If you’ve been eagerly awaiting Samsung’s long-teased trifold phone or Project Moohan XR headset, the company’s IFA launches may feel a little prosaic: an affordable spinoff of its flagship phone line, and a pair of Android tablets. The Galaxy S25 FE and Tab S11 series may not be Samsung’s most exciting launches of the year, but they’re the bread-and-butter basics that will drive its sales figures more than an experimental foldable ever could.
The S25 FE phone is an especially modest update. Samsung has focused on making it thinner and lighter than the S24 FE — just 7.4mm thick and 190g in weight — but the design is otherwise strikingly similar. This is nowhere near as slender as the S25 Edge, but it’s pretty much the exact same size and weight as the Galaxy S25 Plus, which should help make the FE a more compelling option in the lineup.
It comes in four colors — white, black, light blue, and navy blue — all of which have the same silvery trim on the camera rings and frame. Build quality almost matches the Plus too, with an IP68 rating, Armor Aluminum frame, and only a slight downgrade to Gorilla Glass Victus Plus on the display. It all means that for the first time the FE looks and feels every inch the flagship the “S25” in its name suggests, even if limitations elsewhere hold it back from competing with the rest of the S25 line.
The cameras, for one. The triple rear camera setup here is unchanged from last year, which we decided was “just fine,” though the selfie camera has had a modest bump from 10 megapixels to 12. The battery has a smidge more capacity than before at 4,900mAh (despite the phone’s smaller size), and charges faster, with 45W wired charging. The chipset has technically improved year-on-year, but just barely: the Exynos 2400 here is an identical chip to the S24 FE’s 2400e, but with a fractionally higher clock speed. There’s wireless support too, but like other Samsung phones (and unlike the recent Google Pixel 10 line), this is only “Qi2 Ready,” meaning you’ll need a case equipped with magnets to take advantage of magnetic wireless charging.
As for software, the FE is the first Samsung phone to ship with One UI 8, the company’s take on Android 16, which will roll out this month to the other S25 handsets. It will get plenty of those phones’ AI features, including multimodal Gemini support and the Now Bar and Now Brief tools, and will see a total of seven years’ worth of Android version updates and security patches.
The “thinner and lighter” approach extends to the tablets too. Samsung still seems indecisive about which models to keep in its lineup: while last year saw it launch only the Tab S10 Plus and S10 Ultra, this year it’s dropped the Plus and will release an 11-inch Tab S11 and 14.6-inch S11 Ultra. Each shaves about 30g off compared to its closest predecessor, and the Ultra is now an impressive 5.1mm thick — less than a millimeter thicker than the Z Fold 7 when it’s open. That doesn’t stop the Ultra from feeling absolutely enormous though; this isn’t really a handheld device, and still feels best suited to pairing with a keyboard case so it can serve as a laptop replacement.
The bigger redesign has arguably been saved for the S Pen stylus. This has been reimagined with a hexagonal grip that’s closer in style to a traditional pencil and more comfortable to hold as a result. A new cone-shaped tip has the same effect, and also allows you to tilt the stylus further, giving a little more control while drawing. Samsung has also moved the magnetic attachment and charging point from the back of the tablet to its side — a welcome move, speaking as someone who lost an S Pen sliding a Tab S8 into a backpack because the stylus clipped the bag.
If those sound like small tweaks, the bad news is that they’re the biggest upgrades here. Yes, both tablets have had the requisite processor bump to the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 Plus, but cameras, storage, and charging all remain unchanged. The S11 Ultra gets a modest 400mAh battery bump, to 11,600mAh total; the regular S11 doesn’t even get that, staying at the 8,400mAh set by the Tab S9 two years ago.
Like the S25 FE, both tablets will ship with One UI 8, and pack the same software support and litany of AI features. There are some tablet-specific software tricks, but they’re limited to Samsung’s DeX desktop mode, which now includes the option to extend your display to an external monitor, and support for up to four custom workspaces, with different setups for work versus entertainment. There’s also the dubious bonus of four preinstalled third-party AI productivity apps — Notion, LumaFusion, Goodnotes, and Clip Studio Point — which offer free trials and discounts for Tab S11 owners.
All three of Samsung’s new products are available now. The S25 FE starts from $649.99, the Tab S11 from $799.99, and the Tab S11 Ultra from $1,199.99.
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