Samsung’s FE line is intended to be a cheaper alternative to the actual Galaxy S devices, but sometimes they swing too far to the left. Take their new Galaxy S25 FE, for example. It’s still a flagship phone by design, but it seems to struggle in DxOmark’s camera test — so much so that it’s worse than the devices from 2022.
DxOMark has released global camera rankings for devices released in 2025. And they’ve placed Galaxy S25 FE near the bottom of that list. It just scored 118 points, which put the handset on the 123rd rank. This model is seeing the diminishing returns for sticking to generations-old hardware, banking solely on software optimizations to get by.
Devices like iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 13, and Google Pixel 6A actually did better than the Galaxy S25 FE in DxOMark’s camera testing. The platform found that Samsung's latest FE model has small sensors on the back, which is probably why it did so poorly in the rankings.
The Main 50MP 1/1.57-inch camera on the S25 FE has passable performance. Its color processing is great in well-lit scenes, and you get decent exposure in nearly all shots. But the phone obviously didn’t produce great results with its 12MP ultrawide and the bog-standard 8MP 3X telephoto.
It had inconsistent HDR processing in video recording. The phone underexposed the scene, and there was occasionally a pink color cast with unstable White Balance. DxOMark agrees with our theory. The older hardware choice Samsung made for the Galaxy S25 FE has come back to haunt them.
The DxOMark platform suggests that buyers should rather go with the Xiaomi 15 or Xiaomi 14T. Even Google’s Pixel 10 is a better choice than the S25 FE, if camera is something you actually care about. These devices are almost in the same price class. Plus, you get way better base RAM and storage options with these handsets.
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