Samsung Galaxy S24 FE combines AI features in a cheaper phone
Samsung’s $650 Galaxy S24 FE offers newer AI features at a lower price than the standard Galaxy S24 from $800. The phone was unveiled on Thursday at a launch event at the company’s Samsung 837 store in New York. It can be ordered from October 3.
The phone includes many of the features of previous Galaxy S24 phones, including Galaxy AI features like Live Translation, Circle to Search, Generative Edit for removing unwanted objects from photos, and Note Assist for formatting, translating, and summarizing notes. It comes with seven years of software updates and security updates like the S24, further showing how Samsung is bridging the gap between its more budget-friendly and high-end devices. Samsung’s emphasis on Galaxy AI also underlines that it sees the technology as a crucial part of the development of its mobile devices, after Apple touted Apple Intelligence as a key feature of the iPhone 16.
The purple Galaxy S23 FE next to the blue Galaxy S24 FE.
The Galaxy S24 FE has a 6.7-inch AMOLED display and a 4,700 mAh battery. The design resembled last year’s Galaxy S23 FE during my brief hands-on with the phone. If you place the S23 FE – which has a 6.4-inch screen – next to the new phone, you can see that the S24 FE’s body is slightly larger to accommodate the larger screen. I’m also hopeful that the S24 FE’s larger 4,700 mAh battery (versus the S23 FE’s 4,500 mAh) will help it last longer. I had noticed that last year’s phone drained its battery faster than I expected, often ending my testing days with 12% to 20% battery life.
The S24 FE has a 50-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide lens, which on paper sounds similar to the Galaxy S24’s camera setup and is virtually identical to the S23 FE.
Samsung’s $800 phone also has a 50-megapixel main camera and an ultrawide 12-megapixel camera, but comes with a 10-megapixel telephoto camera. But Samsung is also ramping up its new ProVisual camera engine, which it says uses AI to improve details and textures.
During my hands-on time, I took a few photos of the Samsung 837 showroom, including a display of muffins and chocolates on a counter.
Using the 50 megapixel wide-angle camera on the Galaxy S24 FE.
My wide-angle, ultra-wide-angle, and telephoto photos all show off the textures of the pastries, but I’d have to take the phone to more environments with different lighting to get a better idea of how the cameras would perform in the real world .
Muffins on the table with the 8 megapixel telephoto camera of the Galaxy S24 FE.
Muffins on the table with the 12 megapixel ultrawide camera of the Galaxy S24 FE.
The photo I took with the 10 megapixel front camera focuses well on my face, but I do notice that details behind me, such as the people in the background and a sign over my shoulder, are blurring.
Taken with the Galaxy S24 FE’s 10-megapixel selfie camera.
The S24 FE will run on Samsung’s Exynos 2400e processor, a departure from the Qualcomm processors used on last year’s flagship Galaxy S24 phones and S23 FE. Samsung has been using Exynos processors in its more affordable Galaxy A phones, and the decision to switch to a proprietary processor could be one reason the phone could become cheaper. The company also says that the Galaxy S24 FE has a larger vapor chamber for better cooling while gaming. The phone comes in four colors: blue, mint, gray and graphite. Samsung’s announcement also included a yellow model, which was not seen on Thursday.
The launch continues Samsung’s expansion of more value-oriented devices, including the $200 Galaxy Watch FE. An LTE model of the Galaxy Watch FE was also announced at Thursday’s event, which will start at $250. Samsung also unveiled its new line of S10 tablets at Thursday’s event.
The Galaxy S24 FE comes in blue, mint, gray and graphite. The gray model actually looks more like white.
Samsung has spent much of 2024 touting its Galaxy AI suite, and the Galaxy S24 FE is further evidence of that direction. Samsung is just one of many phone makers going all-in on AI. Both Google and Apple also used AI at the center of their most recent phone launches in August and September respectively.
Samsung’s Galaxy S24 FE will have AI features such as Circle to Search.
According to a survey by CNET in collaboration with YouGov, a quarter of smartphone owners do not find the AI features on phones useful. Instead, longer battery life and more storage space are the top reasons why smartphone owners upgrade their devices, the study found.
