Samsung recently released the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE, a ‘Fan Edition’ series, designed to offer consumers a user-friendly phone that features their favorite parts of the Samsung Galaxy S20 devices – display, performance, and camera – at a mid-range price point. Here, we outline the key features of the new release, and how it fares in comparison to its competitors.
How does it look?
One of the first choices we make when choosing a new phone is the color. Whilst many consumers stick with the classics like black and white, we’re usually presented with a few other standard options like silver or the well known and loved Samsung blues. The S21 FE offers up the choice between black, white, lavender and olive, which are very niche options, so for lovers of the classic phone color options, it might be a bit more difficult to land on their final choice.
The casing of the phone is a plastic matte finish, which some users have said makes the phone a bit slippery and difficult to keep a grip on. Regardless, the device still looks sleek and the plastic casing should make the phone more resilient to cracks and scratches than one with a glass covering.
What’s the price point like?
The FE series smartphones are available for a lower price point than regular Samsung Galaxy devices. The Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G is available online from anywhere between $549 and $699, with regular Galaxy devices sitting around the $850 price point. See our daily pricelist.
What are the features?
Samsung Galaxy S21 FE has a 6.4-inch AMOLED display and Gorilla Glass Victus for protection. The overall display is crisp, bright and high definition with 120Hz peak refresh rate, which allows users to easily see the phones display outdoors, without needing to fiddle with the settings. The smartphone has two variants available for storage, 128GB and 256GB, and both options come with 8GB of RAM.
Users might be surprised when unboxing the phone to discover that a charger isn’t included, only a SIM ejector and USB-C cable. The phone supports a 25W charger, which users will have to purchase separately. The device boasts a full day battery life but takes around 30 minutes to charge to 50% and 75 minutes to charge to 100% with a 25W charger. Wireless charging is also available on this device.
There’s also no headphone jack or microSD card slot featured on the device, meaning users will need to connect a USB-C adaptor in order to use headphones.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G features a 12-megapixel primary camera with optical stabilization, and an 8-megapixel telephoto camera with 3X optical zoom, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and a 32-megapixel camera on the front for selfies. Images are crisp and detailed, with the main camera taking high quality close-ups too, with the auto-focus working quickly and automatically. There’s also an object eraser feature, which allows users to remove unwanted clutter from the backgrounds of their photos. Stabilization during video recording is a strong point, both in daylight and in low light settings. Overall, the camera is on par with other recent Samsung models.
The display features a light up fingerprint sensor which is very sensitive and works faster than the facial recognition feature, even when users have claimed to open the phone with sweaty or dry hands. The size of the screen and crip display makes this phone perfect for watching videos and gaming, and the speakers are suitable for both of those functions. There are two speakers on the device, one placed behind the screen at the top of the device, and the other at the bottom, which balances sound well.
Users are able to customize almost every aspect of their device, and some fun and useful additional features include a games center and easy shortcuts and sidebars that make navigation easy and quick.
All in all, consumers can’t go wrong if they are looking for a phone that does it all and encapsulates the best features of the most popular Samsung smartphones, without all the bells and whistles. The price point is more accessible to consumers who are looking for Android devices, so its appeal is wide reaching.