Samsung Galaxy S24 FE Packs AI Features Into a Lower-Priced Phone [CNET]

The phone includes the Galaxy S24’s AI features while stepping down in other areas to hit its more affordable price.

Samsung’s $650 Galaxy S24 FE offers newer AI features at a lower price than the standard $800 Galaxy S24. The phone was revealed Thursday during a launch event at the company’s Samsung 837 store in New York. It will be available to order on Oct. 3. 

The phone includes many of the features found on earlier Galaxy S24 phones, including Galaxy AI features such as Live Translation, Circle to Search, Generative Edit for removing unwanted objects from photos and Note Assist for formatting, translating and summarizing notes. It’ll come with seven years of software updates along with security updates like the S24, further signaling how Samsung is bridging the gap between its more budget-friendly and high-end devices. Samsung’s emphasis on Galaxy AI also underscores that it sees the technology as being a critical part of its mobile devices moving forward, coming after Apple touted Apple Intelligence as being a key feature in the iPhone 16. 

The Galaxy S24 FE has a 6.7-inch AMOLED display and a 4,700-mAh battery. Its design felt similar to last year’s Galaxy S23 FE during my brief hands-on with the phone. Placing the S23 FE — which has a 6.4-inch display — next to the new phone, you can see the S24 FE’s body is slightly taller to accommodate the larger display. I’m also hopeful the S24 FE’s larger 4,700mAh battery — up from the S23 FE’s 4,500mAh — will help it last longer. I had found last year’s phone drained faster than I had expected, often ending my testing days with 12% to 20% of battery life.

The S24 FE has a 50-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel telephoto lens with a 3x optical zoom and a 12-megapixel ultrawide lens, which on paper sounds similar to the Galaxy S24’s camera setup and is nearly identical to the S23 FE. 

Samsung’s $800 phone also has a 50-megapixel main camera and a 12-megapixel ultrawide, but it comes with a 10-megapixel telephoto camera. But Samsung is also hyping up its new ProVisual camera engine, which it says uses AI to improve detail 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 kitchen counter. 

My photos using the wide, ultrawide and telephoto all show off the textures of the pastries, but I’d need to take the phone to more environments with different lighting to get a better idea on how the cameras would perform in the real world.

The photo I took using the 10-megapixel front-facing camera focuses on my face well, but I do notice that details behind me, like the people in the background along with a sign over my shoulder, become blurred.

The S24 FE will run on Samsung’s Exynos 2400e processor, breaking from the Qualcomm processors used on the flagship Galaxy S24 phones and last year’s S23 FE. Samsung has used Exynos processors in its more affordable Galaxy A phones, and the choice to move to its own processor might be a reason the phone can hit a lower price. The company also says the Galaxy S24 FE has a larger vapor chamber for improved cooling while gaming. The phone will come in four colors: blue, mint, gray and graphite. Samsung’s announcement also included a yellow model, which was not on display at Thursday’s event.

The launch continues Samsung’s expansion of more value-oriented devices, including the $200 Galaxy Watch FE. Also announced at Thursday’s event was an LTE model of the Galaxy Watch FE, which will start at $250. Samsung also unveiled its new line of S10 tablets at Thursday’s event.

Samsung has spent much of 2024 touting its Galaxy AI suite of tools, and the Galaxy S24 FE is further evidence of that direction. Samsung is just one of several phone makers going all-in on AI. Both Google and Apple also used AI as the focal point of their most recent phone launches in August and September, respectively.

According to a CNET survey in partnership with YouGov, a quarter of smartphone owners don’t find AI features on phones helpful. Instead, longer battery life and more storage are the top reasons smartphone owners upgrade their devices, the survey found.