, if any at all.

It shouldn’t affect your day-to-day all that much, though; we found the system was snappy when running apps, with only a a few slow downs here and there, modest lag so to speak.

Armed with 8GB RAM, the S25 FE isn’t a major player in the world of performance, but you’ll get what you need out of it.

It’s a similar picture with 5G, offering plenty of speed, provided you’re within reach of a tower that’ll serve your mobile well.

Tested in Australia on the Telstra Wholesale Network by way of Mate, we found 5G speeds as high as 522Mbps before Mate’s bandwidth limiter kicked in and pushed us back down to 250Mbps.

Overall, that’s not a bad effort, and should lead to some speedy music and movie downloading in real life.

Camera

Or even possibly uploading some of the images, because there’s a three camera system capable of going ultra-wide, wide, and a little close.

While the technology here should be as capable as the other S25 models, you’re not getting the same camera. In fact, it’s pretty close to the S24 FE before it.

The 50 megapixel wide camera seems the same as the standard Galaxy S24, but we suspect the 12 megapixel ultra-wide is a little different, as is the 8 megapixel 3X telephoto (compared to 10 on the S25).

While all of these are just numbers, the practical results are interesting, albeit a little lacklustre at times.

For the most part, images out of the S25 FE are fine. Shots from the day are clear and bright, while low-light images are a little on the soft side with some obvious noise.

What you won’t find is a decent macro ability; we tried capturing a flower up close as an example, comparing it to the macro on the standard Pixel 9, and the S25 FE didn’t get anywhere near as sharp or as close an image.

Most people probably won’t find a problem with Samsung’s camera stack, but it could be a little better. It’s flexible and fairly versatile, but it just needs to be sharper and clearer overall.

Battery

The battery may not win you over, though, barely covering a day in our tests.

Using our homegrown Battery Bench app, the Galaxy S25 FE doesn’t even hit 20 hours of screen on video watching, losing it at the 19 hour mark, only an hour better than the Nothing Phone (3).

The real-world usage wasn’t much better, truth be told. We were able to hit a full day’s worth of phone use with the Galaxy S25 FE, but the result wasn’t amazing, particularly for a phone sporting a 4900mAh battery.

Technically, this result came about from four hours of screen time, which isn’t amazing.

Value

We’re also a little unsure about the price, which just doesn’t hit the notes that it should.

Officially, the $1099 starting price is smack dab the same as last year. That’s all normal.

The problem isn’t that the price of the S25 FE is necessarily bad. Rather, it’s that very little has changed between generations, and the regular Galaxy S25 with arguably better technology inside can actually be found for less.

A quick glance finds the standard S25 for under the $900 mark at places, making the FE model’s pricing more confusing. It just doesn’t make sense.

What needs work?

We’d probably whip that price under the thousand dollar mark to make it more compelling and definitely more competitive, but everything else just needs to be ironed out to be a little better. The problem is the S25 FE feels nice, but it also reads like last year’s phone with a new hat.

If you’re upgrading from something like an S21 FE, we can see the logic, but by the same token, you may as well make the jump to a better phone at a better price point.

What we love

One of the things that is different, though, is the size and weight.

While the S25 FE is a sizeable 6.7 inch phone, it manages to be a little slimmer than other models, and even sheds a good 20 grams or so. By comparison to last year’s 6.7 inch S24 FE, the new phone is 190 grams compared to the 213g of its predecessor.

It’s nice to see the size moving in a positive direction, even if the rest of the phone can feel a little like yesterday’s news.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

We loved the Galaxy S24 FE last year and what it offered, but this year’s proposition doesn’t feel quite as well-rounded.

The performance isn’t as improved as it should be. The camera hasn’t really delivered anything better. And that battery needs to be better to compete in the mid-range.

For a model that purportedly plays to fans, the Galaxy S25 FE is just not the phone it needs to be. What it needs to be is better overall. It should be better, and you can probably do better, too.