Samsung's upcoming iPhone 16e rival is shaping up to be a value champion
Though the design remains identical, the Galaxy S25 FE will reportedly be thinner (7.4mm vs 8mm), according to SammyGuru. Another notable upgrade is the front camera, which is reportedly getting a more powerful 12-megapixel sensor, similar to the mainline Galaxy S25 smartphone.
The build is going to be IP68-certified for dust and water resistance, while Gorilla Glass Victus will shield the device. The Galaxy S24 FE received some flak for its 'cheap and hollow' in-hand feel. We are hoping that with a thinner and lighter form factor, Samsung has also paid some attention to the build quality on its successor.
What could set it apart?
As per leaks account @MysteryLupin, the upcoming Fan Edition phone by Samsung will come fitted with a smaller 4,500 mAh battery. For comparison, the Galaxy S24 FE is equipped with a 4,700mAh battery. The difference is not huge, but it appears Samsung will make it worth the sacrifice.
6.7″ AMOLED, 120Hz
Exynos 2400, One UI 8
50MP/12MP/8MP, 12MP front
4,500mAh battery, 45W wired, 15W wireless
IP68, Gorilla Glass Victus, 190g https://t.co/9nscwbZ5mI — Arsène Lupin (@MysteryLupin) August 1, 2025
The latest leak claims 45W wired charging capability on the upcoming phone, up from 25W charging limit on its predecessor. To recall, Samsung only offers 45W charging on its top-end phones, such as the $1,299 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. For comparison, the Galaxy S25 FE is going to cost nearly half as much.
Recommended Videos
In addition to faster wired top-up, the next Samsung 'budget flagship' will retain 15W wireless charging and the ability to juice up other devices using reverse wireless power share. From the looks of it, Samsung's next could easily beat Apple's iPhone 16e on practical merits.
What else is on the table?
On the software side, it will run Android 16-based One UI 8 software out of the box. So far, the latest One UI skin is only available on Samsung's 2025 foldable phones, while the S25 series phones are still awaiting their turn after the beta testing kicked into action a few weeks ago.
As for the rest of the hardware, it seems not much is going to change, save for the year-on-year silicon upgrade. The Galaxy S25 FE is said to get the Exynos 2400 processor, which is slightly more powerful than the Exynos 2400e chip inside its predecessor.
Over at the front, the phone will reportedly feature a familiar 6.7-inch OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. In the imaging department, it will likely offer a 50-megapixel main camera, a 12-megapixel sensor for ultrawide capture, and a 10-megapixel sensor for long-range photography.
If the price remains unchanged, somehow, the Galaxy S25 FE will have no trouble outshining the iPhone 16e at a $50 premium. So far, Samsung hasn't made any official announcement regarding the Galaxy S25 FE, but given the past launch history, we're expecting a market arrival in the coming weeks.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Target salaries revealed: How much the retailer pays software engineers and other tech workers
Target was an early player in omni-channel retail and is one of the more tech-forward brands. The company has built a large tech workforce, and data suggest its workers are paid well. For example, a principal engineer can make a base salary of as much as $353,000, per filings. Target is continuing to invest in its tech workforce as it tries to recapture the success it saw a few years ago. EVP and operating chief Michael Fiddelke told investors in May that harnessing tech and AI would be critical to his work in the company's newly formed office that aims to accelerate its growth plan. The Bullseye retailer has long brought a tech-savviness to its business that has set it apart from most other retailers: it first launched its e-commerce website in 1999, and its early engagement with mobile pickup and delivery services gave Target a massive lift during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, the company employs a large tech team behind its increasingly complex business of physical stores, e-commerce business, retail media, and more. And it pays well, salary data suggests. Company filings with the US Department of Labor show Target sought to hire around 94 workers through the US H-1B visa program in the first half of this reporting year, largely in software development, information systems, and data science. That number is up substantially from about 49 for the same period the years before, but roughly in line with the 98 records from two years ago. By comparison, big-box rival Walmart has about four times as many US employees and requested visas for 1,750 workers. Companies are required to submit this work visa data, which includes salary information, to the US Department of Labor for all foreign hires. However, the compensation figures don't include equity or other benefits that employees can receive in addition to their base pay. The filings also include industry average pay rates for US workers. Business Insider analyzed how much money companies from Apple to Walmart are paying for tech jobs and other roles. Explore salary data from America's biggest employers. Target has about 440,000 full-time, part-time, and seasonal employees. Its starting wage for US hourly workers is $15 to $24. A Target spokesperson told Business Insider the company also offers retirement fund matching and a range of other benefits such as employee discounts. The vast majority of the 10,777 jobs listed on Target's careers website at the time of this writing were for positions in the company's fleet of 1,978 stores. Within the 230 corporate openings, 139 were for the company's offices in India, and the rest were based in the US headquarters in Minnesota. The job listings included salary ranges. Here's a deeper look at some of the roles Target disclosed for tech workers: Software engineers can earn up to $353,000 Senior Engineer: $103,605 to $184,700 Lead Engineer: $136,926 to $240,200 Principal Engineer: $122,741 to $353,000 Data scientists can make more than $122,000 Senior Data Scientist: $122,637 to $184,700 Lead Data Analyst: $139,298 to $200,200 Lead Data Scientist: $128,000 to $273,500 Principal Data Scientist: $211,536 to $347,600 Director-level roles can bring in over $206,000 Director Engineering: $206,398 to $289,700 Director Tech: $206,398 to $289,700 Principal Technical Program Manager: $251,576 to $311,900 Read the original article on Business Insider Sign in to access your portfolio
Android Authority
2 hours ago
- Android Authority
Building a DIY TV box made me realize how awful Google TV really is
Robert Triggs / Android Authority Like many affordable smart TVs, mine runs on a frankly garbage processor that makes trawling through my TV's updated Google TV interface a real chore. Quad‑core Cortex‑A55 CPUs are pretty standard but also as cheap as they come, and paired with a tight-fisted 1.5GB RAM, it's easy to see why the UI experience is just so bad on my TV and many others. Thankfully, there are plenty of options to escape the confines of cheap TV processors, including various Android TV boxes and the much-loved NVIDIA Shield. But I'm a big fan of making do with the kit I already have, and an old Raspberry Pi 4 has been sitting dormant on my desk for far too long. Does your Android TV box suffer from performance issues? 912 votes Yes, it's a huge problem 43 % Yes, but only now and again 40 % No, it doesn't 17 % On paper, the Raspberry Pi 4 looks like a solid candidate for running Android TV. With four Cortex‑A72 cores, up to 4 GB of RAM, and built‑in HEVC 4K HDR decoding, the Pi 4 (and its successor Pi 5) should handily outpace cheap TV chipsets — and even nudge closer to Shield territory. So over the last weekend, I set about seeing what I could get this aging box to do. Thankfully, I didn't have to start entirely from scratch. The brilliant KonstaKang maintains LineageOS Android TV builds for various Raspberry Pi devices. I grabbed the 22 build for my Raspberry Pi 4 based on Android 15, slapped in on my speedy Samsung T2 SSD to avoid microSD card performance bottlenecks. I won't repeat the installation instructions, as it is as simple as flashing the .zip file, tweaking one line in a file, and plugging into the Pi. Hello, Android TV, my old friend Robert Triggs / Android Authority I was instantly pleased on boot to be treated by the 'classic' Android TV interface — no flashy banner ads, just space for my apps. While even I find the barebones look of the interface to be a little stark, at least it's functional and has everything you want exactly where you need it. I can't say the same about the eclectic Google TV interface, which I despise from both performance and ad-infestation perspectives. The drawback is that Google services aren't pre-installed (more on that in a minute), so you must manually load up specific TV APKs. USB storage works fine, and APKs are dotted around for various streaming platforms. After flashing Widevine L3 for DRM, I tried to load up an Amazon Prime video, and although I could sign in and the app ran smoothly, I encountered nondescript playback issues. Perhaps some platforms require more secure Widevine L1, but I couldn't find a patch for a custom Android TV setup. Jellyfin and YouTube ran perfectly fine, however — no app‑launch lags, instant playback seeking, zero back‑button delay. It feels like a breath of fresh air compared to my TV experience. Barebones Android TV runs almost flawlessly on the modest Raspiberry Pi 4. Sadly, there's another drawback: 10-bit 4K content doesn't play back smoothly on the Raspberry Pi 4. The platform has had a troubled history with FFMPEG decoding, and it's clear that Android's capabilities don't leverage its hardware acceleration as well as other platforms. However, trimming back to a lower bitrate 4K HEVC file seems to work just fine, and 1080p is flawless. The setup is usable for self-hosted media, at least. For the full modern Android TV experience, you would want the Play Store, account integration, and perhaps even the modern Google TV interface. Flashing these additional Google services for Android TV 15 isn't difficult, but that's where things went horribly wrong. You can install essentially two levels of GAPPS on an Android TV: the minimal version, which contains core Google services, and the full version that comes with the Google TV UI. I initially tried the first option, for a decent halfway house: the classic TV interface with access to the Play Store and other service integrations. Performance took a bit of a hit here, though. The system definitely started pausing when loading up apps and switching menus, which it wasn't doing before. Still, everything continued to work, and grabbing apps was admittedly easier. Robert Triggs / Android Authority Out of curiosity, I then flashed the full GAPPS package, and oh boy, was that a mistake. The Google TV interface really cooks my Raspberry Pi (quite literally, it quickly became hot to the touch), and it runs like a snail. Those homescreen ads aren't just an eyesore; they kill performance. It took me an age to log in to my Google account; it simply kept closing the login screen and sending me back to the start. The Play Store became far more agonizing to navigate. Apps that were previously lightning fast now took several seconds to open and load content. Thankfully, once you're in an app and the main UI is pushed to the background, performance picks up again, but menus remain sluggish, and I encountered regular hangs and crashes. Everything was working great until I installed the Google TV UI. With the only change being the addition of Google's TV interface, it's hard not to agree with my initial assessment that it's a bloated nightmare that makes weak TV hardware even more lethargic. Perhaps optimization is an issue for the Raspberry Pi. Still, whatever Google services run in the background — account syncing, ad serving, data harvesting, and whatever else — don't agree with low-end hardware already stretched running the barebones Android TV OS. Google TV isn't the platform for me Ryan Haines / Android Authority As someone who mostly binges old shows from my DIY NAS, I'm in the admittedly rare position of seldom stumping up for a streaming service and, therefore, don't really need the bloated overkill of the Android TV ecosystem. As such, there are a couple of far better Linux-based options to run on DIY TV projects — namely, LibreELEC and OSMC. These Kodi platforms are primarily designed around local media playback or plugging into your home Plex or Jellyfin servers. However, there are also unofficial add-ons to access your Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube streaming accounts, so you don't have to totally miss out on streaming capabilities here either. So I gave them a try as well. While a stripped-down media hub won't be for everyone, for pure playback, LibreELEC and OSMC on the Pi 4 obliterate my Google TV: menu navigation never skips, and playback controls are instantly responsive — a night-and-day difference. Furthermore, their focus on playback has allowed them to implement smooth 4K HDR playback on the humble Raspberry Pi, so they outperform my Pi-based Android experience there as well. When it comes to DIY media box projects, Google TV is the worst setup I tried. While I might not have been able to build a flawless Android alternative to my sluggish smart TV, I have come away with a drastically different view of what I really want from a living-room platform. Google TV has undoubtedly fallen into the service feature-creep pit, focusing heavily on flashy banners, sprawling UI integrations, and ad revenue generation, at the expense of snappy performance and instant content delivery. Every extra step that Google throws on top of simple content playback ups the CPU and RAM requirements. This might be fine on platforms that pack as much punch as a mid-range smartphone, but TVs are all too often cheap and incapable of running Google's extra bauballs smoothly enough for a solid experience. The fact that Google wants to lower the requirements for Google TV has already set my alarm bells ringing. Joe Maring / Android Authority Funnily enough, Plex's controversial Universal Search and content discovery options run far smoother and arguably do a better job than Google's OS. This includes rating, comments, and watchlist all under one roof, and a single click to jump to the content from platforms you are actually subscribed to, all while keeping demanding UI flourishes to a minimum. My Google TV, by comparison, still serves generic ads for services I don't pay for and lags its way through dressing up online content previews with fancy transitions. Yes, some apps surface what you want quickly enough, but others are an insufferable labyrinth of sub-menus and performance problems. For instance, the UK's ITVX app notoriously runs like an absolute snail, making for an inconsistent browsing experience. I wish Google would build something as fast and slick as Plex or Kodi. Overall, I'm not sure that the traditional app-based approach is really what I want from my next TV platform. Yes, the idea of running Android on everything is nice, and it undoubtedly helps the platform that developers can target your TV and phone almost simultaneously. However, phones and TV are inherently different in the way we consume content, and a TV-first platform really should be focused on serving up content as painlessly as possible. Google TV obviously set out to do this, but it hasn't accomplished that goal particularly well in terms of either features or performance; it's just another layer running on top of apps, running on top of an OS, without the tight integration with actual content that a good media server ideally needs. No wonder affordable smart TVs continue to run like absolute garbage. Google TV's service‑first, ad‑heavy model may suit powerful set‑tops, but its background and UI bloat on budget models overwhelm the hardware. I'd rather run Kodi or barebones Android TV on my Pi than let Google's extras bog down my living‑room experience. Follow
Tom's Guide
4 hours ago
- Tom's Guide
I'm a TV expert who's picky about performance — these are the 5 TVs I'd buy for under $500 right now
As a TV expert, I field my fair share of questions about the best TVs money can buy, but I get asked about cheap TVs from friends, family and readers more than anything else. It makes sense: Not everyone is looking for high-end performance or fancy features they might not ever use. With the summer winding down and the season of sales rapidly approaching, I thought I'd put together an up-to-the-minute, top-five list of my favorite TVs under $500. They're not peak performers, but they're much better than flimsy, bottom-of-the-barrel sets. My name is Michael, and for over ten years I've been the person everyone in my immediate circle asks for advice when the time comes to upgrade their TV. I don't mind, though, because affordable TVs are often the hardest to shop for. There's a thin line between an low-cost, reliable TV and a cheap, undependable one — and I'm quite familiar with it. The Samsung Q7F is on deck for testing, so we can't speak to its performance metrics, but I've seen this TV in person and I'm confident that it's a reliable pick for folks shopping at or below $500. The Q7F doesn't feature local dimming (or Mini-LEDs, for that matter), so if you can justify the extra $50, I still recommend the Panasonic W95A and the TCL QM6K over it due to their superior display technology. Nevertheless, the Q7F is a quantum dot-enhanced Samsung TV, which should fit the needs of someone who's especially appreciative of the Samsung aesthetic. Remember: No Samsung TV supports Dolby Vision, so adjust your expectations accordingly. The Samsung Q7F isn't as flashy as some of the other TVs on this list, but if you're a fan of Samsung software and design, it'll meet your needs for under $500. Just keep in mind that this TV doesn't support Dolby Vision, the most popular enhanced HDR format. This is by far my favorite TV on this list. The Panasonic W95A impressed me when it debuted last year at $1,299. Now that it's below $500, I think it's one of the best-kept secrets on the market. The W95A not only delivers exceptional brightness (which is critical if you get a lot of watching done during the day), it also features terrific backlight control. These two performance features put it well ahead of every other TV on this list. I should mention that the W95A is a Fire TV, meaning it leverages Amazon's Fire TV operating system for all of the built-in streaming features. Fire TV is not my favorite platform, as its UI is relatively cluttered and navigation can be sluggish at times. Still, at this price point, the W95A's sensational performance makes it easy to look past these shortcomings. Panasonic's fantastic Mini-LED TV has never been more affordable, so it's worth pouncing on this right away. You're not just getting a great sale price with the W95A, you're also getting a superb, 55-inch Mini-LED TV loaded with extra features. We dug this TV when it was over a thousand bucks, and we really dig it now that it's below $500. If you're shopping at the 55-inch size point and the Panasonic W95A doesn't suit your taste, check out the TCL QM6K, another Mini-LED TV that's currently on sale for a hair below $500. You can peruse our TCL QM6K review for a full report, but here's what I love about this TV: It's just bright enough for the average living room and it comes with Google TV baked right in. For most people shopping in this price range, Google TV is a great software suite to have in one's back pocket. It's easy to use and offers top-tier app support. If the inclusion of Fire TV scared you away from the Panasonic W95A, the 55-inch QM6K might be a better choice. The QM6K represents one of the most affordable ways to land a Mini-LED TV at the 55-inch size point. Google TV is available right out of the box, and the TV's relatively modest Mini-LED backlight keeps scenes visually appealing. It also comes with a handful of useful gaming features. Roku TVs tend to be laser-focused at the type of TV-shopper who just wants a dependable, easy-to-use smart TV, and the 65-inch Roku Plus Series is just that. Why do I love the Roku experience so much? There are three reasons: Its app support is among the best you'll find, there are minimal ads across the user interface and, as mentioned, it's incredibly easy to use. From a performance standpoint, this TV isn't as impressive as the previous two, but you are getting quantum dot-color for your troubles. The Roku Plus Series' superb software is the real selling point. The Roku Plus Series is a perfect fit for folks who just need an easy-to-use TV above all else. Thanks to Roku's excellent app support and minimal ad experience, the Plus Series is the most user-friendly TV on this list. If you passed on the aforementioned, 55-inch TCL QM6K because you're looking for a 65-inch model, why not go for the step-down QM5K? Full disclosure: We haven't tested the QM5K yet, but given its place in TCL's 2025 TV lineup and some of its specs, I'm confident that this set is worth a look. Like the QM6K, the QM5K arrives with Google TV. It also features Mini-LED backlighting (though it probably doesn't wring as much out of this feature as the higher-end QM6K). Still, it's a 65-inch TV for under $500, so it's worth checking out. The QM5K arrives with built-in Google TV features for all of your streaming needs, plus Dolby Vision support. Its handiest feature is its Mini-LED backlighting. If the 55-inch QM6K is too small, the 65-inch QM5K is a good compromise for around the same price.
