Samsung Galaxy S26 FE vs Galaxy S25 FE: What’s new?

Price and Availability

The Samsung Galaxy S26 FE is the cheapest of Samsung’s 2026 S-series, with a starting price of £699 for the 128GB variant which rises to £799 for 256GB.

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The year-old Galaxy S25 FE has a slightly cheaper starting price of £649 for the 128GB iteration. We have seen the Galaxy S25 FE dip in price over the past year however, and even saw the handset drop to under £450 earlier this month on Amazon.

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Same camera hardware, but Galaxy S26 FE promises a few upgrades

Judging by the hardware alone, there’s not really much to say about the Galaxy S26 FE’s cameras that hasn’t already been said about the Galaxy S25 FE, as both are equipped with the same 50MP main, 12MP ultrawide and an 8MP 3x telephoto zoom lens. 

That’s not to say the line-up isn’t solid. In fact, we concluded that the Galaxy S25 FE performed well across most lighting conditions and we were rarely left disappointed with its ability. While the 8MP telephoto undoubtedly has its limitations, it’s a welcome addition for getting a touch closer to a subject, though it obviously can’t compete with many of the best camera phones. 

With this in mind, it’s fair to say that we expect the Galaxy S26 FE to offer a similar level of performance to the Galaxy S25 FE.

Having said that, Samsung does promise the Galaxy S26 FE sees a few new tricks. Like the rest of the S26 series, the Galaxy S26 FE supports Horizontal Lock with the Super Steady feature that allows videos to stay smooth, even with rotations up to 360°. There’s also Pro Visual Engine improvements, such as sharper and less graining nightography videos and enhanced noise reduction for video content too.

Galaxy S26 FE promises a longer battery life – but not by much

Both handsets are equipped with a 4900mAh cell, supports 45W wired and 15W wireless charging. However, Samsung has managed to eke out an additional hour’s worth of life with the Galaxy S26 FE, with a promise of up to 29 hours of video playback compared to up to 28. 

But what does that mean for real-world users? Essentially, we found that the S25 FE could easily support us through a busy day, and still had around 20% of juice left in the tank. So, although it’s definitely not a two-day device, it should alleviate any battery anxiety you might have. 

Galaxy S26 FE is the first S-series to see Android 17 

The Galaxy S26 FE benefits from being the first S-series handset to see Android 17, and will come with the OS and Samsung’s One UI 9 installed. That means the Galaxy S26 FE will be among the first to benefit from Samsung’s new Galaxy AI tools including a more personalised Now Brief, Now Nudge which understands on-screen context and provides suggestions and Circle to Search with multi-object recognition too.

At the time of writing, these new features are reserved for the Z Flip and Z Fold 8 series.

Both will see seven years of updates

Samsung is undeniably generous with its software support, and promises up to seven years of updates for most of its handsets. That means the Galaxy S26 FE will benefit from Android OS and security upgrades up to Android 24 – in 2033. 

Samsung also gave the same promise to the Galaxy S25 FE when it launched last year. 

Early Verdict

There aren’t a lot of differences between the Galaxy S26 FE and the Galaxy S25 FE, which makes upgrading from the older phone a much harder recommendation. Not only that, but we’d also argue that there’s probably little reason to splurge on the newer Galaxy S26 FE when the Galaxy S25 FE can be found for a bargain price. 

We’ll update this versus once we review the Galaxy S26 FE.