Samsung Galaxy S26 FE is proof that Samsung should kill its 'Fan Edition' phones — here's why

Earlier this week Samsung announced the Galaxy S26 FE, a cut-price flagship phone that sits somewhere between the $899 Galaxy S26 and the $549 Galaxy A57. The general idea being that you get more flagship features without necessarily having to cough up the full price of a premium device.

Unfortunately, the small amount of time I've spent with the Galaxy S26 FE suggests that Samsung has fumbled the release of the new phone. We shouldn't really be surprised, considering how lackluster the last few Fan Edition releases have been. We're at the point now where it's time for Samsung to scrap the whole line-up and let the A-series step up to the plate.

Too expensive to be cheap, too compromised to rival flagships

The Fan Edition series has always been about lowering the price but making cuts elsewhere. You can't have the same specs as a Galaxy S26 for a lower price, because that's just not economical. That typically manifests itself in worse cameras, cheaper materials and slightly worse performance.

In the case of the Galaxy S26 FE, those compromises come in three key areas: the screen, the camera and the performance. This is not a phone that has the latest flagship Snapdragon chips, nor does it have the latest Exynos 2600 chip that powers international variants of the S26. Instead it has the Exynos 2500, which was released last year, alongside 8GB of RAM rather than the now-standard 12GB.

Admittedly, on paper, the lower specs on the S26 FE don't seem too bad or different from that of the standard S26. It's little things that help drop the price tag, such as weaker display glass, lower resolution telephoto lenses, and the loss of premium materials like the shiny matte glass back panels. But these things all add up, and while that keeps the price down, it also makes the S26 FE a much less appealing purchase.

The starting price of $699, which gets you 128GB of storage, may make this the cheapest Galaxy S26 you can buy, but it's still not particularly cheap as far as smartphones go. Sure, it's almost half the price of something like the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but it doesn't directly fall into the cheaper phone categories like the S57 or A37.

Easily the worst part of all this is the fact that Samsung has (at the time of writing) discounted the standard Galaxy S26 by $100. This means the cheapest model, with 256GB of storage, can be purchased for $799. Meanwhile the 256GB variant of the Galaxy S26 FE is also $799, which means you're getting a worse phone for the same amount of money.

Sure there is a cheaper storage option that costs $100 less, but is it really worth losing out on everything the S26 has to offer to save that much? In most cases, I'd argue no.

The Galaxy A series keeps getting better

As much as the Galaxy S26 FE isn't a huge amount worse than the Galaxy S26, it also doesn't seem to be that much better than the Galaxy A57. In fact Samsung's mid-range phone is one of the best cheap phones you can buy because, despite the sacrifices you inevitably have to make, it's an exceptionally good phone for its price tag.

It's a lot easier to see where the Galaxy A57 made the cuts in contrast to the S26 FE. The main sticking point for me is the terrible macro camera, which always feels like an absolute waste of hardware compared to a dedicated macro camera mode other smartphones utilize. It also looks a lot cheaper, and the performance hardware is more noticeably inferior.

It doesn't matter if you don't know anything about phone chips, the fact that the A57 has an Exynos 1680 means it might as well have a giant neon sign declaring that it won't outperform the S26 FE's Exynos 2500.

That being said, we've been seeing pretty big gains in the mid-range phone market over the past several years. They're starting to feel a lot more premium, and they're coming with AI and software features that you previously wouldn't see outside ultra-premium models. The yearly upgrades aren't exactly stellar, but that seems to be a problem all phones are facing right now — no matter the price point.

A Galaxy A-series phone is never going to be as good as a flagship S-series, but it still offers a lot of the things you might need from a phone, including solid cameras, battery life and so on. There's even some solid AI features thrown in, if you're the kind of person who really likes using Galaxy AI and Bixby.

Admittedly, the Fan Edition phones have all done this too, but they also cost more and don't offer as much of a discount compared to other Galaxy S-series phones.

Bottom line: Galaxy FE phones lack purpose

Few phone companies take the approach Samsung does when it comes to cheaper-than-flagship phones. In fact, Samsung is the only one I can think of that offers two distinct devices that are meant to sit below the entry level premium model. The likes of Google, Apple, Nothing and others typically only have the one.

With two devices that sit in such close proximity, from both a price and hardware perspective, differentiating them becomes a much harder task. We end up in a situation where the Galaxy S26 FE feels awkwardly placed in a bizarre, paradoxical middle ground.

In the past Samsung was a lot more inconsistent about releasing the A50-series phones in the U.S., which arguably gave the Fan Edition release a lot more breathing room. There's clearly demand for a cheaper Galaxy phone, and the lack of competition from itself meant Samsung could continue to push the more premium option.

These days, it feels like these phones are released out of obligation, rather than a pressing need to actually build them. And it's about time Samsung threw in the towel, and gave the Fan Edition line-up a trip to the farm upstate.

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