We're expecting three Samsung Galaxy S25 phones to appear sometime in January 2025, but the latest rumors suggest the standard edition might be the last of its kind – with Samsung potentially dropping the cheapest, smallest Galaxy S26 model in 2026.
This comes from the usually reliable Ice Universe (via SamMobile), and while it's somewhat speculative for now, there's some sound reasoning behind it: specifically, that the Plus and Ultra models account for most of the handset sales.
The tipster says part of the problem faced by Samsung and Apple is that Chinese companies such as Oppo and Xiaomi are now much better at making small and powerful phones, squeezing the market for everyone else.
While Apple can still use iOS to differentiate its iPhones, Samsung cannot. As a result, Samsung "may cancel" the Galaxy S26 as it's "no longer competitive," leaving just the Samsung Galaxy S26 Plus and the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.
Past and future
When OPPO Find X8 is released, you will find that one of the characteristics of the new flagship in 2024 is that it is small and powerful. Chinese brands are much better at making small-sized mobile phones than Samsung and Apple. You will realize that Galaxy S25 is no longer…October 1, 2024
What adds some extra credibility to this rumor is that Samsung just launched the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus and Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra Android tablets with no sign of a standard model – so no successor to the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9, for whatever reason.
You may remember that Samsung started releasing two versions of its flagship smartphone in 2015 with the Samsung Galaxy S6. The Samsung Galaxy S20 series, launched in 2020, was the first to adopt the standard, Plus, and Ultra approach.
Almost five years later, it seems Samsung might be ready to change that again – depending on how the Galaxy S25 performs. There's been no indication that Samsung will move away from the three phone format for its 2025 flagship launch.
Of course, we also have the Fan Edition (FE) versions of these phones, most recently the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE. This version typically arrives later, offering similar specs at a cheaper price and pushing the standard model into even more of a niche.
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