Samsung appears to be recycling plenty of old hardware for the Galaxy S26 FE
John McCann / Digital Trends
Samsung’s upcoming “budget” flagship has leaked so many times over the past few months that there is not much left for the company to reveal. We have already seen its colors, redesigned camera housing, older processor, and familiar cameras. Now, a new leak appears to have filled in nearly the entire spec sheet.
WinFuture has obtained detailed specifications for the Galaxy S26 FE, pointing to a 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a 2340 x 1080 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and brightness reaching 1,900 nits in high-brightness mode. The phone is expected to come in Graphite, Pistachio, and Blueberry.
The older chip is no longer much of a surprise
The leak once again points toward Samsung’s Exynos 2500 paired with 8GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of storage. We already covered an alleged Geekbench result for the phone in April, where the older chip trailed the Exynos 2600 inside the regular Galaxy S26 series by a sizeable margin.
The cameras are looking equally familiar. WinFuture lists a 50MP main camera with optical image stabilization, an ultrawide camera, and an 8MP telephoto offering 3x optical zoom. A 12MP camera sits on the front. An earlier leak already suggested Samsung would recycle much of the Galaxy S25 FE’s camera hardware, so there are few surprises here.
At least the battery gets some attention
The Galaxy S26 FE is said to pack a 4,900mAh battery and support 45W charging, which is exactly what Samsung already offers on the Galaxy S25 FE. The more interesting part is the battery chemistry. WinFuture believes Samsung may have switched to silicon-carbon technology.
If accurate, Samsung could be taking a similar approach to the Galaxy Z Flip 8. The foldable retained the same battery capacity as its predecessor, but the newer battery technology helped Samsung make the device slimmer. The Galaxy S26 FE could follow the same playbook, using silicon-carbon to reduce thickness rather than squeeze in a larger battery. Other specifications include IP68 protection, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, Android 17, and One UI.
The phone is expected to cost €799 in the European market, which is €50 more than the launch price of the Galaxy S25 FE. Considering the current market conditions around RAM and storage, that price increase doesn’t look too bad, and Samsung has already warned that its future devices could get pricier due to rising component costs. Still, an older processor, familiar cameras, and no increase in the battery department could make the price harder to justify.
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