It hath been rechristened the “Fan Edition,” and bestowed upon us for seven hundred dollarydoos.
Hot diggity, rejoice!
But enough industry navel-gazing: is the Galaxy S20 FE a good phone?
Is it worth the asking price?
Is it better than the original Galaxy S20?
Actually, it’s about the same, at least in terms of user experience.
The only huge difference is the camera.
The rear panel also moves from tempered glass to colored plastic, which we’re fine with.
All that, for $300 less.
Surprisingly, Verizon’s ultra wideband variant of the S20 FEdoesn’t get a price bump.
Strategically, this is similar to what Google’s been doing with its Pixel 3a and 4a variants.
$700 is still a lot of money to spend on a phone, especially at the moment.
But Samsung’s upgrade now looks a lot better than its competition.
I’m also not in love with the size.
That’s a very subjective comparison, obviously.
and a pretty pronounced, sharp camera bump—a case is a must-have.
I’d also have preferred a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor after getting used to it again on the Pixel series.
Otherwise, the S20 FE is more than capable of doing pretty much everything I wanted it to.
5G performance is hard to quantify since nobody’s traveling and 5G coverage is still spotty.
I did notice the occasional stutter in the touchscreen, which sometimes interpreted taps as swipes and vice-versa.
A reboot cleared them up quickly.
Still Extremely Samsung
Enough comparisons with other phones.
How does the Galaxy S20 FE hold up on its own merits?
Quite well…assuming that what you want is a big, powerful Samsung phone.
Okay, that’s a lot of qualifications.
And that’s extremely intentional.
(This phone runs Android 10, by the way.)
I could go on for a thousand words about all the little tweaks Samsung has made to the software.
Take that as a positive or negative, for whatever you want.
There was one feature I was eager to try out:the deeper integration with Microsoft’s Your Phone.
And that bears out in its real-world use.
Above: the same spot at telephoto, standard, and wide-angle shots.
The front-facing camera, likewise, is a little disappointing.
You won’t find this much pure hardware goodness for this price anywhere else at the moment.
