Samsung S20 FE 5G Review - Why You MUST Get it Now!

Today I am looking at a mid-range smartphone. It’s the Samsung S20 Fan Edition 5G. It is interesting, because, the phone is actually a derivative of last year’s flagship Samsung phone, the S20. The reason this phone makes sense at this stage is because of several price cuts that it is benefiting from owing to the imminent arrival of its successor, the S21 FE 5G. So currently you can pick this phone up on Amazon for around Rs.37,000 and that is before any card discounts or bank discounts have been applied. You can also take back GST input credit if you own a business making this phone close to Rs.30,000 in asking price. And for that amount, this is killer value. Let’s find out more. You see, I’ve realized that we’ve been buying all the wrong Android phones for the past few years. Well, at least I have. I have always been concentrating on the higher end of the market, so that means phones like the S21 Ultra. Those are phones with everything including the kitchen sink thrown at them, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But despite all that, You come back dissatisfied from the experience. Small things like overheating, bulkiness, lack of value for money are factors that mar the overall experience. We seem to have forgotten that it is the lower end of the market where Android shines and surprises. Enter the galaxy S20 FE, at Rs.37000. It is not expensive. It is much smaller and lighter than the S21 Ultra. Sure, it doesn’t feature the latest Snapdragon processor, but at least it gets a Snapdragon processor, so it’s not powered by any of the Expos chips. As a result, it does not heat up. Already things are looking excellent for this phone. I think we all need to take a deep breath and pause. And instead of running for the latest and greatest every time, focus on something that offers real value at a very affordable price point, such as this phone right here. Now in terms of sheer numbers, obviously the two generation old Snapdragon 865 processor will not hold a candle to the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or the Snapdragon 888 or even Apple’s A15 Bionic processor. But unless you’re doing tasks that demand processor intensive workflows, such as gaming, all this is just theoretical. A Phone just should be fast enough to make the whole experience fluid, and makes switching between apps seamless. It should have enough horsepower to power through resource hungry webpages when browsing and also handle rendering of 4K videos on streaming platforms. If it has enough RAM to back it up, then the entire experience tends to be nice and smooth. And if you add in 120 Hz high refresh rate to the equation, the full experience becomes sublime. Do you see where I’m going with this? This phone right here has all the necessary ingredients that make up the core functionality of a flagship phone and delivers it at a mid-range price point. That makes it terrific value for money as well as no-compromise smartphone for most users. Next month we have the Samsung S21 FE smartphone coming out, and its expected price will be close to Rs.50,000. So if you have the yearning to get the latest design and chassis, then it may be worth waiting for that one. But at nearly half the cost or 60% of the cost of that phone, the S20 FE continues to represent excellent value for money and with at least three years of software updates promised by Samsung it will last you at least that long and the experience will remain smooth and lag-free. Now there are tons of videos on YouTube to talk about the physical aspects of this phone and go into intricacies of its cameras and interface. So here I’ll rather take a high-level look at things because this phone is so relevant right now. And indeed, inside the box, there isn’t much to talk about. One thing that surprised me was the amount of dirt on the phone when I unboxed it first. And no, it did not feel like it had been used in the past, it’s simply the gap between the box and its cover allowed for dust to get in either during transport or storage. But anyway it’s good to see that there is still a 15 W charger in here unlike the latest Samsung Galaxy phones or iPhones for that matter. The phone itself in Cloud Navy looks quite premium, and the back is a mixture of glass and plastic, but if no one mentioned this to you, it would never bother you in the slightest. It is that premium, and combined with metal sides it makes for a nice slim holding experience. The phone weighs just 190 g and that is definitely an asset for a 6.5 inch phone, so basically this phone is as large as an iPhone 13 Pro Max, but close to 50 g lighter. In fact, it is even lighter than the 6.1 inch iPhone 13 Pro, which is 13 g heavier. Now in terms of the cameras, sure you’re not getting the latest and greatest advancements in iOS and Android computational photography. So that means if you were to take portraits in a low light environment, the shots come out darker and softer than they do on the latest Pro iPhones. But for most situations, they are just as vibrant as Samsung photos have been for the past six or seven years and are absolutely ready to be shared to social media. So you can tweak them in an app of your choice as well. It also features a 3X optical zoom which the latest iPhones have only just got in the Pro versions and can digitally dial in up to 30 times on an image. Basically, with all this, you have to decide how much you value features such as photography and the incremental upgrades that you get to see every year and weigh the cost versus benefits by increasing the amount you spend to acquire a greater smartphone. In simple terms, the S20 FE cameras will certainly feature in the top 10 smartphone cameras even today, and at this price point you simply cannot argue with that. In terms of the battery life, frankly speaking I haven’t used this phone extensively to be able to give a Final verdict, but going by what other reviewers have said and also looking at the battery stats of my initial usage, I can safely say that it will last a full day of use. And that is really where you want to be. No phone can really convincingly last for two days if you’re really using it, so that means you will be charging it overnight anyway. So any phone that can last from early morning to late night is good enough in terms of battery life, as long as you do not have to economize in any way on your daily usage. Of course there are many variables with battery life and the way the phone is used will dictate the ultimate screen on time. But the idea should always be to strike a balance between longevity and active usage. It’s a shame that the phone can only be charged at a maximum of 25 watts, by buying a faster charger separately. Things have gone crazy in the Android world in terms of fast charging, so this certainly is an area where this lags behind. But frankly speaking. I would rather have a phone that lasts all day, and then I don’t care what speed it charges at when it’s charging overnight. I would rather have this, a phone that discharges its battery at an alarming rate and I keep charging it, albeit at a very fast rate, during the day. The speaker quality on the phone is also excellent, and I was genuinely surprised by the loudness and fullness that it offered. You will really appreciate this when watching videos or listening to music on this phone. Now a few points to remember here, one this is a dual SIM phone with a hybrid SIM tray. That means you can put two SIM cards or one Sim card and micros card up to 1 TB in capacity. Whilst that is exceptional, you can’t have a high-capacity SD card and two SIMS running in this phone. You may be thinking that you might get away with using one ENIM and one physical Sim along with an SD card. But my research has shown that the fan edition does not have the necessary hardware to support an ENIM. Secondly, on the 120 Hz display, there is no adaptive mode. That means if you choose to run at the higher refresh rate settings, the screen will always be refreshing at 120 Hz, irrespective of what app you are using. This can certainly have an effect on the battery life, and I am sure the phone would have lasted longer had it had the adaptive refresh rate feature. But having said that, since the phone is capable of giving 5 to 6 hours of screen on time, this appears not to be too much of an issue as of now. Thirdly, even though the whole experience in general is very smooth, you can see the odd stutter in various apps when the phone is trying to refresh stuff or scrolling through news feeds. I don’t think this is a factor of the RAM or the processor, but more a result of lack of optimization of the software. This is something that you never get to see in iOS. That operating system handles this kind of situations differently. In iOS, you will simply see a spinning ball instead of more content trying to push up as you scroll compared to what Android does. Which one is better will depend on your likes or dislikes. So there you have it. This is perhaps the best open secret in the Android world right now. If you can stomach having a last gen phone at a great price, then this is an excellent choice even going into 2022. I consider this video more as an overview rather than a review at a very pertinent time, to draw your attention to a phone that offers the best of everything at a stupendous price only for a short while perhaps. So do check it out whilst stocks last by clicking the links in the description. Hope you found this video useful, and if you did, please consider subscribing to this channel. Thanks for sticking by till the end, and I will see you in the next one!