If there’s one thing I like more than an unabashedly good smartphone, it’s an unabashedly good cheap smartphone. Spoiler alert: The Galaxy S20 FE (or Fan Edition) is precisely that.
There are a few ways to look at a phone like this. Through one lens, it&aposs Samsung&aposs response to an ongoing pandemic and its economic effects. Through another, it&aposs the valuable connective tissue that sits between Samsung&aposs mid-range A series phones and the more premium S20 line. But, regardless of how you look at it, there&aposs a lot to like about Samsung&aposs newest, cheapest S20.
For one, I&aposm a fan of what Samsung did with the FE&aposs design. At a glance, it&aposs nearly impossible to tell you&aposre using a phone that costs hundreds less than the other S20s… apart from maybe some of the wild colors available. (Unfortunately, our review unit is an inoffensive — some might say pedestrian — blue.) That the Fan Edition retains a lot of flagship style is especially nice, as Samsung had to make some tweaks here to keep costs down. Most of the glass and metal you&aposd find on a standard S20 is gone, replaced largely by the same kind of polycarbonate Samsung uses for its more modest A series phones. While that means the FE lacks the gravitas of something like an S20+, that material should hold up to spills better and keeps this thing mercifully light.
That&aposs especially nice when you consider how big thing&aposs screen is. The FE&aposs 6.5-inch Super AMOLED display sits in the sweet spot between the S20 and the S20 Plus, but that plastic frame and minimal bezels mean the phone never feels unwieldy. Maybe more important is the fact that the screen is honestly quite a bit nicer than I expected. Who could blame me? Screens are routinely the most expensive parts that go into smartphones, and managing costs here was the whole point.
The one major compromise is that the display’s resolution is just 2400×1080 — that&aposs noticeably lower than the other S20s, and you can see individual pixels if you press your face right up against the Gorilla Glass 5. But what this screen lacks in flagship-grade clarity, it makes up for with a 120Hz refresh rate and completely flat cover glass. The former means on-screen motion can look remarkably smooth, though leaving the feature off will result in some slight battery gains. And the latter means you&aposre much less likely to accidentally tap something on the edge of the screen with the side of your hand. That’s been a recurring — and obnoxious — issue with many of the smartphones I’ve tested this year, and not having to worry about it has honestly been a joy.
So, yes, the S20 FE looks and feels pretty great. That wouldn’t matter much if its performance wasn’t up to snuff, but thankfully, it uses the same Snapdragon 865 chipset you’ll find in most of its more expensive cousins. Suffice to say, there’s enough sheer horsepower here to keep any app or game running smoothly. With that in mind, things can get a little hairy when multitasking or picking up where you left off in an app — that’s because the Fan Edition relies on a mere 6GB of RAM, down from the 12GB you’d find in most other versions of the S20. This skimpy allotment of memory might be the one thing I truly dislike about the FE, but thankfully hiccups are infrequent. Just keep in mind that, while the S20 Fan Edition is a surprisingly good deal, it isn’t quite as future-proof as other models.
That being said, the rest of the package is pretty hard to argue with. Just consider its battery: The cheapest S20 uses the same 4,500mAh battery as the S20+, but since it doesn’t have to drive a super-high-res display, it routinely lasts for well north of a full day’s use. (If screen-on time is your preferred metric, expect about seven hours.) That’s with the screen set to that 120Hz refresh rate, mind you — if you played your cards right, I have little doubt the FE could clear the two-day battery barrier. That’d be pretty good from any smartphone — from a phone using a Snapdragon 865, it’s doubly impressive.
Author: Chris Velazco, @chrisvelazco
3h ago
Source: Engadget
