The Samsung Galaxy S24 FE is on the way, or at least that’s what the rumors say. The first tantalizing details about the phone are already making their way online, and we’re starting to form a picture of what this year’s Fan Edition Galaxy smartphone will be like.
The Galaxy S24 FE is going to sit somewhere between the standard Galaxy S24 and the mid-range Galaxy A55 — which should arrive sometime this Spring. So this is going to be a phone with a premium feel but that makes some compromises to keep the price low, whether that’s cheaper materials, older chips or weaker camera performance.
There are still plenty of unknowns that we’ll doubtless hear about in the coming months, but there are still things on our wishlist. Here are 7 things we’d like to see from the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE.
Improved camera performance
Sacrifices have to be made somewhere with cheaper phones, and with the Galaxy S23 FE that seemed to affect the camera more than anything else. Not that the photos it produced were bad by any stretch, but we feel like a company like Samsung can pull off a lot more than offering photography that’s simply OK.
So we’d like to see some general improvements on the Galaxy S24 FE camera. More natural coloring, a little bit more sharpness, better computational photography, and maybe tone down the face smoothing effects a bit. Most of all, sort out the low light photography so you can actually make stuff out.
Better telephoto zoom
It’s incredibly rare to see a cheap phone with a dedicated telephoto lens. It’s hard enough to find the third camera lens on an $800 phone these days, so the sub-$600 ones don’t seem to have an ice cube’s chance in hell. So we can certainly appreciate it when a phone like the Galaxy S23 FE has a telephoto shooter, but we would like to see some improvements.
We actually found that Galaxy S23 FE’s physical zooming lens didn’t even match up to the Google Pixel 7a’s digital zoom. That’s pretty embarrassing for Samsung, and it’s something that it really needs to work on for this year’s Fan Edition phone. It’d be nice to see more than 3x optical magnification too, but considering the S24 and S24 Plus are also limited to 3x zoom I don’t see that happening.
Longer battery life
Honestly, it doesn’t matter what phone is coming, there’s always room to improve the battery somehow. We don’t have any specific battery testing data for the Galaxy S23 FE right now, but considering it runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset there is absolutely going to be room for the final figure to increase on the S24 SE.
After all, that happened with the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S24, thanks to the improved power efficiency on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Gen 3. All Samsung really needs to do is ensure that one of those chips is in the Galaxy S24 FE. Rumor is that we’ll see the same 4,500 mAh capacity as last year, so fingers crossed we should see some kind of increase.
Galaxy S24 tier performance
Rumor is that the Galaxy S24 FE will be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the U.S., which would be a major upgrade over the S23 FE’s Gen 1 chipset. If this is the case then it would make the Fan Edition model a much more enticing purchase, especially if Samsung sticks to the same $599 price tag. Particularly since Snapdragon chips tend to outmatch their Exynos counterparts that power the mid-range Galaxy A series.
So if the Galaxy S24 FE does come with a Gen 3 chipset, then we would like to see similar levels of performance to those on the original Galaxy S24 model. The phone scored a respective 2,235 and 6,922 in single and multicore Geekbench 6 testing, 120.4 fps in Wild Life Unlimited and finished an Adobe Video Rush video transcription in 41 seconds. While the S24 FE can’t be expected to exactly match those figures, we’d like to see it get very close. And then there’s the AI angle.
The full Galaxy AI suite
Samsung has made a very big deal about the launch of Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24 series, even going so far as to add some of those features to older phones. It’s all but guaranteed that the Galaxy S24 FE will get the same AI upgrades as the Galaxy S23 range, but we’d like to see it get more than that. It’s a brand new S24 series phone after all, and Fan Edition or not it deserves to be treated like one.
This is especially important if the phone is getting the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, as one rumor claims. If Samsung uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip to save costs, there may be technical limitations to the amount of AI that chip can handle. But if we get the Gen 3? Really there’s no excuse to hold back on the S24-exclusive features like AI-enhanced photo editing.
A better and brighter display
It’s important to have a good display, and there are a few things that the Galaxy S24 FE should do to make that happen. We expect that the phone will offer Full HD resolution, like the S23 FE and Galaxy S24, but there’s still room for improvement. Particularly when it comes to brightness and refresh rate.
The Galaxy S23 FE was rated for a maximum brightness of 1,450 nits, which was slightly lower than the Galaxy S23’s 1,750 nits. Since the Galaxy S24 upped that brightness to 2,600 nits, the S24 FE should up its brightness to something a little more impressive.
Likewise the S23 FE had an adaptive refresh rate that could dynamically switch between 60Hz and 120Hz, and it would be fantastic to see the S24 FE boost that to the same 1-120Hz that we see on the Galaxy S24. At the very least lower the minimum refresh rate to 48Hz, like the Galaxy S23.
Keep the $599 price tag
The Galaxy S23 FE currently sits in a rather precarious position in Samsung’s lineup, right between the standard $799 Galaxy flagship and the $449 mid-range A54. It’s an odd place for a phone to be, and there have been times when we’ve questioned the need for a Fan Edition Galaxy at all.
The Galaxy S24 FE is going to have the same issue, and that means the price has got to be locked down tight.By the time the S24 FE rolls two things will have happened: the Galaxy A55 will have launched for under $500 and the first significant Galaxy S24 discounts will be appearing. Maybe not a full $200, but $100 or so isn’t unreasonable to expect.
Any increase to the S24 FE’s price from the S23 FE’s $599 starting price will end up pushing people in one of those two directions. Either they opt for the cheaper A55 and make a few more sacrifices, or they pay a little extra for a phone that has a lot more to offer. The phone may still sell with a higher price tag this year, but probably not as well as it could have done without it.
