If you missed out on that surprise Samsung Unpacked announcement today, we’ve got you covered. The South Korean outfit today unveiled the Galaxy S25 FE (Fan Edition), with the promise of delivering all of the S25 family’s best features into a package that’s slimmer, lighter, and most importantly, more affordable.
The big gimmick with Samsung’s Fan Edition last year was the device’s ability to comprehend Galaxy AI without first dropping flagship prices, and the company hasn’t ditched that notion here. Arriving today, 4 September, in “select markets” (local pricing and availability are still under wraps), the S25 FE starts at $650 (∼R11,560).
Galaxy S25 hits the Fan
Don’t worry if you can’t tell the S25 FE apart from its older sibling. That’s very much intentional, seeing as how Samsung appears to have reused the general chassis, though it claims this one features an “enhanced” Armour Aluminium frame — protecting the 6.7in AMOLED display capable of hitting 120Hz comfortably. Samsung has at least shaved off some weight, with the device now weighing in at 190g, and is 7.4mm thin.
Continuing the trend comes the 4nm Exynos 2400 chipset, which doesn’t do much to set it apart from the still-great Exynos 2400e chipset that we got to test last year. Samsung reckons it’ll unlock a performance bump thanks to the 10% larger vapour chamber it’s employed here, but we’ll reserve judgment on that until we get our hands on it ourselves. The S25 FE is still only rocking 8GB of RAM, with up to 512GB of storage to choose from.
Read More: Samsung Galaxy S24 FE review – He a fan, he a fan, he a fan
It’s not all recycled materials, though. The S25 FE boasts a massive upgrade in the form of the 4,900mAh battery — up from the slightly disappointing 4,700mAh offering we got last time. It’s made even more impressive by the 45W charging spec. Expect the same cameras as last year (50MP main, 12MP ultrawide, and 8MP telephoto), but with a more pleasing 12MP shooter on the front.
Finally, Galaxy AI. The pinnacle of Samsung’s marketing for the past few years. The S25 FE is well up to the AI tasks you’d expect any other Samsung to do, though the lack of RAM upgrades might force it to sit out of some future updates. It’s shipping with Galaxy UI 8 out of the box, too. There’s still no word on local pricing and availability, but we’re expecting it to hover around the R15,000 mark we saw on the S24 FE.
