Samsung S20 FE (Fan Edition) Full Review: This Is It. This Is The One To Get.
What's going on guys my name is wade with tech daily so i've had my samsung galaxy s20 fe for a couple of weeks now and i honestly have a lot of thoughts about this phone right off the bat i will say this if you're looking for just a samsung phone in general in 2020 and likely into next year as well this is easily the best choice and it may also be the best overall android device out right now at least for folks specifically here in the us it's a phone
That in my mind really has killed the flagship s20 and s20 plus devices there's seriously no reason to buy those phones now that this one is out and i think that's a huge statement to make because those were samsung's flagship devices just six or seven months ago furthermore i also think this phone is a way better buy than the likes of the a51 5g and the a71 5g those phones here in the us for what they are i consider to be overpriced while this phone
The s20 fe at 699 is probably the single best value device samsung has ever made i have a lot more to say about this phone so let's just go ahead and get into it but if you're looking for a straightforward answer to whether or not you should consider this phone yes absolutely this is the phone to get physically the s20 fe is this sort of interesting combination of fun colors paired with cheaper materials but at the same time it's a similar form factor to the big
Expensive flagship phones with all the extra features thrown in this sort of mint green finish i think is really nice it's certainly my favorite color in the lineup but you have half a dozen to choose from blue orange red white and purple the material here at least on the back is plastic it's got a matte finish sort of a smooth feel but you know what material this is as soon as you hold it in your hand yeah it's not glass or metal but this is exactly what you
Get on the thousand dollar note 20 as well so that's a really weird connection to make and the metal frame with the polished chrome finish sort of balances out the whole look i think so in the end it's still a good looking phone even if you do miss out on the complete premium build but the thing is if you can look past the plastic back cover which i don't really think is a huge deal anyway you'll find that all the other important stuff is still included
There's wireless charging reverse charging via power share it's ip68 water and dust resistant so unlike the a series for example this s20 fe retains those i guess flagship features even with a less premium build at six and a half inches the s20 fe is also really big it's one of the larger phones samsung offers and it's just a bit smaller than the flagship s20 plus you've got a lot of screen to work with it's a bit to manage with one-handed use
I'm sure for some people and i realize now that we're seeing more of a push towards smaller devices but i still know a lot of folks who want as big of a screen as possible and that's pretty much what you do get here and taking a look around at everything else you'll find an sd card slot for expandable storage which is good no headphone jack which is probably expected at this point even though you do get that on the a series phones and underneath the front display is a
Fingerprint sensor with this its speed and accuracy actually mimics the flagship s20 and in my experience it's significantly better than what ships on the a series phones so just another area where samsung took the extra step rather than compromising and there's also face unlock 2 which you should pair up with and that works fine as well another thing you won't get on a cheaper samsung phone is a dual stereo speaker setup you've got the one
Downward speaker towards the bottom and the additional speaker in the earpiece and this out loud listening experience here is really good yes i do think other phones may still do it better but it's worth highlighting and it's actually one of the biggest things i miss on the a series phones and here's a quick sample so you can get an idea now i already mentioned that the screen is big but there's more to it than that the six
And a half inch display comes in at a resolution of 2400 by 1080 it packs in around 407 pixels per inch and it's samsung's super amoled panel that selection of specs isn't unheard of even for 300 or 400 dollar phones in general the display looks great as all samsung displays do but the extra edition you get here with the s20 fe is a 120 hertz high refresh rate option this is a feature that came with the flagship s20s earlier in the year
It's not really a feature that has come to many other 600 to 700 phones you see 90 hertz on the pixel 5 and oneplus nord but not 120 hertz and again this is just crazy to me the 1 000 note 20 doesn't even offer a 120 hertz display again super strange now realistically is this something the average consumer would maybe go out of their way to get probably not i don't think we're really quite there yet in pushing high refresh rate screens to the masses but here's the thing if you give this phone to just about
Anyone and ask them how it feels they're likely going to say wow this phone feels fast it feels snappy it's super smooth it's more responsive with every touch tap and scroll and that's kind of the point with 120 hertz this is a phone that just feels way faster than any other phone in its price range and the 120hz display is basically what does that are the rest of the specs with the screen groundbreaking no definitely not you do miss out on qhd resolution compared to the flagship
Phones but the 120 hertz mode is probably the defining feature with the screen in general and probably with this phone specifically the other defining feature of the s20 fe is sort of a collection of things but it's the internal specs packed inside samsung very well could have just shoved a mid-range processor into this thing like the snapdragon 730g and called it done but they didn't they shipped this phone with a snapdragon 865 chipset an adreno 650 gpu the choice of either 6 or 8 gigs of ram and by the way mine has the full 8 gigs
Here and either 128 or 256 gigs of ufs 3.1 storage with like i said the option to throw in an sd card so there's absolutely nothing inside this phone that indicates it isn't samsung's 2020 flagship device this is almost exactly what people got just a few months ago for a thousand dollars or more besides maybe a few extra gigs of ram and here's the thing if i bought a flagship s20 or s20 plus at any point this year and saw this phone launch
I would probably be pretty upset honestly and if i hadn't yet bought a new samsung phone at this point this would seriously be the only option i would even consider based on the specs alone the value here is just unmatched when you consider what's inside and i'm very surprised that samsung took this route with the s20 fe this phone is fully capable and plenty powerful for anything and everything you'd want it to do samsung's continued one ui updates have been a breath of fresh air this year
So many great improvements to the software experience that i actually like what samsung does now and looking ahead i can safely say that this s20 fe is a phone i'd be comfortable with three or four years down the line at least not only is this phone included in samsung's list of devices getting three years of updates but the definitive 2020 specs inside with no compromises no exynos chipset no outdated hardware it all means that this phone is a long-term investment for sure i'm not
Sure how i can state this any other way but this s20 fe simply has no compromises and it kind of doesn't make sense it's almost too good and i don't want to come across like i'm over hyping this phone i'm just looking at it objectively spec wise performance wise feature wise side by side against a much more expensive phone this s20 fe just isn't lacking anything and this also extends to the battery as well with a 4500 milliamp battery packed inside
It's bigger than the regular flagship s20 it's the same size as the s20 plus but i found this phone to last just as long if not longer than those phones it's an all-day device and then some the kicker here is that for whatever reason samsung decided to ship this phone with its small older power brick even though it supports 25 watt fast charging out of all the cost saving measures it's weird that that's what they chose to do but whatever and since you've got a
Snapdragon chipset rather than an exitus one inside i found it to be better optimized disabling the 120hz refresh mode does help battery quite a bit by adding additional hours of use at least but even if you don't want to do that you're going to be getting through a full day no problem just like with basically everything else samsung also essentially took their flagship s20 cameras and included them here with the s20 fe but there's actually even more to it
Than that on one hand you've got basically the same 12 megapixel main lens and the same 12 megapixel ultrawide lens what's missing is that 64 megapixel telephoto lens that gets bumped down on the s20 fe to an 8 megapixel telephoto lens and you lose the 64 megapixel high detail shooting mode obviously on the other hand though the selfie camera is a 32 megapixel f 2.2 shooter and in my experience the selfies are oftentimes better than what came off
The flagship s20 feature and shooting mode wise there's nothing missing here everything from 4k60 to pro video mode to all the filters and functions and everything else and the results i think speak for themselves this is for all intents and purposes the flagship camera setup from the flagship s20 just offered at a cheaper price now and while in years past samsung's lesser line of phones like the a series or like the s10e
Maybe could have had less lenses less features missing additions or whatever else this s20 fe misses nearly nothing you even get the crazy 30 times zoom on here too you pretty much get it all and once again i'm just really surprised with everything samsung decided to include so here's the thing about the s20 fe i know i probably come across as some crazed samsung fan praising this phone as the greatest thing ever but in reality
I'm just surprised i'm surprised that just six months ago samsung launched their thousand dollar s20 flagship phone and the 1200 s20 plus and then suddenly came out with this which is practically the same phone at hundreds of dollars less by comparison this s20 fe loses a glass back qhd resolution and a high megapixel shooting mode that's it everything else from the features to the specs to the performance it's exactly what samsung touted as their flagship experience not that long ago for quite a bit more
Money i don't know if we're just seeing smartphones have that much shorter and shorter of a lifespan or maybe samsung wanted to beat its competitors into the 600 to 700 space with this phone but whatever the reason is samsung brought to market easily the best overall value android device in the us that's available right now and probably the best value for the foreseeable future too i'm not sure i can put it any other way except that there's simply no reason to pay more for
Any other device but especially not the flagship s20 or s20 plus now that this phone exists this is the samsung phone to get right now it's the android phone to get right now if you're in the us and i think it's an incredibly good value for the price so there you go those are all of my thoughts on the samsung s20 fe what do you guys think did i praise this phone too much let me know in the comments down below i'd love to hear your thoughts of course but hopefully you guys did enjoy this
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