Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Long-term review: The real flagship killer By Mr. Phone

The Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe is a very interesting smartphone. I mean. When was the last time you saw a flagship grade, Samsung smartphone, available at a relatively affordable price. I can't seem to remember and now that this phone has received a major price cut and is now offered at a starting price of just 41 000 rupees. It begs the question: has Samsung cut a lot of corners or are we looking at a new flagship killer that can give the OnePlus phones a run for their money? Also, with the galaxy s21 series just around the corner, will it still make sense to buy the Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe in 2021, let's find out hello, everyone, I'm man Rashid for Mr phone, and I've been using the Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe, as my daily driver for quite some time now- and this is my long term review, but before we begin, please go ahead and subscribe to the Mr phone YouTube channel if you haven't yet and do hit that bell icon so that you're notified whenever a brand new video drops with that said, let's get started now before I go ahead and talk about the phone's design and build quality. Let's address the elephant in the room, the phone's polycarbonate pack.

Now I understand Samsung's decision to include a polycarbonate bag in favor of cost-cutting, but trust me guys this phone doesn't feel cheap. Cheap are those phones that use those flimsy and shiny sort of back panel, but this one right here is a high quality one, and I'd prefer this over any other glass back phone. My reasoning behind this is quite simple. I don't like putting a case on my phone, which means I constantly live in the fear that what if I drop my iPhone 11 Pro, I don't think that it will survive, and this is why, with the time that I spent with the galaxy s20 Fe, I felt that the polycarbonate back, coupled with the curved sides and the anti-slip texture, makes this phone drippy in the hands. That said, glass back phones are indeed premium, but the galaxy s20 Fe with its polycarbonate back is definitely solid without a doubt.

However, my only gripe here would be that it does pick up fingerprints and smudges, then again, not as much as a glass back phone. Apart from this, the phone weighs 190 grams. It is 8.4 mm thick, and I would say that the phone's weight distribution is pretty well-balanced. Moving on there's a rectangular camera bump at the back, which is not as big as the one found on the Galaxy Note 20 ultra, but it is still quite pronounced now. This does make the phone wobble a bit if you put it on a flat surface, but that is only towards the top left corner.

This means, if you like, to type a message or browse the web, while the phone lies flat on a surface that shouldn't be a problem. Apart from this, the phone's frame is made out of aluminum, that comes with a shiny coating. The phone's volume and power buttons are found on the right which, by the way, aren't as click as I would want them to be, but over time I have got used to them. No Bixby button on the left, which is good news. The primary microphone, an USB type-c port and a speaker are found at the bottom, while the secondary microphone, the hybrid sim slots and the earpiece that doubles up as a speaker are situated at the top.

Lastly, for authentication Samsung has chosen to go with an optical in-display fingerprint sensor. Instead of the reliable ultrasonic sensors found inside the more expensive galaxy s20 series, I found this fingerprint sensor to be quite finicky. I mean it does the work, but it is slow, though. What is not slow is the face and lock functionality. You can purchase the Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe in five different color options.

These are cloud white cloud, navy cloud, red cloud lavender and the one that I have with me cloud mint on the front. The Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe is grazed by a 6.5 inch. Full HD, plus super AMOLED flat display with a center aligned hole, punch cutout at the top for the selfie camera. The panel is not of the dynamic AMOLED variety like the ones found on the galaxy s20 series, but nonetheless the display on the galaxy s20 Fe is simply gorgeous to bring in the 120 hertz refresh rate, and what you have here is a very smooth panel. Now some people might miss the presence of a quad HD resolution display, but in my opinion the full HD display should be fine for most trust me.

As for the quality I'd like to report that this is indeed a very well calibrated panel and in general use it indoors as well as outdoors. I had no complaints with the brightness levels. Moving on display mode is set to vivid by default, and personally I like how the colors pop on the screen just in case, if you feel that the panel is a bit too over saturated for your liking, there's an option to manually tweak the display mode as well. Viewing angles are good, and I did not notice any kind of color shifting on this panel with white wine l1 support, I was able to watch out content and YouTube videos in full HD, thanks to the large display and the presence of stereo speakers, videos and games look great on this phone overall. I've been very satisfied with my experience.

However, my only complaint with this display, if there would be one, is that this display doesn't offer you variable refresh rate. Just like you get on the galaxy s20 ultra. This means you can either set the display at 60hz and have a good battery life, or you can set the display at a 120 hertz in favor of a relatively shorter run times. If you ask me, I'm willing to trade off the battery life in favor of the smoother display more on the battery life. Later, in terms of software, Samsung had already started rolling out the one UI 3.0 update, based on android 11 for the galaxy s20 Fe. By the time I started using this phone, so if you have been holding back from purchasing the s20 Fe because of the older software now is the time, but how good is Samsung's latest software? Well, anyone who's coming from one UI 2.5 will feel right at home with one UI 3.0. I feel the company has paid good attention to detail, and it is quite evident in the way the new software looks and feels.

For starters, there is a ton of options that you'd get to play with. There are navigation gestures or wallpapers and themes, a game launcher dual messenger feature, and so much more starting with the lock screen. You can check the weather, your music and more with the help of lock screen widgets edge panels are one of the most underrated features that I really enjoy using the best part here is that it lets me save my often used app pairs quite handy, then there's a notification shade, which looks pretty slick. In my opinion. I really like how Samsung has played around with the translucent elements, and it's not just a notification shade, but the entire UI that I'm talking about the volume controls are also revamped, and you now get a much detailed view.

There's also a toggle to enable android.11's live caption feature notification. Bubbles are also here, which will remind you of the old Facebook chat heads, but these are system-wide, of course, and how can we ignore the always on display which, according to me, has now become Samsung's 40. ? It still comes with the same number of clock and color options. However, now you do get a few new gives to apply now. Samsung's software is, as usual, loaded to the brim, and it isn't always a good thing right.

So this is why I feel that not everything is nice and dandy. If I point out, I don't like Samsung daily and, yes, they renamed it. I don't know how does that matter, but that's there. I truly wish Samsung resorts to using google. Now in the future.

Annoyingly you still get the option of download two apps for everything. For example, gallery and google photos internet and Google Chrome, and you know the drill. The good part is that, while setting up you can choose to skip downloading Samsung's suite of apps and many other bloatware apps, but I only have one simple question: why can't we simply stick to google apps pre-installed apart from this general operation, is on point Samsung's. One UI 3.0 is truly very functional. Sometimes, yes, I do get bothered by the occasional stutters and frame drops in the UI which, by the way, something that is absolutely rare.

When I compare it to what I used to face during the old touch wiz days. That said, if we do ignore the minor shortcomings, I guess this is it one UI looks good animations and transitions are done well, and I can finally say that I am kind of starting to like Samsung's take on android over stock android or for that matter, oxygen OS. If you have ever used a Samsung flagship device in the past or if you are currently using one. Let me know in the comments: how has your software experience been? Also, if you've been enjoying this video? So far, then, a subscribed to the channel would be totally awesome.15 years. Let's talk about the phone's hardware, the Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe features the Enos 990 soc under the hood, which is coupled with 8gb of lpddr5 ram and either 128gb or 256 GB of UFS 3.1 onboard storage. This storage is by the way expandable to up to one terabyte via a micros card.

Sadly, the Indian version of the galaxy s20 Fe doesn't come with the snapdragon 865 soc, but when did Samsung ship a flagship grade device in India with a snapdragon processor. So while I haven't had the opportunity to test the snapdragon variant of this phone, I can say that the performance on the Enos variant has been good for the most part hear me out: let's get the benchmarks out of the way in an tutu the Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe reported a score of 4 lakh 87 090. In geek bench, the phone's single core and multi-core scores were 911 and 2709, respectively, and revenge results that show the phone's sequential, read and write speeds reported a score of 1527.38 MB per second and is 668.44 MB per second respectively. While synthetic benchmarks are just numbers, here's how the phone performed in the real world opening apps was fast and the s20 Fe could handle heavy multitasking with ease while the phone was quite responsive. Mostly, I did come across those slight stutters and delays.

Whenever I switched from a heavy app to the home screen, I played Call of Duty mobile and asphalt 9 legends at high graphic settings and the galaxy s20 Fe was able to run both these games without breaking a sweat. The only problem is that over longer gaming sessions, the back panel specifically near the camera module gets warm to the touch which did make me feel a little uncomfortable holding the phone over long stretches of gameplay. I really feel that in general usage, the Enos 990 chipsets inside this phone can handle anything that you throw at it. But that's not the problem. The problem is overheating, and this is an area where Samsung really needs to put in their efforts and come up with a solution soon.

Moving on, I have already told you that the galaxy s20 Fe comes with a stereo speaker setup, and I have to say that its output is pretty loud and clear check this out. During my testing, I found the master output to be very good, with beautiful sounding lows and mid vocals sound, crisp and clear, and overall these are one of the loudest speakers that I have seen on a smartphone wireless audio performance was great as well. The Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe packs a fairly large 4500 my battery under the hood. It supports a wired, fast charging wireless charging and reverse wireless charging. You also get a 15 watt charger, bundled inside the box, despite having a fairly large battery endurance, isn't a strong suit of the galaxy s20 Fe.

While you can make the phone last a full day without any major problems. This is only if you set the screen refresh rate to 60hz, but then again, if you have a 120hz screen at your disposal, why would you want to use 60 hertz? With my usage, I was only able to manage a full day worth of use with the display set at 120 hertz. That's it giving short battery top-ups before sleeping had become somewhat of an everyday routine, since I was never confident that the phone would make it to the next morning, speaking of which standby times on this phone are a total mess. Every morning, I'd notice a dip of about 15 percent in the battery, and the result was the same. Even when I tested the phone, while the screen refresh rate was set to 60 hertz, consistently charging the galaxy s20 Fe from about 20 at all times to all the way up to a hundred percent took me about 80 minutes using the supplied, 15 watt charger.

As for the good part, throughout the review period, I tested the galaxy s20 Fe on jio4g, and I have to say that I did not come across any issues regarding the call quality or network performance. We finally come to the most exciting part about this smartphone. The cameras, the Samsung Galaxy, s20 Fe features a triple camera setup at the back. That comprises a 12 megapixel. F: 1.8 primary camera with optical image stabilization. This is coupled with a 12 megapixel, f, 2.2, ultrawide camera and a 12 megapixel f, 2.4, telephoto camera, that's capable of 3x optical zoom at the front, the galaxy s 20 Fe 1 ups, the regular galaxy s20 and offers a 32 megapixel, f 2.2 front camera for selfies, while the cameras sound to be formidable on paper. Are they up to the mark in real life check this out in daylight conditions, the primary camera was able to capture excellent shots with good color reproduction and details? Autofocus was quick and objects.

Even at a distance were sharp and well-defined, while shooting human subjects, especially in live focus. The camera does a very good job of maintaining the skin texture and overall sharpness anyway. Moving on close-ups were once again excellent. Details were superb on the focus area, while the natural depth of field looks very pleasing to the eye. The telephoto camera also takes some well detailed photos while using the 3x optical zoom.

It is good to see consistent, colors in images taken from both the primary camera and the telephoto camera. That said, I am not a huge fan of the 30x face. Zoom features that Samsung advertises according to me. It is nothing more than just a gimmick coming over to the wide-angle camera. Well, I have no complaints with the color reproduction.

I mean just look how beautiful the photos look. The only problem is that, since the wide-angle camera is using a small sensor, the images lack detail when you zoom in now, let's move on and talk about the low light image quality, so the shots taken from the primary camera are decent, but the photos that come out from the telephoto and the white cameras are plain poor. They lack detail. Green is visible, there's distortion and basically the photos, don't look good, but then there's night mode now, first things: first, that the photos taken in night mode take a lot of time to process, and this was something that really tested my patience during the review period, but the end result was simply amazing check this out images taken with the night mode. Look, sharp and detailed in comparison to the general low light shots.

Color reproduction is good, and I simply can't deny that the photos, at least to my eye, look very pleasing. Rest. You be the judge on to the front camera selfies taken in good lighting conditions came out with excellent details and good color reproduction skin textures are maintained. Well, while the dynamic range is on point, the light focus mode for the front camera again does a very good job of separating the subject. From the background that said, the low light selfie camera is a plain average.

The camera struggles to maintain consistency and the resulting shots, look muddy and grainy. The screen flash does help in getting a better image, but the overall output is still meh. That said, night mode once again saves the day, since the photos taken in this mode are definitely amazing. Both the front and rear cameras are able to shoot 4k videos at 60 fps talking about the rear camera video sample. I have no complaints when it comes to details, color, reproduction or dynamic range.

Those are done well. My problem is with the movements. Whenever I pan, I feel, there's a slight judder in the footage. Also, when moving the camera around, while shooting the movements for some reason, don't look natural. As for the low light, video quality I'd say, don't expect much.

The performance is just fine. While colors and details look. Ok, there is visible grain and noise in the recorded footage which you can't ignore in terms of selfie video recording. I have recorded a few samples as well, so please check them out and let me know in the comments what you guys think about the picture and audio quality. This is the front facing video sample on the Samsung Galaxy.

S20 Fe tell me: how does this sound? How does this look? This is the dynamic range, as you can see, I'm panning around and yeah looks good on the phone at a selling price of 41 000 rupees. There's a lot of going in the favor of the Samsung Galaxy s20 Fe. The device has proved that Samsung can still make good phones with top of the line hardware and offer it at a relatively low price. For what it's worth the galaxy s20 Fe comes with an amazing 120, hertz OLED display is designed well and feels solid in the hand, has a great pair of stereo speakers that offer an immersive audio experience and its cameras perform exceptionally well in good lighting conditions, coupled with one UI 3.0, and I can not see a reason. Why would anyone skip and purchase some other phone at this price range? If you can look past the camera's average video recording performance and somewhat okay battery life, you won't regret purchasing the galaxy s20 Fe.

So can this phone be called the new flagship killer? I guess yes, the galaxy s20 Fe directly competes with the OnePlus 8t, and apart from the faster fingerprint sensor and the glass back found on the OnePlus phone, I can't think of anything special that makes the 80 better than the s20fe for that matter. After using the galaxy s20 Fe, I actually prefer one UI over oxygen OS. I say this because I'm a huge oxygen OS fan, but right now in between the two, I really feel that Samsung is the better pick. So that was my review of the Samsung Galaxy s, 20 Fe. What do you guys think about this smartphone share your thoughts with me in the comment section below apart from this hit the like button, if you had fun and do share this video with others, as always for all the latest tech content visit, Mr phone see you in the next one: take care and stay safe? You.

Source : Mr. Phone