Samsung Galaxy A36 5G vs Galaxy S24 FE: Don’t make the obvious mistake

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Samsung Galaxy A36 5G vs Galaxy S24 FE: Don’t make the obvious mistake

Intro

The Galaxy A36 is here, and Samsung is surely hoping that it will become its mid-range success story in 2025, or at least fill in the gaps that the upcoming Galaxy A56 will leave gape open. The phone features a slightly different design language, much faster charging, some AI features, a new Qualcomm chipset, and a straightforward-to-stomach $400 price tag.

However, Samsung has another device with a pretty decent value proposition right now––the Galaxy S24 FE. It delivers excellent value, a flagship experience at a non-flagship price and cutting just a few corners in comparison with the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S25, delivering what’s best described as an affordable flagship experience.

Should you go for the Galaxy A36 or the Galaxy S24 FE? That’s the question we’re trying to answer in this comparison, and spoiler alert, you should probably abstain from getting the Galaxy A36––the Galaxy S24 FE is simply better in every regard, so totally worth it.

Galaxy A36 vs Galaxy S24 FE differences:

Galaxy A36 5G	Galaxy S24 FE
Thinner 7.4mm plastic body	Slightly thicker at 8mm, with an aluminum frame
Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chip (5nm)	Samsung Exynos 2400e chipset (4nm) on deck
Triple camera system with macro	Triple camera system with 3X telephoto
Larger 5,000mAh battery	4,700mAh battery on board
45W wired charging, no wireless charging	25W wired charging, 15 wireless charging and reverse wireless charging supported
$400 starting price	$650 starting price
Awesome Intelligence (Circle to Search, Object Eraser)	Galaxy AI (A more powerful and comprehensive AI suite)
Six years of software updates	Seven years of software updates

$249
⁹⁹

$649
⁹⁹

$400 off (62%)

The Galaxy S24 FE is up for grabs at the official Samsung Store. Currently, you can save up to $400 on the handset with eligible trade-ins. No pre-trade in discounts are available right now.

Buy at Samsung

$102 off (16%)

The Galaxy S24 FE is also available at Amazon. The base storage configurations featuring 128GB of onboard space are currently available at lower prices, and you can save 16% on them.

Buy at Amazon

$249
⁹⁹

$399
⁹⁹

$150 off (38%)

The Galaxy A36 is finally here! You can buy this affordable model with a brilliant Super AMOLED display and a 50 MP main camera at the official store. While it arrives at its standard price, you can save up to $150 with a trade-in. Plus, you can bundle with the Galaxy Buds FE and save 60% on the earbuds.

Buy at Samsung

Design and Display

The Galaxy S24 FE is the more premium device (Image by PhoneArena)

The Galaxy A36 5G generally boasts the same design language as its predecessor, following the now signature Galaxy styling with a flat frame and flat display. The phone is 7.4mm thin, which is decent for a mid-ranger and makes it delightfully compact. However, to keep costs down, the Galaxy A36 features a plastic frame.

An elongated camera island, combining all three camera lenses at the rear into one uniform entity, is certainly the most considerable design change here. Most Galaxy phones these days have separate camera lenses, but the Galaxy A36 has moved into a new direction that kind of sets it apart from just about any other Galaxy phone in the current roster (except for the Galaxy A56, which has also adopted this change).

The Key Island, which houses the hardware buttons, remains a staple on the right side of the Galaxy A36 (Image by PhoneArena)

In comparison, the Galaxy S24 FE, on the other hand, has an aluminum frame and could end up being slightly narrower and thicker than the Galaxy A36. It follows the design language of the Galaxy S24 lineup pretty closely, but has no differentiating features.

There’s no Key Island here: the right-hand side of the phone is flush, which is a design feature more consistent with Samsung’s flagships.

Colors-wise, the Galaxy S24 FE is available in Blue, Graphite, Gray, Yellow, and Mint colors. The Galaxy A36 5G, on the other hand, comes in Awesome Lavender, Awesome Black, Awesome White, and Awesome Lime colors. Aside from the black one, all the others are subtle pastel hues.

Pretty similar displays, all things considered (Image by PhoneArena)

The Galaxy A36 5G’s screen has grown to 6.7 inches, an improvement compared to the Galaxy A35’s 6.60-inch screen. It’s also a Super AMOLED screen with a 60/120Hz refresh rate, which is smooth but not as sophisticated as flagship-level devices that can tone it down to 10 or even 1Hz. The peak brightness is 1,200 nits here, which is great and makes sure you will have no issues with legibility.

The Galaxy S24 FE comes with a very similar 6.7-inch FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen, with the only major difference being the refresh rate, which can go lower than 60Hz for battery-saving purposes. From a quality perspective, it’s a pretty decent AMOLED screen, like most of Samsung’s previous ones.

As per our tests, the two displays are surprisingly similar in terms of measured properties, with similar peak brightness and color accuracy. Basically, you get the same screen on both devices.

The Galaxy S24 FE has an optical fingerprint scanner, and the Galaxy A36 has followed suit. In the hierarchy, those are a step below ultrasonic fingerprint sensors, which are both faster and more accurate.

Performance and Software

The Galaxy S24 FE delivers better performance (Image by PhoneArena)

The Galaxy A36 5G uses the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3chip, a 5nm mid-range affair which aims to strike a balance between performance and battery life on a tight budget. This would be yet another chipset change for the Galaxy A36, as its predecessors switch up between Exynos and MediaTek chips each year.

In the other corner, the Galaxy S24 FE relies on an in-house chipset: the Exynos 2400e, which is a very potent chipset with pretty impressive graphics performance. It’s just a tad slower than the Exynos 2400 inside Samsung’s Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus, so it’s definitely nearly flagship-grade.

CPU Performance Benchmarks:

According to our in-house synthetic benchmark tests, the Galaxy S24 FE performs significantly better, which comes to no surprise.

GPU Performance

In the 3DMark graphics benchmark tests that we conducted, the Galaxy S24 FE pretty much left the Galaxy A36 in the proverbial dust with a significantly better graphics performance.

The Galaxy A36 features just 6GB of RAM, which might be the reason for the limited AI capabilities in comparison with the Galaxy S24 FE. Samsung has also thrown some AI features on the Galaxy A36. Dubbed Awesome Intelligence, these include Circle to Search and an Object Eraser in the Gallery app.

You get the full Galaxy AI experience with the Galaxy S24 FE, and once One UI 7 comes along, the phone will enjoy even more Galaxy features. The Fan Edition has some 8GB of RAM, which gives it access to most AI features that are also available on the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S25.

Galaxy A36 users will be enjoying six years of software updates. The Galaxy S24 FE will be supported for seven years, just like the company’s proper Galaxy S24 flagship lineup. Great!

Camera

No competition (Image by PhoneArena)

The Galaxy A36 5G boasts a mostly unchanged camera system in comparison with the Galaxy A35. We get a 50MP main camera, 8MP ultrawide, and a 5MP macro camera, which is a gimmicky addition. The main camera also allows you to take 2X photos with great quality thanks to sensor cropping.

Not a particularly exciting camera setup, but it will do the job for the occasional photo, just don’t count on the quality being in the same ballpark as the Galaxy S24 FE. The latter comes with a 50MP main, 12MP ultrawide, and an 8MP telephoto with 3X optical zoom, which is a drastically more versatile and usable setup.

Now, in our PhoneArena Camera test, the Galaxy A36 doesn’t fare particularly well, and the differences between the affordable and the Fan Edition phone are obvious. Quality-wise, the Galaxy S24 FE to ultimately be the superior phone, and with a score of just 120, the A36 can’t really stand up to it.

The latter delivers significantly better image quality with superior dynamic range, better colors, and more natural detail.

Photo Samples

Video Quality

While the Galaxy S24 FE struggles when recording scenes with extreme lighting, it’s still way better than the Galaxy A36. The latest affordable Samsung phone isn’t particularly good when it comes to video-recording, and it also can’t take ultrawide videos at 4K resolution, which is a pity.

Battery Life and Charging

Even Stevens

Battery life is not a major differentiating point here (Image by PhoneArena)

There’s a large 5,000mAh battery inside the Galaxy A36, which means it’s as potent as the Galaxy S25 Ultra in this regard. The Galaxy S24 FE, on the other hand, boasts a 4,700mAh battery, slightly smaller but still probably in the same ballpark in terms of overall battery life thanks to the faster chip on board.

Both phones perform rather similarly in our custom battery life tests, achieving around 6 hours and 20 minutes of average battery life. The two phones achieve very similar results in our web browsing, video streaming, and 3D gaming tests.

PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:

Surprisingly, we get 45W wired charging with the Galaxy A36.

Incredible! That’s as much as Samsung’s best flagships support, and better than the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S24 FE‘s 25W wired charging. However, despite the addition of the 45W wired charging, the Galaxy A36 only charges 6 minutes faster than its higher-tier sibling.

However, the Galaxy A36 5G doesn’t have wireless charging, but the Galaxy S24 FE supports that, as well as reverse wireless charging.

Specs Comparison

	Samsung Galaxy A36 5G	Samsung Galaxy S24 FE
Size, weight	162.9 x 78.2 x 7.4 mm, 195 gr	162 x 77.3 x 8 mm, 213 gr
Screen	6.7″ Super AMOLED 60-120Hz Gorilla Glass Victus+	6.6″ Dynamic AMOLED 2X 60-120Hz Gorilla Glass Victus+
Processor	Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 (5nm)	Exynos 2400e (4nm)
RAM, Storage	6GB/128GB 6GB/256GB	8GB/128GB 8GB/256GB
Cameras	50MP main 8MP ultrawide 5MP macro 12MP front	50MP main 12MP ultrawide 8MP 3X telephoto 10MP front
Battery	5,000mAh	4,700mAh
Charging	USB-C 45W wired	USB-C 25W wired 15W wireless Reverse wireless

Summary

It’s hard not to get the Galaxy S24 FE (Image by PhoneArena)

So, is the Galaxy A36 5G the phone that could ultimately beat the Galaxy S24 FE in value?

Launching at $400 in the US, there’s definitely potential for speculation to be made that it could undercut the Galaxy S24 FE, which starts at $650.

Ultimately, however, you get what you pay for, and the much lower price of the mid-ranger is pretty telling. It is not as powerful and has a less impressive camera in comparison with the Galaxy S24 FE.

The value is just better on the Galaxy S24 FE, which happens to be merely a step beneath Samsung’s proper flagships, so it’s always a recommended purchase, if your budget allows it.