(Image credit: Tom's Guide / Tom Pritchard)
Earlier this week Samsung announced the Galaxy S26 FE, a cut-price flagship phone that sits somewhere between the $899 Galaxy S26 and the $549 Galaxy A57. The general idea being that you get more flagship features without necessarily having to cough up the full price of a premium device.Unfortunately, the small amount of time I've spent with the Galaxy S26 FE suggests that Samsung has fumbled the release of the new phone. We shouldn't really be surprised, considering how lackluster the last few Fan Edition releases have been. We're at the point now where it's time for Samsung to scrap the whole line-up and let the A-series step up to the plate.Too expensive to be cheap, too compromised to rival flagships
(Image credit: Tom's Guide / Tom Pritchard)The Fan Edition series has always been about lowering the price but making cuts elsewhere. You can't have the same specs as a Galaxy S26 for a lower price, because that's just not economical. That typically manifests itself in worse cameras, cheaper materials and slightly worse performance.In the case of the Galaxy S26 FE, those compromises come in three key areas: the screen, the camera and the performance. This is not a phone that has the latest flagship Snapdragon chips, nor does it have the latest Exynos 2600 chip that powers international variants of the S26. Instead it has the Exynos 2500, which was released last year, alongside 8GB of RAM rather than the now-standard 12GB.
