Samsung Galaxy S24 FE hands-on: I think it's great, but is it really a 'fan edition'?

When Samsung first launched its line of “FE” products, it readily admitted the moniker stood for “Fan Edition.” The idea was to slightly water down its most popular flagship products to make them still rock-solid devices but less expensive overall. Eventually, though, the company dropped the Fan Edition nomenclature and just kept the FE label. Today, the company launched the latest entry in this family: the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE.

Obviously, this isn’t a Fan Edition phone because Samsung doesn’t use that term anymore, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking that the FE line is still where Samsung puts new editions of a product designed with its fans in mind. After playing around with the Galaxy S24 FE a bit today in New York City, I came away impressed while simultaneously questioning whether or not this phone is anything Samsung fans would actually want.

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE design

Physically, the Galaxy S24 FE is a dead-ringer for the Galaxy S24 Plus. Technically, the two phones aren’t the same size, but they are pretty close. Regardless, if you just looked at the Galaxy S24 FE, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a Galaxy S24 Plus.

Design-wise, Samsung barely changed anything. There are still totally flat aluminum rails all around the device. There’s a glass back and a triple-lens rear camera system, with each lens arranged neatly in a column in the upper left. Honestly, it seems like Samsung’s designers just looked at the Galaxy S24 Plus and then hit “CTRL-V” for the Galaxy S24 FE.

The two phones share the same display size at 6.7 inches while also sharing the same 120Hz refresh rate. They don’t share the same resolutions, though: the Galaxy S24 Plus is capable of hitting 1440p, while the Galaxy S24 FE can only go as high as 1080p. Still, in my brief time with the phone, I barely noticed the resolution difference. It was still a beautiful, crisp, and fluid display, just as I would expect from a Samsung flagship.

There is one semi-significant difference between the construction of the two phones, which is the glass used. The Galaxy S24 Plus uses Gorilla Glass Victus 2, while the Galaxy S24 FE uses a slightly older Gorilla Glass Victus Plus. Still, this is a huge upgrade over the Galaxy S23 FE, which was using the much, much older Gorilla Glass 5.

With this high-end glass and an IP68 rating, the Galaxy S24 FE should be very durable. As always, we still recommend keeping it in a case.

Finally, the Galaxy S24 FE comes in four colors here in the United States: Graphite, Gray, Blue, and Mint. The blue colorway is very much a baby blue, and I didn’t like it at all. The Mint color was nice, but I would probably go with gray if I had to choose. It’s more fun than the boring Graphite color while not being quite as in-your-face as the Mint or Blue colorways. Notably, there is a yellow model, too, but it is only available in select countries, and that doesn’t include the US.

Not too many other upgrades this year

Internally, the Galaxy S24 FE doesn’t change much from what we saw in the Galaxy S23 FE. It has the same amount of RAM (8GB), the same starting level for internal storage (128GB), and the same charging speeds (25W with a cable and 15W with a wireless charger).

We also don’t see any hardware changes with the cameras. There’s a 50MP primary sensor, a 12MP ultrawide, and an 8MP telephoto with 3x zoom. This is very close to the Galaxy S24’s system, although the Galaxy S24 (and, of course, the Galaxy S24 Plus) has a slightly better 10MP telephoto sensor.

On the front, the selfie camera is also the same as the one we saw on the Galaxy S23 FE: a 10MP shooter that is not quite as good as the 12MP shooter in the mainline Galaxy S24 series.

Samsung did make room for a very slight camera upgrade, though: the Galaxy S24 FE can shoot 8K video at 30FPS, which is nominally better than the 8K/24FPS quality cap of the Galaxy S23 FE. This is a very minor change, but still welcome.

Samsung also updated the battery by a bit. The Galaxy S23 FE had a 4,500mAh battery, which was pretty good, but the Galaxy S24 FE bumps that up to 4,700mAh. This makes it very close to the Galaxy S24 Plus’ 4,900mAh battery.

That’s about it for year-over-year changes, though. The Galaxy S24 FE barely moves the needle when compared to its predecessor. The biggest change is the one spec I haven’t touched on yet.

The controversy: An Exynos processor everywhere

In the US, all FE phones have had Qualcomm processors. In fact, that was one of the big selling points of the line: get a phone with the same processor as its corresponding flagship model but spend less money on it. Even last year’s Galaxy S23 FE kept up this tradition while changing the formula slightly by offering the older Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 instead of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy offered by the mainline Galaxy S23 phones.

The Galaxy S24 FE, however, tears completely away from this tradition by landing with an Exynos 2400e processor. This CPU powers all Galaxy S24 FE phones, regardless of where you buy them — and yes, that includes here in the United States.

Granted, there’s nothing really wrong with the Exynos 2400e. Samsung didn’t elaborate on what the “e” means, but it is almost certainly similar to the Exynos 2400, which appears in global variants of the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus (all versions of the Galaxy S24 Ultra globally have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy). In other words, it’s going to be a high-quality processor — it’s just not going to be as good as a Snapdragon.

In my limited time with the device, it moved like butter. It was smooth, fast, and snappy. I didn’t have time to put it through any paces, but I walked away confident that normal day-to-day smartphone usage would be terrific.

But “day-to-day smartphone usage” isn’t what Samsung fans really care about. It’s no secret that the Exynos line is not well-liked by Samsung die-hards because they make a habit out of pushing the limits of what the processor can do, whether that be through multitasking, gaming, or content creation. These situations are where the Exynos 2400e will not be able to compare to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy inside the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus in the US and the Galaxy S24 Ultra all around the world.

I can’t speak for all Samsung fans worldwide, but it just feels like this is a change none of them would have asked for.

Galaxy AI is the upgrade Samsung is pushing

During the launch presentation, Samsung spent the bulk of its time talking about Galaxy AI. For both the Galaxy S24 FE and the Galaxy Tab S10 series, Galaxy AI was all Samsung seemed to care about.

However, there’s nothing really new here. The features Samsung showed off were ones we’ve all seen before, such as Circle to Search, Sketch to Image, Interpreter, etc. There was no brand new feature announcement, just the movement of already-announced features to the Galaxy S24 FE.

Granted, that’s still cool, but Samsung has already assured us that even phones in the 2024 Galaxy A series will eventually see Galaxy AI. A bulk of Galaxy AI features run in the cloud, so you don’t even need high-end hardware to run them. The whole announcement felt very hollow, like Samsung couldn’t think of anything to say specifically about the Galaxy S24 FE so it just talked about Galaxy AI instead.

Regardless, I used a lot of the Galaxy AI features on the Galaxy S24 FE and they worked as expected. Interpreter was nice and fast, Circle to Search was as reliable as ever, and Sketch to Image worked like a charm. But I highly doubt anyone reading this is thinking about buying a Galaxy S24 FE specifically because it has Galaxy AI.

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE specs

As mentioned earlier, the Galaxy S24 FE only has a few upgrades when compared to the Galaxy S23 FE. You can see all the essential info in the table below:

Samsung Galaxy S24 FE hands-on: Great, but maybe losing the plot?

After using the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE for a bit, I walked away thinking it was a watered-down version of a non-US model of the Galaxy S24 Plus. It has a similar design to the Galaxy S24 Plus but skimps out on some build materials. It also waters down the internals to make them similar to an Exynos-powered Galaxy S24 while still not being quite as good as that phone.

While the core idea of the phone, as I’ve just described it, is fine, I can’t stop thinking about the strangeness of this being an FE device. If there’s one thing I’ve heard over and over again after working at Android Authority for as long as I have, it’s that Samsung fans don’t like Exynos processors. They are fine with Exynos chips powering lower-level phones, but when it comes to anything in the Galaxy S family, they overwhelmingly prefer Snapdragon. The fact that Samsung isn’t offering any Snapdragon-powered Galaxy S24 FE models — especially here in the US — seems like an abandonment of the integrity of the FE branding.

I also can’t help but think about the Samsung Galaxy A55. That phone is incredibly similar to the Galaxy S24 FE. But the Galaxy A55 didn’t land in the United States — the first time in a while that we haven’t seen a Galaxy A5x phone. Now that I’ve used the Galaxy S24 FE, I can see why Samsung did that. There’s no way it could have these two phones on a shelf without confusing the hell out of US customers.

This makes me feel like fans will be even more upset. The FE line is supposed to be a trimmed-down flagship, not a beefed-up mid-ranger. I’m not saying that’s exactly what the Galaxy S24 FE is, but it certainly could be construed that way.

The bottom line here is that the Galaxy S24 FE feels like a great phone at a good price. At $649, it is $350 cheaper than the Galaxy S24 Plus ($1119.99 at Amazon) and $150 cheaper than the Galaxy S24 ($859.99 at Amazon) while offering similar specs and features from both. For what you’re getting, I feel like $649 is a fair price (although last year’s $599 would have been better). But considering how similar it is to the Galaxy S23 FE ($599.99 at Amazon) and considering that it would be easy to find a Snapdragon-powered version of that phone for a relatively low price right now, I am not sure Samsung fans are going to flock to the Galaxy S24 FE.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s a good thing FE doesn’t officially stand for “Fan Edition” anymore. I enjoyed my brief time with the Galaxy S24 FE, but it doesn’t seem to truly fit in with what I think of when I see the FE branding.