The Samsung Galaxy S24 FE seems like it’s the S24 Plus but wrapped in a more affordable package. But did the cost-saving hurt the phone’s overall flagship experience? Well, I have that answer after using this phone for a week.
Design & Build
At first glance, it looks very similar to the S24 Plus but with a few differences.
The S24 FE is just slightly taller and wider than the S24 Plus, and it also comes with a flat and glossy glass back instead of the matte finish on the S24. It’s a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but since the color variant that I have here is in Blue, where it is bright, so it was not that visible.
And if you’re the kind of person who gets your phone scratched easily, the good news is that it comes with the Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ at the back. The flat aluminum sides feel really good in the hands, making the phone really solid too, and it’s also IP68 rated.
The camera placement is identical to the S24 and the S24 Plus, but the camera bumps are a little raised compared to those two phones. And yes, I will discuss the cameras later on.
So yes, like the flagship, the phone’s design and build were indeed flagship-level quality, so huge points for that. But how does it fare in terms of display quality and brightness? Well, that is what I’ll cover next.
Display
The bezels on the phone are thicker than the S24 Plus. Now, this is because the phone doesn’t use an LTPO Super AMOLED display like the S24 Plus; instead, it uses the more mainstream Super AMOLED display.
And while the display doesn’t go as bright as the S24, at max brightness of only 1900 nits, it was still very good because I had no issues here in a very bright studio or even under bright sunlight.
Now, Samsung is quite known to produce some very high-quality displays on smartphones, and I’m happy to say that they haven’t left out their magic here, since this FE has a beautiful screen, great color saturation, and lovely deep blacks.
Even though there’s no adjustable screen resolution, I felt that it didn’t matter at all, as the screen quality was already really great. Even the large bezels are quickly forgotten the more I use the phone daily, especially with a nice and flat screen design.
Then finally, the optical fingerprint sensor at the bottom was very fast and accurate and had a very nice placement on the screen as well.
Cameras
In terms of the camera performance, the cameras are using a similar setup as on the S24 Plus, with a 50MP wide camera and a 12MP ultra-wide camera as well.
It does lose out a bit on the telephoto camera, with an 8MP compared to the S24 Plus’ 10MP telephoto camera. There’s also the 10MP selfie camera, again slightly smaller than the 12MP on the S24 Plus.
But enough talking about specs, let’s see how the camera performs, shall we?
The phone produces fantastic images, it is definitely one of the best in the business, especially for smartphones within this price range. The images produced by this phone have sharp and nicely saturated colors.
While some may have said before that Samsung often produces overly saturated and processed colors, I personally felt that they have lowered that down recently, with more true-to-life colors.
Based on my test, I did notice a bit of haloing going on when taking pictures against a white background. And while it’s not really distracting, it’s something that probably should be pointed out.
Then, the main lens has up to 5x zoom and still produces excellent results without any significant quality loss. Even the 30x zoom produces somewhat of a great quality picture, although I’m not sure who is going to be using this particular mode and going all full spy mode—unless you’re trying to see what your neighbors are up to. Otherwise, just don’t use that mode; 30x zoom, no point.
Then, portrait shots are also quite good, where the blurred lines don’t look too artificial, and the phone managed to pick out the details really well. However, when it comes to objects, the camera struggles a bit to distinguish certain details.
Then, the ultra-wide camera also delivers amazing results, and the color consistency between the ultra-wide lens and the main camera was really great, with no lens distortion even present at all.
Then, when it comes to the night shots, the pictures also look good, and the camera has an auto-night mode built-in, which produces pictures with great detail and solid contrasts.
However, the dedicated night mode brings up the overall contrast, producing an even better balance of the details and the shadows as well. So it’s nice that Samsung has provided the auto-night mode and the dedicated night mode for you to see which fits you the best.
Then, selfie pictures also look really great, where the pictures are sharp during the day, and the skin tone looks natural, which does not make you look like Annabelle from The Conjuring movies, which some smartphones tend to do, especially within this price range.
Then, portrait selfies also look good, with the results looking very similar to the portrait shots taken by the rear camera.
But the selfie pictures really struggle in low light, so I would just totally avoid taking random selfies in the dark, not only because people might think that you’re a weirdo, but the pictures won’t turn out as good as the daytime shots.
Video
[Sample video footage available in my YouTube video]
Then, as for video, the phone did much better than I thought it would. It can capture up to 8K at 30 frames per second, and the quality of the videos taken is spectacular. So if you’re someone who loves to take videos on your phone, you’ll be very happy with this.
The default stabilization was also surprisingly very good, with no warping issues that could make your video look very jelly-like. As usual, it has the Super Steady mode, which basically uses the ultra-wide camera to shrink it to have a more stable video, but honestly, by 4K, it still looked very great.
Then, as for video taken at night, it also looks decent, although it’s not as good as the ones taken during the day. But it was still quite bright, even in low-light conditions as well, where the image stabilization also works wonders here.
So yeah, guys, all in all, the cameras on this phone can proudly stand toe to toe with its bigger brothers here, probably not so much on the selfie photos at night, but if you’re more into gaming, you want to hear what’s coming up because this phone has some surprises in store.
[Audio test available in my YouTube video]
Gaming
As for gaming, firstly, in case you didn’t know, this phone comes with the Exynos 2400e chipset, which is the same chipset for all of the S24 FE models all around the world. So yeah, there’s no superior version of the Snapdragon version of this phone.
Now, this Exynos 2400e chipset is slightly an underclocked version of the Exynos 2400 in the S24 and the S24 Plus. And while it’s not powerful compared to the flagships, it makes up for better thermals and a more balanced overall performance.
So I had a similar gaming experience on this phone as I did on the S24 Plus, and I managed to play all of the games I threw at it almost flawlessly.
I played a lot of COD Mobile at max settings, and the frame rate stayed consistently at 120 frames even after an hour of gameplay. And of course, I had to test Genshin Impact, where I had a great time at max settings, where the frame rates were very smooth, running about 30 to 40 frames.
But be prepared for an increase of warmth after very long game plays. But don’t worry, it’s not hot enough to fry an egg, just warm enough to remind you that it’s working really hard and for you to stop playing games and start working more.
And if you’re wondering how is the battery life during heavy usage like this, let’s get into that next.
Battery
So the phone comes with a 4,700 mAh battery, and while it sounds small, but so far I had no issues going through the whole day with just a single charge. I managed to get a total screen-on time of about 7 hours and 32 minutes with quite heavy use of messaging, social media apps, and even very heavy gaming.
It supports max fast charging speeds up to 25W, and while it’s not the fastest by any means, I can still get about maybe 50% with around 30 minutes of charging, and that is fast enough for me.
Software
As of the timing of this review, the software on this phone is at OneUI version 6.1, so it comes with all of the latest features that Samsung has to offer.
As you all know, the biggest thing about OneUI version 6.1 is the addition of Galaxy AI, which is a very big step in the smartphone AI world, being the first to introduce features like Circle to Search, Live Translate, Note Assist, and more.
And now with OneUI version 6.1.1, it comes with the latest AI features such as the Portrait Studio and Sketch to Image where all of these features work incredibly well and enhance the overall experience using this phone daily.
Apart from Galaxy AI, all of the other OneUI features are still present over here, and it’s still one of my personal favorite Android skins so far. Now, sure, it’s not flashy like some other skins out there, but I just love how cool, clean, and very intuitive some of the features are.
But one thing that Samsung does way better than any other Android smartphone brand is the fact that it gets software support up to a whopping 7 years of software and security support, so if you do the math, it has official support until October 2031! That is amazing if you really think about that.
Conclusion
So in conclusion, this Samsung Galaxy S24 FE is a fantastic device that perfectly carries on the FE legacy, and it is a worthy addition to the S24 series. It’s got great cameras, a great UI, a beautiful display, and it can game very well too.
It starts at a price of RM3,299, which is about USD 766. Now sure, there is a case to be made that if you spend a bit more, you can get the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, which is overall a better device, but if you want to save some money, then this phone is a huge no-brainer.
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