The rumor is the Samsung Galaxy S25 could be the last Galaxy of its kind

No standard Galaxy S26?

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We’re expecting threeSamsung Galaxy S25phones to appear sometime in January 2025, but the latest rumors suggest the standard edition might be the last of its kind – withSamsungpotentially dropping the cheapest, smallest Galaxy S26 model in 2026.

This comes from the usually reliableIce Universe(viaSamMobile), 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 andAppleis 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 theGalaxy Tab S10 Plusand Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra Android tablets with no sign of a standard model – so no successor to theSamsung Galaxy Tab S9, for whatever reason.

You may remember that Samsung started releasing two versions of its flagship smartphone in 2015 with theSamsung Galaxy S6. TheSamsung Galaxy S20series, 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.

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Of course, we also have the Fan Edition (FE) versions of these phones, most recently theSamsung 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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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you’ll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.

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