Samsung Galaxy S25 FE Review: Hands-on with the 2025 Fan Edition

Introduction

Another year, another Samsung Galaxy Fan Edition – this time in the form of the Galaxy S25 FE. 

The Fan Edition branding has been an excellent way for Samsung to offer a flagship-esque experience without the associated price tag – and with the S25 FE emulating the S25 Plus experience pretty closely, it could be one to look out for.

I got to spend a few hours with the new Samsung Galaxy S25 FE ahead of its IFA announcement, and here’s what I learnt. 

Design and screen

As a ‘Fan Edition’ of the regular Samsung Galaxy S25 collection, it should come as no surprise that the Galaxy S25 FE looks a lot like this year’s flagship. It sports the same minimalistic design, complete with the rather controversial camera rings on the rear, and put alongside the Galaxy S25 Plus, you’d be hard-pressed to see the differences.

The two weigh the same at 190g, and there’s only 0.1mm in them when it comes to general thickness, with the S25 FE clocking in at 7.4mm thick while the S25 Plus boasts a 7.3mm thick body. It gets the same IP68 dust and water resistance, and even comes with Gorilla Glass Victus+ protection. The latter isn’t quite up to the flagship’s Victus 2 standards, but it comes pretty close. 

There are hints that this isn’t quite a flagship however; The bezel surrounding the 6.7-inch screen, for example, while slimmer than the S24 FE, are still not quite uniform with a slight chin at the bottom. But this is a cheaper device and it’s not really that big of a dealbreaker – the slimmer bezels here still offer a noticeable boost over the S24 FE’s rather chunky alternatives.

Elsewhere, that 6.7-inch screen is pretty much in lockstep with its more premium siblings – the S25 Plus in particular. It’s the exact same size, and it sports similar Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen tech with HDR10+ capabilities. It’s not an LTPO-enabled screen, which is a bit of a bummer, but again, it’s par for the course at the price point. 

It’s also not quite as pixel-packed as its premium sibling with a FHD+ resolution compared to QHD+, but in actual use, I’d argue that most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. 

In my limited experience, I had very few complaints about the screen experience; it remains detailed and smooth with the 120Hz refresh rate, and the AMOLED tech means that colours are vivid and blacks are inky and deep. 

Elsewhere, you’ll find features like the same upgraded Armor Alumimium from the S25 series, and a range of colourful options including Navy, Icyblue, Jetblack and White to help seal the deal. 

Cameras

If you were hoping for big things from the cameras on the Galaxy S25 FE, I’ve got some bad news for you.

This year’s Fan Edition sports the same selection of 50MP main, 12MP ultrawide and 8MP 3x telephoto lenses as last year’s S24 FE. Samsung does claim that upgraded ProVisual Engine smarts should help boost image quality – especially areas like light, noise and skin tone accuracy – but that’s something I’ll have to put to the test once I spend more time with the phone.

In my limited time, the snaps I took were pretty detailed and vibrant – but then again, even photos taken on a terrible camera would look pretty decent with the flood of indoor lighting present at the hands-on experience. The real test is when you take the S25 FE into less-than-ideal environments, whether that’s fast-paced movement that could introduce blur or low light levels that could incur noise and blurriness. Again, we’ll have to wait and see for now.

Flip the phone around, however, and you’ll find a boosted 12MP selfie camera. That’s a decent upgrade over the S24 FE’s 10MP alternative, but in reality, don’t expect a day-and-night difference in the results. It still lacks elements like autofocus present on the likes of the OnePlus Nord 4 that really make a selfie snapper stand out. 

There’s also a returning flurry of AI-powered photo and video features, including instant slow-mo from non-slow-mo videos, generative photo editing, and audio eraser tech, all of which, according to Samsung, should work better than ever. 

Features and software

One of the biggest giveaways that this isn’t a full-fat flagship is the chipset in use; rather than the Snapdragon 8 Elite of the top-end models, the FE utilises Samsung’s own Exynos 2400 chipset. That’s an ever-so-slight upgrade over the Exynos 2400e from last year, but I’ve got a feeling it’ll probably score similarly in most benchmark tests. 

That said, when coupled with 8GB of RAM, the phone felt smooth enough during use, handling average tasks like scrolling through Chrome websites and opening apps with ease. There’s even a 13% larger vapor chamber on board with a new liquid thermal interface material that Samsung says should keep the phone cooler for longer – but without any preloaded games on the units at the hands-on event, I can’t confirm just how effective it is just yet.

That said, I’ll be interested to see just how well the chipset performs with more demanding tasks once I get my hands on a sample for more in-depth testing. 

While the rest of the Samsung Galaxy S25 collection still runs One UI 7 based on Android 15, the S25 FE comes with One UI 8 based on Android 16 out of the gate. The rest of the S25 range is scheduled to get the update in the second half of September, but it means that, for a short time at least, the S25 FE is the only model in the collection running Samsung’s latest software.

It’s not a huge change like the jump from One UI 6 to 7 – complete with redesigned visual elements and new animations – but if you’re coming from an older version of Samsung’s software, there’s a lot to appreciate here. It also boasts support for every single Galaxy AI feature offered by the flagship phones including the recent addition of Now Brief, but with a less powerful chipset, I’d imagine that most of these are run via the cloud rather than on-device. 

Still, with seven years of OS upgrades confirmed, the S25 FE should get plenty more updates than most smartphones in its upper mid-range price class. 

When it comes to battery life, a slightly boosted 4900mAh cell – up from 4700mAh – isn’t that far off the 5000mAh of the top-end Galaxy S25 Ultra. In fact, it’s the biggest battery found in an FE smartphone yet, and it’s coupled with faster 45W charging, so you’re not tethered to the wall for too long. 

The phone is even Qi2 ready with 15W wireless charging, but unlike the recently released Pixel 10 collection, it doesn’t feature built-in magnets. You’ll need to find a magnetic case for that…