Samsung's Next Affordable Galaxy Phone Has Surfaced Online

Samsung is seemingly gearing up to introduce the successor to its Galaxy S25 FE smartphone. Likely to be dubbed the Galaxy S26 FE, this relatively affordable flagship from the South Korean tech giant has shown up in live shots on the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) website. WPC is the organization that maintains the Qi wireless charging standard and lists the certified products on its website. The Galaxy S26 FE was likely sent to WPC certification ahead of its official launch, leading to its appearance on the WPC website. Although WPC has since replaced the Galaxy S26 FE pictures with a generic "coming soon" graphic, you can still spot them in an archived version of the webpage on the Wayback Machine. The listing was first spotted by folks at 9to5Google.

This Galaxy S26 FE appearance on the WPC portal suggests an impending launch announcement; however, if the typical release schedule of previous Galaxy S-series FE models is any indication, we'll likely have to wait until September or October to see its official debut. Although Samsung has yet to reveal anything official about the phone, the WPC leak hints that the phone will carry the model number SM-S741. However, other details, such as support for Basic Power Profile (BPP) for 5W charging, seem like placeholders or initial testing results, as its predecessors have had 15W wireless charging support, and the Galaxy S25 FE is even Qi2-ready, but without a built-in magnetic ring.

Like the Galaxy S26, which features iterative changes over the Galaxy S25 both in terms of design and features, the Galaxy S26 FE isn't expected to be a massive departure from the S25 FE. The pictures posted on the WPC website show the phone will look pretty much like the Galaxy S25 FE, barring the Galaxy S26-like triple rear camera island design. The phone will likely have a typical glass-sandwich design with a hole-punch camera on the front and an aluminum frame. A similar design was also seen in the photos of an alleged Galaxy S26 FE case in early June. The actual specifications remain a mystery for now; however, a previous alleged appearance of the phone in the Geekbench database suggested the presence of the Exynos 2500 SoC, Android 17, and at least 8 GB of RAM.

All of this sounds plausible, as the company uses the Exynos 2400 SoC in the Galaxy S25 FE with 8 GB of RAM. However, one notable change may be in terms of the phone's display, which, according to The Elec, is being sourced from China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT), instead of Samsung Display, which has traditionally supplied nearly all OLED panels used in the company's high-end and mid-range phones. The change seems to have been driven by an effort to cut costs amid the rising memory and storage prices. If Samsung is indeed able to maintain the pricing by cutting costs, the Galaxy S26 FE will likely start at $650, in line with its predecessors, the Galaxy S25 FE and the Galaxy S24 FE.