Ever since it relaunched the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7, Samsung has been launching a new “Fan Edition” S series flagship every year. The Samsung FE series is supposed to bring the most wanted features of its high-end phones down to a more affordable price tag, which means it does have to cut some corners to reach that price point. Cameras and battery life have always been the main focus of the Galaxy FE phones, but this year brings an unsurprising addition to that set. With the Galaxy S24 FE, Samsung is making an even bigger push for its Galaxy AI suite, trying to push it to more people with a handset that won’t kill their budget too much.

Designer: Samsung

In terms of design, the Galaxy S24 FE strangely stands in between the Galaxy S24+ and the Galaxy S24 Ultra. It has an unapologetically large 6.7-inch screen, but its actual size is made even bigger by the wider bezels you won’t see on the more premium Galaxy S24 series. It does at least have the same elegant minimalist design as the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ with its rounded corners, flat edges, and flat front and back.

Of course, the “Fan Edition” phones come with plenty of compromises if you compare them to the standard flagship. In this particular case, the Galaxy S24 FE has a slightly dimmer screen that has fixed refresh rates of either 60Hz or 120Hz only, an underclocked mid-range Exynos 2400e processor, and only 8GB of RAM. That said, it does have a larger 4,700mAh battery compared to the 4,000mAh battery on the Galaxy S24, and it has almost similar 50MP main and 12MP ultra-wide cameras. The 3x telephoto camera, however, only has an 8MP sensor.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the focus in this release is on Galaxy AI and the features that it enables. Those include retouching photos, making amusing compositions, and of course, Circle to Search with Google. Hopefully, the phone’s modest specs will be able to catch up with the demanding AI features without making the phone too hot to handle.

What is surprising is that Samsung is making the same support commitment it made with its more expensive phones, namely seven generations of OS upgrades and seven years of security updates. The phone also uses some materials made from recycled plastics, aluminum, glass, and rare earth metals, which is pretty impressive for a “cheaper” variant of a flagship phone. All of these come with a $649.99 price tag for 128GB of storage ($709.99 for 256GB), which isn’t all that bad considering you’re getting a solid phone from a reputable brand.

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