Other Samsung Phones to Consider
If you don’t see a Samsung phone mentioned in this guide, it may be because it isn’t sold in the US and is a little harder to source for testing. But here are a few other Samsung phones we’ve tested.
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra for $2,100: An incremental upgrade over the Z Fold7, the Z Fold8 Ultra is for foldable phone fans who want the best and are willing to pay for it. The familiar book-style form factor offers a 6.5-inch cover screen, like a regular candy bar phone, and opens to give a tablet-sized 8-inch display with a fainter crease than before and a stronger hinge. Naturally, you get top-notch performance, all-day battery life, and Samsung’s best camera in a folding phone, with a 200-megapixel main shooter, 50-megapixel ultrawide, and 10-megapixel telephoto lens.
Photograph: Simon Hill
Samsung Galaxy S26 FE for $700: The Samsung Galaxy S26 FE is a perfectly decent phone with good battery life, a lovely big display, and a solid triple-camera system, but nothing about it justifies the extra $100 over last year’s almost identical S25 FE. The processor is slightly better, but that’s about it. In fact, Samsung downgraded the USB-C port to USB 2.0 in the S26 FE, so we think you’d be better off buying the S25 FE above while it’s still available.
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Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Z Fold7 for $2,000 or Z Flip7 for $1,100: If you want a Samsung foldable without the eye-watering price tag, consider 2025’s Galaxy Z Fold7 or Galaxy Z Flip7 if you can find them discounted. The Fold7 is a little thicker with a more prominent crease in the screen. The battery life isn’t great, and the ultrawide camera is weaker, but there isn’t a huge difference between it and the Fold8 Ultra. It’s a similar story for the Flip7, with the Flip8 bringing minor hinge improvements, a refined, lighter design with a less noticeable crease, a faster processor, and more useful software features for the outer display.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge for $1,300: Have you ever wanted a really thin and lightweight phone? No? Well, Samsung has an option for you anyway. The Galaxy S25 Edge was a unique one-off last year (it’s doubtful we’ll see a successor) and matches several features of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, like a titanium frame, stronger front glass, and 4K 120 frames per second video recording. All the cameras even have autofocus. But it made several sacrifices to achieve its amazingly slim 5.8-mm frame (for context, the S25 Ultra is 8.2-mm thick). There’s no stylus, no telephoto camera, and worst of all, the battery capacity has been slashed. We’ve seen this before—thin phones have always compromised on battery life, and this is no different. We constantly had to baby this phone’s 3,900-mAh battery with mixed usage, and that’s just not acceptable. (The iPhone Air did it better.) If you find yourself constantly near a power source and think you’ll enjoy the slim and light design, then go for it.
Samsung Galaxy A17 5G for $249: On paper, the Galaxy A17 seems like a really great deal. It offers six years of software support, an AMOLED screen, expandable storage, and a decent camera. Unfortunately, it’s held back by lackluster performance. The problem is the very limited 4 GB of RAM in the US model, which ruins the overall experience. If you had to use your smartphone in an emergency, I would not trust the A17 to be reliable. But if your needs are extremely minimal, it may suffice.
If you’re looking to save some cash, it’s fine to buy Samsung’s Galaxy S24 range from 2024, as long as the prices are a good deal lower than the original MSRP. (They’re hard to find at most major retailers.) These phones will still get support for a while, and they’re pretty great. I don’t think it’s worth buying anything older.
Should You Invest in Samsung’s Ecosystem?
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Samsung is one of the few smartphone manufacturers that can match Apple’s hardware ecosystem. The company makes smartphones, but you can also expand your experience with a Galaxy Watch8 smartwatch, Galaxy Buds4 Pro earbuds, Galaxy Ring fitness ring, Galaxy Tab S11, and even a Windows-powered Galaxy laptop.
There are perks, like some features on the Galaxy Ring and Watch8 being available only when paired with a Samsung phone, and its earbuds automatically switching between Samsung devices based on what you’re using. There aren’t many exclusive features when using a Galaxy phone with a Galaxy laptop, but capabilities like Quick Share let you send photos and documents between your devices (even to iPhones via AirDrop!).
Again, it’s not necessary, and these other devices might not be the right ones for you within their respective categories, but if you’re chasing hardware parity, you have that option with Samsung.
What Is Galaxy AI?
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
With the Galaxy S24 series, Samsung launched “Galaxy AI,” a selection of artificial intelligence features, many of which are powered by Google’s Gemini large language models. These enable smart features that may be helpful in your day-to-day, like real-time translations during phone calls, real-time transcriptions in Samsung’s Voice Recorder app, the ability to summarize long paragraphs of text in the Samsung Notes app, or changing a sentence’s tone with the Samsung Keyboard.
In the Galaxy S25 series, Galaxy AI expanded to include Gemini as the default voice assistant and the ability for Gemini to work with multiple apps simultaneously. It also debuted Drawing Assist, which lets you sketch or enter a prompt and get an AI-generated image. Now you can also use video in real time with Gemini, even from the cover screen of the Galaxy Z Flip7.
And in the Galaxy S26 series, the AI features got even more helpful. The Document Scanner built into the camera app can now erase fingers and creases and minimize distortion before converting the photo into a PDF. Audio Eraser is now available in any media app to reduce distracting background sounds in videos, so you can hear the subject clearly. And there’s now built-in call screening to better filter out robocalls. Samsung also debuted Google’s Task Automations in the Gemini assistant, allowing you to ask Gemini to book you an Uber or order something from DoorDash, Uber Eats, or GrubHub, though it’s pretty slow.
You can find many of these features in Settings > Galaxy AI to toggle them on or off. We also have an explainer on how to limit Galaxy AI to on-device processing.
What Is Samsung DeX?
Courtesy of David Nield
Samsung’s DeX (short for “desktop experience”) launched in 2017, and it lets you plug your Samsung phone into an external monitor and launch a desktop version of Android, all powered by the phone. You can find a list of compatible Samsung phones here—the Flip7 is the first Galaxy Flip to support DeX—and you’ll need a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, plus a cable to connect the phone to the monitor. (You can also cast DeX to select screens wirelessly.)
In DeX mode, you can resize Android apps and open them all in separate windows. It’s a proper computing platform, though you probably won’t want to use this as a permanent laptop replacement or anything of the sort. It’s great if you’re visiting another office, or working out of a coffee shop or airplane (if you have a portable display). We have a whole guide to setting up and using DeX here.
What Happened to the Galaxy Z TriFold?
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PHOTOGRAPH: Julian Chokkattu
I have not tested Samsung’s Galaxy Z TriFold, and it seems I never will. (I had some brief hands-on time with it at CES 2026, but Samsung did not provide WIRED with a test unit.) This folding phone, which had an MSRP of $2,800, officially went on sale in the US at the end of January, but three months later Samsung discontinued it because of high manufacturing costs.
Yes, unfolding it from a fairly compact phone to a massive 10-inch tablet was amazing and the stuff of dreams, but it didn’t justify the high price; you can buy a killer phone and excellent tablet for way less than $3,000. The luxury of having them in one pocket is incredible, but more than a $1,000 incredible? I think the TriFold is the true “phablet” Samsung promised so long ago, and the folding mechanism is novel and a marvelous feat. Hopefully, when the smartphone market picks back up, Samsung will revisit this design. It’s great for productivity junkies who frequently juggle multiple apps. Alas, it’s just a dream now. You’ll have to stick with the standard Z Fold. —Julian Chokkattu
How We Test Phones
WIRED has been covering Samsung smartphones since they entered the market. With each Samsung smartphone we test, our reviewers always put their personal SIM card inside and spend as long as they can (a few weeks) using the phone as their own. We do camera testing and compare the results with similarly priced devices; we benchmark performance and play graphically demanding games to see how they fare; we try out all the new features; and we even take calls to make sure they go through and that voice quality is fine.
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