I’ve never been quite sure what to call the category Samsung’s Galaxy FE belongs to. Upper midrange? Midrange plus? Low flagship? Whatever we’re calling it, Samsung is bringing the concept back again this year in the Galaxy S25 FE, which continues to stand for Fan Edition. It’s still $650 like the S24 FE before it and still comes with a 6.7-inch screen, making it a big phone for the value-conscious buyer. Also new from Samsung today for big-screen fans: the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra with a 14.6-inch screen, alongside the less-big Tab S11 with 11-inch screen. They’ll cost $1,199 and $799, respectively.
My colleague Dominic Preston got some hands-on time with all three devices, which are all thinner and lighter than the versions that preceded them. The S25 FE gets a slight battery boost — 4,700mAh to 4,900mAh — and an updated selfie camera, from 10 megapixels to 12 megapixels. The 8-megapixel 3x zoom is still a step behind the telephoto camera on the S25 and S25 Plus, but it’s there, at least. It’ll come with an Exynos 2400 chipset, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB or 256GB of storage.
If the S25 FE belongs to the flagship-minus class, then the basic Pixel 10 is a contender for the category this year, too. Like the FE it doesn’t offer quite the same high-end camera specs as the higher-tier flagships, but does include an optical zoom lens. It’s a tad pricier at $799, but the ethos is similar. Still, I think at least part of the reason for the S25 FE’s existence is to sit on a shelf near the other new phones we’re expecting next week and tease iPhone buyers with a lower price and a telephoto lens that their base model can’t touch.
The Galaxy Tab S11 and S11 Ultra also come with a feature you won’t find included in the box with Apple’s tablets: a stylus. It doesn’t offer Bluetooth LE connectivity, but it’s there. The S11 Ultra comes with an anti-reflective display coating, a feature I appreciate on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. And it makes sense on a tablet this big that you might want to use as a laptop replacement. Both tablets — and the S25 FE too — will ship with One UI 8, which is Samsung’s version of Android 16. They’re available starting today.
