Top 3 Reasons Why the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE May Fall Short as a Budget Flagship

Samsung isn’t known for offering big batteries on its flagship phones except for the Ultra. While the industry standard for most high-end devices is a 5,000mAh battery pack, the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ only offered a 4,000mAh and 4,900mAh cell respectively. While the latter is still quite decent, the Galaxy S24 FE might fall somewhere between these two. Last month, a leak claimed that the 2024 Fan Edition model would be powered by a 4565mAh battery. This is ever so slightly bigger than its predecessor but it’s still quite underwhelming.

It gets worse considering the charging rates. In the current market, even budget phones can offer faster charging rates than the Galaxy S24 FE. Based on the TUV Rheinland database, the Galaxy S24 FE supports just 25W wired fast charging. Only the higher-end Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24 Ultra support 45W wired fast charging. But even these pale in comparison to flagship phones from other brands. Samsung’s budget flagship could also offer 9W wireless charging support, which is slower than the 15W wireless charging feature on the Galaxy S23 FE and even the Galaxy S21 FE.

The previous gen Galaxy S23 FE was well received in the market and didn’t have any glaring issues or standout features in particular. It was a solid package and made certain improvements over the S21 FE, mainly the design. However some felt that the camera didn’t feel as capable as Samsung’s true flagship models. While the exact image sensors of the Galaxy S24 FE are still unknown, this is the same overall package as the Galaxy S23 FE. So there’s a chance we might not see any improvement in the photography side.

To recall, the Galaxy S24 FE is rumored to feature a 50-megapixel primary camera along with a 12-megapixel ultra wide angle lens and an 8-megapixel telephoto shooter with 3x optical zoom. For selfies and video calls, the front houses a 10-megapixel sensor.

Samsung typically launched its Galaxy S lineup in two variants, namely Snapdragon and Exynos. So depending on the region, you’ll get a Galaxy S24 with either a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC or Exynos 2400. The former has always been faster than the brand’s proprietary chipset but with the Galaxy S24 FE, we might getting only an Exynos option.

Rumors have also hinted that the chip under the hood is an underclocked version dubbed the Exynos 2400e. This might be the company’s way to cut costs on cooling or some other reason. So it probably won’t be as powerful as some of the other new affordable flagship phones out there.