Galaxy S26 FE may use older chip as early tests show big performance gap

The Galaxy S26 FE's Geekbench debut confirms last-gen silicon inside, a trade-off Samsung fans have grown frustratingly familiar with, year after year.

By Shikhar Mehrotra Published April 4, 2026

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE in Blue — Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends

Samsung hasn’t even announced the Galaxy S26 FE, but it’s already appeared on the benchmark listings. Renowned Indian tipster Abhishek Yadav spotted the device in Geekbench’s database under the model number “SM-S741U.”

Screenshots of the listing, however, are still available. The Galaxy S26 FE scored 2,426 points in the single-core and 8,004 points on the multi-core Geekbench 6 CPU test, running Android 17 with 8GB of memory.

What do the numbers actually tell us?

In retrospect, those figures land well below what the standard Galaxy S26 putson the board. The Galaxy S26 and the S26 Plus, with Samsung’s Exynos 2600 chips, score between 3,250 points in the single-core and around 11,350 points in the multi-core tests.

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The gap, as you can clearly see, is substantial. The culprit? It’s the chipset. The Geekbench listing appears to point to Samsung’s Exynos 2500, the same chip found in the Galaxy Z Flip 7, along with the Xclipse 950 GPU.

Now, I’m not saying that the Exynos 2500 isn’t a capable chip. However, it simply isn’t the company’s best chip, and the difference shows up in benchmarks.

Is this a disappointment or just usual business?

Given that the S25 FE debuted with the Exynos 2400 chip, it’s only logical that the S26 FE will get an upgrade and switch to the Exynos 2500. So, I already saw it coming. That said, the S26 FE should deliver a noticeable performance boost.

Another reason to equip the S26 FE with the Exynos 2500 chip could be to control the manufacturing prices. Is Samsung the first company to do this? Look at the Google Pixel 10a with the Tensor G4 chip (that debuted with the Pixel 9 series), and you have your answer.

Anyway, expect the Korean giant to reveal the S26 FE around September 2026, with One UI 9 based on Android 17. Rumored specs also point toward a 6.7-inch OLED screen and a 4,900 mAh battery. Whether the price justifies these specifications is something we’re yet to find out.

Beyond the specs, I’m more interested to see the Galaxy S26 FE’s pricing.

Shikhar Mehrotra

News Writer

For more than five years, Shikhar has consistently simplified developments in the field of consumer tech and presented them…

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