When I first opened the S25 FE, I thought Samsung had played a cruel joke on me. The phone looks exactly like its predecessor and has the same brushed aluminum chassis that has been the company’s favorite for years. I had to take the S24 FE out of the device box to compare the two phones before I was sure they were actually different devices.
The physical differences are minimal. Samsung has optimized the dimensions of the new phone, making it slightly shorter, wider and thinner. Specifically, the S25 FE measures 6.35 x 3.02 x 0.29 inches, while its predecessor measures 6.38 x 3.04 x 0.31 inches. The new phone is also protected by Samsung’s “Enhanced Armor” aluminum chassis.
Most noticeably, the S25 FE is lighter than last year’s model, weighing 6.7 grams (down from 7.51 grams). This despite the fact that the new device has a battery with a capacity of over 4,900 mAh. Overall, these changes don’t make the S25 FE any easier to hold if you have small hands (ask my girlfriend), but it does feel more balanced than its predecessor. One problem with the size of the S25 FE is the placement of the fingerprint sensor on the screen. This is at the bottom of the screen. I found it difficult to unlock the phone with my thumb and I have big hands.
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Another slight difference is the finish on the back of the phone. This time, Samsung has opted for a matte finish instead of the glossy finish used on the S24 FE. This is a welcome change as it means the new model is less susceptible to smudges and fingerprints. I wish Samsung had decided to offer the S25 FE in nicer colors. Once launched, it will be available in four color variants: White, Ice Blue, Carbon Black and Navy Blue (pictured). So if you don’t like blue, sorry.
Apart from some minor design changes, Samsung has chosen the same screen as last year. The S25 FE features a 6.7-inch single-panel AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and 1080p resolution. The S24 FE’s vibrant display was one of the best features of last year’s model, and the same goes for the S25 FE. Thanks to the maximum brightness of 1900 nits, the screen is easy to read even in direct sunlight. It’s also dynamic and with HDR10 support, it’s ideal for watching videos on YouTube, Netflix and elsewhere.
Cameras
Samsung has only optimized the camera hardware in the Galaxy S25 FE. Just like last year’s model, the new phone has a 50-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and an f/1.8 aperture lens. Again, it has an 8MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and a 12MP ultra-wide angle lens that offers a 123-degree field of view.
The only addition is a 12 megapixel front camera with higher resolution and a faster lens with f/2.2 aperture. For selfies, the S24 FE makes do with a 10 MP sensor and an f/2.4 lens. If the new front camera had phase detection autofocus (PDAF), it would be the same one found on the Galaxy S25. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and that’s a shame because PDAF greatly increases the chances of your photos looking sharp and crisp.
It’s also a shame that Samsung has decided not to update the FE’s telephoto lens. Before the Nothing 3a Pro, this was one of the features that set the S24 FE apart in its price range. But in 2025, the telephoto lens on the S25 FE looks dated. It doesn’t offer the 5x optical zoom of the Pixel 10, nor the 50MP resolution or periscope zoom of the 3a Pro. As for the former, the FE’s telephoto lens seemed limited. With a resolution of only 8 megapixels, it was useless to take a photo with more than 5x zoom; It would just be a blurry mess.
As for the other FE cameras, they are decent, if not exciting. The 50 megapixel camera is the best of them all and manages to capture beautiful and detailed images even in low light. The ultra-wide, on the other hand, is largely forgotten. It works pretty well when shooting large scenes, but lacks dynamic range and detail. The selfie camera is a significant improvement over last year’s model, offering pleasing images on par with what you’d expect from the S25’s front-facing camera.
Otherwise, taking pictures with the S25 FE is like using a flagship phone from a few years ago. The only thing that keeps this from completely disappearing into the past is the integration of Samsung’s generative photo editing software, which helps remove distracting objects from photos. Of the AI photography apps I tested, Samsung’s is among the best at cropping objects without blurring the background. You can also use generative editing to add elements to a photo, but as expected, it doesn’t work as well as removing them.
Performance and battery life
On paper, the S25 FE should offer better performance than its predecessor, as Samsung has decided to equip the phone with the Exynos 2400 chipset instead of the stripped-down Exynos 2400e used in last year’s model. In short, they are both at eye level. In the Geekbench CPU test, the Exynos 2400 achieved a single-core score of 2144 and a multi-core score of 7059. That’s not much better than the 2140 and 6690 I included in the S24 FE last fall.
Still, it’s a more impressive result than the Pixel 9a and Nothing 3a Pro achieved when my colleague Sam Rutherford and I put their Tensor G4 and Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chips on Geekbench earlier this year. In comparison, the former delivered a modest 1,665 points in single-core performance and 4,294 points in multi-core performance. The latter achieved even less impressive scores: 1,115 and 3,082 respectively.
In real-world use, the Exynos 2400 feels fast. Scrolling is quick and smooth, as is opening apps and switching between apps. Gaming performance is also impressive, as the chip can handle 60 fps modes in graphically demanding games like… immortal devil AND League of Legends: Wild Rift without losing images.
Last year, Samsung announced that it had redesigned the S24 FE’s vapor chamber to be larger and improve cooling. On the S25 FE, this part is even 10% larger. However, it was hard for me to tell if the new vapor chamber made any difference to the phone’s thermal performance. The S25 FE and S24 FE warmed up after about 15-20 minutes of gaming. The new phone never got too hot to hold, but it’s also not significantly cooler than the S24 FE, which runs the same game.
As mentioned above, the S25 FE has a larger 4900mAh battery. This is approximately 4% more capacity than the S24 FE. The difference in battery life is therefore minimal. I’m sure there are scenarios where the S25 FE will last longer than its predecessor, but from my tests, both phones proved to be equal in terms of longevity. With three to four hours of active screen time, I was able to get a full day out of the S25 FE’s battery, while still having enough charge to power the phone overnight before charging it in the morning. This is similar to the experience I had last year.
Speaking of charging, the S24 FE was incredibly slow with a wired limit of 25 watts. When I started this review I expected the S25 FE to perform better and I had good reason to be hopeful. Samsung says the new phone can be charged at 45 watts. But in my tests, the S25 FE was only slightly faster than its predecessor. Plugged into a 130-watt Razer GaN charger, it took about an hour and 14 minutes to fully charge the phone with 10% battery life. When I repeated the same test with a 25-watt charger, it took just over an hour and a half to charge the S25 FE.
If battery life matters to you, the Nothing 3a Pro and Pixel 9a are definitely the best options. Both are equipped with larger batteries (5,000 and 5,100 mAh respectively), with the former also offering 50 watts of charging power.
software
The S25 FE ships with Android 16 and Samsung’s One UI 8. Samsung has promised to support the phone with at least seven generations of platform updates, so it should stay up to date with Google’s annual release schedule until at least Android 23 in 2032. This specifically means that the S25 FE could get a newer version of Android, the S2 Ed55ge, the S2 Ultra and the S2 Ultra with Android. 15.
With One UI 8, the S25 FE has access to the latest AI features from Samsung and Google. Some of these tools are useful; others replicate features that have been around for a long time on Android. Google Search Circle, for example, is amazing. It’s easier to visually search for something on your phone screen. On the other hand, you could do without Samsung’s Now Brief, as it offers more or less the same tools found on Android’s Discover page (a standard feature on all Android phones).
Each S25 FE also includes six months of free access to Google AI Pro. The service typically costs $20 per month and gives you access to some of the company’s top models, including the Gemini 2.5 Pro, through the Gemini app. In Flow, Google’s AI video app, you also have limited access to Veo 3.1, Google’s latest video generation system. Other benefits include 2 TB of cloud storage and higher performance limits when using NotebookLM.
Summary
Since the changes are just a scam, I cannot recommend anyone to buy the S25 FE at full price. There’s enough to justify spending $650 on a phone that’s barely an improvement over its predecessor. If you’re a Samsung fan, the S25 FE is often discounted, but why reward the company for a lazy effort? Plus, after a $200 Prime Day discount, the S25 is just $10 more expensive than the FE earlier this month.
Over the past few years, Google and Nothing have proven that mid-range phones don’t have to be boring and repetitive. I think it’s time for Samsung to rethink its FE strategy. If these phones offer something else (for example, favorite features like a headphone jack), there may be compelling reasons to recommend them. But as it stands now, there’s simply no reason to buy a new FE phone when the company’s flagships are heavily discounted just months after launch.