Flagship experience on a budget

Design

• Lighter than the Galaxy S24 FE
• Premium materials
• IP68 dust and water resistance

If there’s one obvious problem that can be levied against the Galaxy S25 FE, it’s that it looks almost identical to the Galaxy S25, which in turn looks like a carbon copy of the Galaxy A56.

Unlike the latest iPhones, which can be identified purely by their camera bumps, Samsung’s phones are a little trickier to tell apart thanks to their consistent use of three vertical cameras on the rear (with the Galaxy S25 Ultra being the exception).

I can understand wanting to adhere to a certain degree of consistency to telegraph to potential buyers that they’re looking at a Samsung phone, I just wish that it could go a bit further to tell you which Samsung phone it is. Still, I wanted to mention this minor gripe first so that I could get it out of the way and talk about how much I love the Navy colourway of the S25 FE.

There are four models available, with the others being White, Icyblue and Jetblack, but the Navy version, with its dark blue backing and silver aluminium railings, makes for one of the nicest looking phones I’ve tested all year. I’m glad that the review unit wasn’t sent with a case because it’d be a travesty to let this colour go unseen.

In terms of durability, it’s all much the same as the Galaxy S24 FE, with a glass backing and a chassis that boasts IP68 dust and water resistance, alongside Corning Gorilla Victus Plus glass used for the display. What has changed, however, is that the overall weight of the phone has dropped from 213g to 190g.

Having a more lightweight build is appreciated, given that the S25 FE itself is a bit on the larger side, but I never felt as if it was a struggle to hold during everyday use. That might feel a little different if you bring a case into the mix, but on its own, the S25 FE never felt too cumbersome during my time with it.

Screen

• 6.7-inch panel is perfect for entertainment
• AMOLED colours really pop
• 120Hz refresh rate for gaming

As someone who currently uses the 6.1-inch iPhone 16 as their main phone outside of reviews, I’ve become accustomed to having a smaller display to hand, and I enjoy using a device that’s easier to operate one-handed, especially when I’m out and about and don’t want to be too distracted by my phone.

However, when moving over to a mammoth display like the 6.7-inch display on the S25 FE, it does remind me of everything that I’m missing.

With plenty of room for apps to stretch out and more freedom when using touch screen controls for gaming, the S25 FE is great fun to use, and with 1900 nits of peak brightness, not to mention HDR10+ and Samsung’s Dynamic AMOLED display, everything comes through with such vibrancy and contrast that you can’t really look away.

I’ve been slowly making my way through the Prime Video exclusive Reacher when at the gym (definitely not using Alan Ritchson’s muscles for inspiration) and compared to my iPhone, the experience has felt far more cinematic. It’s more like having a mini tablet on your person, and exactly the kind of smartphone you’d want to have on a flight with no onboard entertainment.

The screen is also bright enough to use outdoors, and I had no issues with seeing all the facets of the camera app when taking pictures around town. Admittedly, you do get a brighter display on the standard Galaxy S25 of 2600 nits, but I wouldn’t say that the FE was lacking enough to justify spending an extra £150/$150 to get the S25.

The 120Hz refresh rate is greatly appreciated as it made everything from social media to Call of Duty Mobile look very smooth in operation. It’s a variable refresh rate too, so it’s optimised to use that 120Hz cap when it makes sense, and bring it down automatically for apps like Kindle where it’s not needed, prolonging the battery in the process, just not as far as an LTPO panel would go.

Cameras

• No change to the rear-facing cameras
• New 12MP selfie camera
• Great performance in most scenarios

For whatever reason, Samsung has become fairly reluctant to introduce any major camera upgrades to its phones with each new generation, and the Galaxy S25 FE falls under that same sentiment as its rear-facing cameras are identical to what came before.

This means that you’re getting a triple sensor array on the back, including a 50MP main camera, a 12MP ultrawide and an 8MP telephoto. The lack of change here will probably make the S25 FE a better buy for photography enthusiasts on a budget (although I’d personally recommend checking out the Pixel 9a instead), but what is presented here is actually quite competent.

When putting these cameras through their paces, very rarely did I come up against a scenario where I wasn’t pleased with the results. In typical Samsung fashion, colours appear saturated but never in an unnatural way. This was particularly helpful as I went out to take photos on a classically cloudy British day, but the phone still managed to extract as much colour as possible from the scenes at hand.

Heading down to a local canal, you can see the dynamic range at play as all the colours of the foliage are captured beautifully, and their shadows are distinctly cast upon the water below. The texture of the clouds has also been captured accurately, so even on days when the sun is well hidden, you won’t be struggling to get a good picture with the S25 FE to hand.

Even with the downgrade in megapixels when swapping over to the ultrawide camera, I found the overall aesthetic to be much the same, which then gave me the freedom to use it when it felt more fitting for the occasion. As someone who rarely uses ultrawide cameras unless absolutely necessary, I did enjoy feeling compelled to use it more often here.

The telephoto camera is also a big win, especially as you won’t find one on an iPhone unless you plump for the iPhone 17 Pro, so to get a decent 3x telephoto lens here for just £649/$649.99 is quite something. Of course, the 8MP cap means that you won’t want to zoom into any of those 3x shots, or you’ll start to notice the clarity drop off pretty quickly, but it is a helpful lens to have nonetheless.

After the sun went down, I did notice the HDR stick around to an impressive degree when using the main sensor. It even bumped up the hint of purple in the darkening sky, which I appreciated as it looked rather eye-catching in the final print. That said, the ultrawide and telephoto struggled to keep up to the same degree and lost even more clarity in the process.

Although the rear-facing cameras have stayed the same, there is a key change that has been made to the front camera, which has been bumped from 10MP to 12MP. That might sound like a small jump on paper, but after testing the camera out for myself with a few selfies, I was quite impressed with what Samsung has achieved here.

Even before toggling the portrait mode for a bit of bokeh, the selfies I took had a nice composition to them, but it was the shots that had a distinct separation between myself and the background that really appealed to me, so if you’re a social animal who loves a cheeky group selfie to document an occasion, you’ll get on just fine here.

Performance

• Upgraded Exynos 2400 chipset
• Great everyday performance
• Most games run well, just not high-end 3D titles

While the overall camera experience isn’t too dissimilar to what came before, the S25 FE has been given a decent boost in power as it moves over to the more capable Exynos 2400 chipset (the same one previously used in the Samsung Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus).

As you can probably imagine, it’s not a touch on the blazing fast speeds achieved by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip found in Samsung’s flagship phones, but the Exynos 2400 has yet to leave me with any sense of feeling left behind.

Apps have loaded quickly and I’ve been able to jump between them at speed, without signs of slowdown. The only area where I’ve experienced any sort of disconnect between what’s available here and the iPhone alternative is that the face unlock function takes just a few seconds longer than anticipated to kick in. Other than that, it’s been smooth sailing, and I can’t imagine that anyone would find themselves in desperate need of more power if they upgraded to this phone.

Even Samsung’s Galaxy AI features, which I’ll touch on more in a bit, have carried out their required tasks at a reasonable pace, and as you may have guessed, this all bodes well for gaming. When diving into my go-to test of a round of Team Deathmatch in Call of Duty Mobile, I had zero issues in keeping up with the action in Nuketown as the phone didn’t stutter one bit.

The 120Hz refresh rate worked well with the chipset’s performance to create a fast-paced and engaging session, and it was elevated even further by the very impressive stereo speakers built into the phone. You don’t even have to turn the volume up all that much before you’re greeted with a deep soundscape, so if you’re lacking a pair of headphones in the moment then you won’t be subjected to a lacklustre experience.

Things did take a slight stumble when jumping over to Honkai: Star Rail. As a more graphically taxing title, I did notice the occasional bit of stuttering during my gameplay session, which did take me out of the experience, particularly after everything had been so smooth with Call of Duty.

It’s not unplayable by any means, especially as it relies on turn-based combat and not trigger-finger reactions, but for a truly uncomromised experience, you’ll be better off with the standard Galaxy S25 and its more powerful chipset.

Software

• Comes with One UI 8 out of the box
• Samsung’s UI has never looked better
• Seven years of software support

I’ve made no secrets of the fact that it’s software, above all, that keeps me coming back to iPhone after every Android device that I review.

At this point, it’s more of an ecosystem thing (I have AirPods, an Apple Watch, shared shopping lists in the Notes app, etc.), but after seeing the strides that Samsung has taken with its One UI overlay in the last year, I think that now is a perfect time to side with Samsung as your go-to brand of choice.

One UI 7 was a monumental shift in bringing Samsung’s phones into the modern era with a far slicker interface that is now, thankfully, one of the best Android overlays available. The ‘Now bar’ at the bottom of the lock screen can let you shift between various apps and media sources quickly, and the fact that you can finally have apps arranged in a scrolling tray as opposed to a page-by-page library is a big win.

With One UI 8 from the jump, the S25 FE takes that experience and elevates it just that bit further. There are small tweaks like a slightly redesigned weather app, which is beautifully animated and clearly laid out, and some larger changes, such as the addition of 90:10 multitasking. Similar to what OnePlus has put together via Open Canvas, this feature lets you quickly switch between two apps, with one taking up 90% of the display and the other only covering 10%, which can be tapped to fill the screen.

All of this amounts to the best software experience that I’ve ever seen from Samsung, and the presence of Galaxy AI just makes it even better. I’ve encountered plenty of lacklustre AI features now as companies clamour to use artificial intelligence to bolster their respective UIs, but from my experience, Galaxy AI is really the only one that actually achieves what it sets out to do.

This prowess can be seen in how well the photo editor can use generative AI to fill in blank spaces in a picture, and how quickly an AI-powered summary of a webpage can be presented when using the Samsung browser. It’s all very impressive, and I only wish that Apple Intelligence worked half as well as this.

What ties all this together from a consumer perspective is that Samsung is offering seven years of software support for the Galaxy S25 FE from the time of launch. For context, you won’t even get that with more expensive handsets like the OnePlus 13. The Xiaomi 15T Pro, which is arguably the S25 FE’s biggest competitor with the same price tag, only carries four years of updates.

For true value for money, and saving you from needing to upgrade your phone again in just a few years, Samsung can’t be beaten here.

Battery

• Larger 4900mAh cell
• Faster 45W wired charging speeds
• Solid all-day battery life

Just like with the performance, Samsung has made sure to give the battery life of the S25 FE a similarly solid bump. Not only do users now get to enjoy a larger 4900mAh battery (up from 4700mAh), but the wired charging speed has leapt up to 45W, trouncing the 25W capacity of the S24 FE.

Looking to really put the battery through its paces, I subjected the S25 FE to a day involving about an hour and a half of social media, roughly two hours of hotspotting, NFC payments, 30 minutes of watching Prime Video, taking plenty of pictures, using Google Maps for directions, listening to music and podcasts and even indulging in a quick 10 minute match on Call of Duty Mobile.

With all that in mind, I managed to get from about 9:25am to 10:40pm with 22% left in the tank. That’s quite impressive, and it’s well beyond what a typical day looks like for most people, so expect to see a lot more juice remaining under normal use-cases.

Even when the battery was looking a little low, having that upgraded charging speed meant that I didn’t have to wait around long before needing to unplug the charger.

From a dead battery, I was able to claw back 67% in just 30 minutes, and it only took 69 minutes for the phone to be fully charged. It’s definitely not as quick as the fastest around, but it’s up there, and handy if you’re in a rush. There’s also 15W wireless charging too.

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