Samsung Unveils Galaxy S26 FE at August 2026 Launch Event, Brings Back Popular Fan Edition
-
Samsung just introduced the Galaxy S26 FE at its Unpacked August 2026 launch event. The company's latest Fan Edition smartphone is a follow up to the Galaxy S25 FE that was introduced in September 2025. One thing you might notice is the higher price. The Samsung Galaxy S25 FE started at $649 while the Samsung Galaxy S26 FE starts at $699, which is $50 more.
Compare 3 other versions
CNETSamsung’s Galaxy S26 FE may be the company’s lower-cost flagship, but the phone’s getting nearly all of the same software features we first saw on the company’s more expensive phones. And it better be, as it’s also getting a $50 price bump over last year’s S25 FE, with this year’s phone starting at $700 for 128GB of storage and $800 for 256GB.
The VergeThe FE looks almost identical to the S26 Plus, which cost $1,099.99 at launch but can currently be had for $899.99 direct from Samsung. Both phones are the same size and weight, though while the FE’s screen is no smaller, it does have a lower resolution. The battery and charging match too, apart from very slightly slower 15W wireless speeds. It’s the underlying performance that really pulls the phones apart, with more RAM and a faster chip in the mainline S26 phones, better build quality, and superior telephoto and ultrawide cameras.
GizmodoThe fourth member of Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series has arrived: the Galaxy S26 FE. The “Fan Edition” smartphone cuts back some of the Galaxy S26+’s features to bring pricing down to $699.99.
-
Samsung has also ported over a lot of the software features we first saw on the core S26 family back in February. This includes things like Super Steady Video with horizontal lock, the my FanCam tool for automatically tracking and centering subjects in already recorded clips, AI-powered Photo Assist and Now Nudge, the latter of which can now surface important info across a handful of third-party apps and notifications.
Compare 1 other version
The VergeThe bigger updates are to the phone’s software, though these are also familiar from those foldables, or the S26 phones earlier this year. There’s My FanCam, a video editing trick that uses AI to crop footage so that it tracks a specific subject throughout. Audio Eraser now supports third-party content apps, reducing background noise in videos on YouTube or Netflix to make it easier to focus on dialogue. Most useful might be the super steady Horizontal Lock video recording option in the camera app.
-
The phone also has a 4,900-mAh battery with 45-watt wired charging and 15-watt wireless charging speeds. That’s also unchanged from last year, but in our 30-minute wired charging test, the S25 FE’s battery recharged from 0% to 69%. That’s very good, and hopefully the S26 FE pulls in a comparable result. Samsung will also sell cases for the S26 FE that add support for magnetic accessories like chargers and wallets.
Compare 1 other version
EngadgetBoth storage options available in the US (128GB and 256GB) tap out at 8GB of RAM, like the S25 FE. The 2025 and 2026 phones both have 4,900mAh batteries and support the same 45W wired charging speeds as well (along with fast wireless). However, a 30-minute charge will get you to 69 percent battery levels with the Galaxy S26 FE versus 65 percent with the Galaxy S25 FE. That might not sound like a lot, but when you're in the red, every bit of power counts!
5 details only one outlet reported
Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
-
01 ZDNet With fewer consumers constantly riding the upgrade train, sustainability has begun to gain a foothold in the phone sector. At the same time, skyrocketing RAM prices have directly affected phone prices. With flagship models from brands like Apple, Samsung, and Google often exceeding $1,000, and more and more people struggling to make ends meet, the idea of owning a phone that could outlast the current crop of pricier offerings makes perfect sense.
-
02 Gizmodo While the S26 FE is a stripped-down S26+, it does get some features from Samsung’s latest Z Fold 8 foldables that are running One UI 9 first, including My FanCam, which uses AI to let you motion-track a subject in a captured video and recrop it in various sizes for posting to social media. Other One UI 9 features include a “Now Brief” that lets you create custom card widgets and a “Now Nudge” that uses AI to provide more proactive suggestions based on context.
-
03 The Verge At its core, this is the same phone as last year’s. The 6.7-inch OLED display, 4,900mAh battery, and triple rear camera are all identical. The changes are few: The chipset has been given its annual upgrade, and the 12-megapixel selfie camera is a little wider, with an 85-degree field of view, up from 80.
-
04 Engadget While Samsung touts the Galaxy camera and AI experiences of the Galaxy S26 FE, you can access most of those with the Galaxy S25 FE as well. There are new features like My FanCam that come natively with the Galaxy S26 FE, as well as the new Galaxy Z Fold 8 line announced in July. With this feature, you can select a specific subject from a video and change framing to follow them, much like you can track with a gimbal camera. This reduces the amount of manual editing needed for a video. The feature is part of One UI 9, but it requires advanced neural processing, so you won't be able to access it on the Galaxy S25 FE.
-
05 CNET But I’m most excited about all of the camera software features the phone is getting from Samsung’s more expensive devices, like the $900 Galaxy S26 and the $1,200 Galaxy Z Flip 8.
Fact Corroboration
Which sources independently confirm the same facts. Hover a claim to see its sources, or a source to see what it corroborates.
Coverage by Perspective
Source Similarity
Connections show how similarly each outlet covered this story. Thicker lines = more similar framing.
Sources (5)
- verge
- cnet
- gizmodo
- zdnet
- engadget