The iPhone XR shipped in October 2018. It was carried, used, and slowly worn down for seven years. In May 2026 it was replaced by a Samsung Galaxy S25 FE, which had launched the previous October. The two devices never met on a store shelf — they are separated by seven model-years, two operating systems, and the entire span of the 5G rollout. What follows is a record of the handover, drawn at the same scale and read row by row.
This note treats the change as a press release rather than a review. The figures below are orthographic, not photographic. Every specification has been lifted from the manufacturers' datasheets; the editorial column does not adjudicate which device is better. It only registers what changed.
PLOTTING UNIT A · iPhone XR · 2018 PLOTTING UNIT B · Galaxy S25 FE · 2025
01A brief history of two outlines.
The XR was Apple's high-volume budget iPhone of 2018. It carried the same A12 Bionic silicon as the iPhone XS, paired with a 6.1-inch LCD display, a single rear camera, and the notch that had been introduced by the iPhone X a year earlier. It launched at $749 and remained on the official Apple Store for three years.
The Galaxy S25 FE is Samsung's 2025 entry in its "Fan Edition" line: a slightly de-specified flagship at a lower price. It ships with the Exynos 2400e at 4 nanometers, a 6.7-inch AMOLED 2X panel running at 120 Hz, and three discrete rear cameras with no shared island. It launched at roughly $649 in October 2025.
Seven years separate the two outlines. The body grew taller and slightly narrower. The notch became a punch-hole. The Lightning port became USB-C. Memory tripled. The display doubled its refresh rate. The camera array tripled. The figures that follow draw each of these changes to scale.
02Elevations, drawn at scale.
Below are four orthographic figures — front and rear views of each device — rendered at the same 1:1 scale used in the technical blueprint. The XR's body is 150.9 × 75.7 × 8.3 mm. The S25 FE's body is 161.3 × 76.6 × 7.4 mm. The newer device is 10 millimeters taller, one millimeter wider, and almost a millimeter thinner.
The XR's front face is defined by the notch. Apple introduced the notch with the iPhone X in 2017; it persisted across the X family until the Dynamic Island arrived on the iPhone 14 Pro in 2022. By the time the XR was retired, the notch had become a generational marker.
The transition from Lightning to USB-C was set in motion by a European Union directive in October 2022. Apple shipped the first USB-C iPhone — the iPhone 15 — in September 2023. The XR was never updated; it kept its Lightning port to the end. The S25 FE arrived with USB-C as standard, alongside DisplayPort Alt Mode over the same connector.
The XR shipped with one rear lens. The S25 FE ships with three. The main sensor's resolution rose from 12 to 50 megapixels — a 4.17× nominal jump, though pixel binning means the default capture is 12.5 MP. Video adds 8K capture at 30 fps, which neither device's preview screen can fully resolve in real time.
03What changed, in numbers.
Memory tripled. The display doubled its refresh rate. Wired charging more than doubled. Apple silicon shipped at 7 nanometers in 2018. The Samsung Exynos 2400e ships at 4 nanometers in 2025. The selection of deltas below is the editor's; the underlying matrix is preserved in the appendix at the foot of this page.
Three gigabytes of RAM was generous in 2018. By 2025 it was a constraint — modern Android keeps eight gigabytes only modestly comfortable. The XR's memory was LPDDR4X; the S25 FE's is LPDDR5X, with materially higher peak bandwidth.
The XR ran its LCD panel at a fixed 60 Hz. The S25 FE's AMOLED 2X is adaptive between 1 Hz and 120 Hz, falling to the lower bound on static content to conserve battery. The perceived smoothness gap is the single most obvious daily difference.
Battery capacity rose by 66 percent. Some of that capacity is absorbed by the brighter, faster display and the second cellular generation; some is left over. Wired charging rose from 18 to 45 watts; wireless from 7.5 to 15 watts, with reverse wireless added.
One lens became three. The added ultrawide and 3× telephoto change what kind of photograph the device can take, not just the resolution of the shot it already could.
Apple silicon shipped at 7 nanometers in 2018. The Samsung Exynos 2400e ships at 4 nanometers in 2025. The CPU core count rose from six to ten. The GPU is Samsung's Xclipse, which is built on AMD RDNA architecture under license — itself a notable industry detail.
The XR launched as 5G was being defined. It will end its life having seen the entire first generation of 5G rollout from the outside. The S25 FE supports sub-6 GHz 5G alongside Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and ultra-wideband — three radios the older device does not have.
04The system, side by side.
Below, the two devices are drawn as parallel system stacks. The left column is the iPhone XR; the right column is the Galaxy S25 FE. Each row pairs a subsystem — operating system, silicon, memory, authentication, port, radio, distribution — and names the delta in the centre channel. Where the figure is too wide for the column, it scrolls horizontally.
The single most consequential shift is not visible in any specification: the operating system. Moving from iOS to Android changes the social graph the device connects to, the application binaries the user has paid for, the default cloud, and the model of distribution itself. The XR is sandboxed and single-source by design. The S25 FE accepts sideloaded APKs, alternative app stores, and ADB connections out of the box.
05Seven years on one line.
Between the two endpoints the world's mobile networks rolled out 5G, the European Union mandated USB-C on portable electronics, on-device large language models became commodity, and the iPhone notch was replaced twice. The XR received its final supported operating system, iOS 18, in 2024. The S25 FE arrived with a seven-year operating-system commitment from Samsung — the longest such guarantee available on Android at the time of writing.
06The handover.
The XR is not retired. It is set aside. It will keep its iOS 18 install and remain a backup device — a calculator, a music player, an Apple-only mailbox. Its battery still holds; its display still shows photographs at 326 pixels per inch; its single rear lens still focuses. The handover is to a different machine, not to a better one. The figures above record what is different.
The full technical specification is preserved below, as an appendix.
Full technical specifications
All figures sourced from manufacturer datasheets and verified spec pages. The Δ column is informational, not a benchmark.
| Subsystem | iPhone XR · 2018 | Galaxy S25 FE · 2025 | Δ Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display | 6.1" LCD · 1792×828 · 326 ppi · 60 Hz | 6.7" AMOLED 2X · 2340×1080 · 120 Hz adaptive · HDR10+ | +0.6" · 2× refresh · LCD → AMOLED |
| Pixel density | 326 ppi | ~385 ppi | +59 ppi · +18 % |
| SoC | Apple A12 Bionic · 7 nm · 6C CPU / 4C GPU | Exynos 2400e · 4 nm · 10C CPU / Xclipse GPU | 7 nm → 4 nm · +4 CPU cores |
| Memory | 3 GB | 8 GB LPDDR5X | +5 GB · 2.67× |
| Storage | 64 / 128 / 256 GB | 128 / 256 / 512 GB · UFS 4.0 | 2× max · UFS 4.0 |
| Rear camera | 12 MP wide f/1.8 OIS · single lens | 50 MP wide f/1.8 OIS · 12 MP UW f/2.2 · 8 MP 3× tele OIS | 1 → 3 lenses · +38 MP main |
| Front camera | 7 MP f/2.2 · TrueDepth | 12 MP f/2.2 · punch-hole | +5 MP · notch → cutout |
| Video | 4K @ 60 fps | 8K @ 30 fps · 4K @ 60 fps | + 8K capture |
| Battery | 2942 mAh | 4900 mAh | +1958 mAh · +66 % |
| Charging | Lightning · 18 W wired · 7.5 W Qi | USB-C · 45 W wired · 15 W Qi · reverse wireless | 2.5× wired · 2× wireless |
| Connectivity | 4G LTE · Wi-Fi 5 · BT 5.0 | 5G sub-6 · Wi-Fi 6E · BT 5.3 · NFC · UWB | 4G → 5G · + UWB |
| Authentication | Face ID · structured IR | Ultrasonic in-display FP · 2D face | IR depth → ultrasonic |
| Operating system | iOS 12 → iOS 18 · ~6 yrs support | One UI 7 / Android 15 · 7-yr OS commitment | platform shift · iOS → Android |
| Ingress | IP67 · 1 m · 30 min | IP68 · 1.5 m · 30 min | IP67 → IP68 |
| Weight | 194 g | ~210 g | +16 g · +8 % |