Galaxy S26 FE Review: A Good Phone Asking $50 Too Much

The Fan Edition used to be the easy Samsung recommendation. You got most of a Galaxy S flagship, including a telephoto camera and long software support, for a few hundred dollars less. The Galaxy S26 FE, on sale in the U.S. since September 18, still delivers most of that. What it no longer delivers is an obvious bargain.

At $699.99 for 128GB and $799.99 for 256GB, it costs $50 more than the Galaxy S25 FE did at launch. After going through the major reviews and the spec sheet line by line, our verdict is simple: this is a solid phone with one real upgrade, and it’s priced as if it had three.

What actually changed

The headline is the chip. The S26 FE moves from the 4nm Exynos 2400 to the 3nm Exynos 2500, and that matters. GSMArena calls it “substantially faster” than its predecessor and says it lands “surprisingly close to last-generation flagship performance.” Battery life benefits too, even though the cell is still 4,900mAh.

Almost everything else is carried over.

Where it’s good

The display is the kind of thing Samsung rarely gets wrong: a 6.7-inch AMOLED panel at 120Hz with up to 1,900 nits of peak brightness. It looks like a phone that costs more than it does.

Battery life is dependable rather than remarkable. SamMobile got through full days of mixed use and saw about 5.5 hours of screen-on time under heavy use, and the 45W charger took the phone to 65 to 70% in half an hour. You’ll charge it nightly, but you won’t be hunting for an outlet at 4 p.m.

The main camera is strong in daylight, with good detail and dynamic range, and you still get a real 3x telephoto at this price. Samsung also backs the phone with seven years of OS updates, which means an S26 FE bought this month is supported well into the next decade.

Where it stumbles

The telephoto hardware is aging. Engadget found it produced blurry or overexposed shots, and SamMobile noticed the camera app stutter and slower photo processing more often than on the S26 or S26 Ultra.

There are quiet downgrades, too. GSMArena points out that the USB-C port is now USB 2.0, which kills wired DeX and wired display output, and that the speakers aren’t as loud. SamMobile notes the phone misses Samsung’s Call Brief feature. RAM stays at 8GB while the price goes up, which is a sign of the industry-wide memory squeeze rather than a Samsung whim, but buyers pay for it either way.

Engadget gave the phone a 6.7 out of 10, concluding: “It’s simply not doing enough.” SamMobile was kinder, but landed in the same place: “The Galaxy S26 FE is a good phone. But because of its higher price, it’s difficult to recommend wholeheartedly.”

Verdict: who should buy it

Buy it if you’re coming from a Galaxy that’s three or more years old, or switching from another brand, and you want seven years of updates, a telephoto lens and a big bright screen without paying flagship money.

Skip it if you own an S24 FE or S25 FE. The faster chip is not worth an upgrade on its own.

Consider instead a discounted Galaxy S25 FE, which GSMArena argues is the smarter purchase at a lower price, or the standard Galaxy S26 when it’s on sale. Engadget spotted the base S26 at $799.99 with 256GB of storage, 12GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. At that price, it’s the same money as a 256GB S26 FE and a clearly better phone.

The S26 FE isn’t a bad buy. It’s just no longer the no-brainer the FE name promises. Wait for the first real discount, and it becomes one again.

Sources: Engadget, GSMArena, SamMobile. Photo by Amanz on Unsplash.