Samsung Galaxy S20 FE unboxing and first impressions By Neowin

Hi everyone- this is robin Edwin, and today we have here the Samsung Galaxy s20, Fe 5g, which is a real mouthful of a name. Fe here stands for fan edition, and we've seen this name before in some Samsung phones, but it's not something they do a lot of. So this is basically Samsung takes the galaxy s20 that they released earlier in the year. Turning down some things about this phone like the build and the cameras and making it much more affordable than the original lineup. So that's pretty much the concept of this thing. Uh here in Europe, we do have a 4g version of the phone as well, but in the US there's only 5g, and I'm really glad I got the 5g version, but I'll explain that in a bit, so I'm just going to go ahead and open this up, because usually I would show you the top of the box, but they put the shipping label on top here and there's a bunch of barcodes and stuff that I don't want to expose.

So I'm just going to try to slide this out and there we go as usual for Samsung. You do have uh this thing here on the top part of the box, with the manuals and the sim ejection tool is going to be in here. So that's something to keep in mind if you're unboxing this- and here we have the phone now, this phone is beautiful. This thing comes in six different colors, and you see color options I mean, but I got the cloud red one and whoops. Oh, my this thing is beautiful.

I usually say I don't like red very much on most things, but man does this look great uh it has this frosted finish to it. I think that that's why they call it cloud red because they have this frosted finish on the plastic, which, yes, this is a plastic pack and I believe the frame might also be plastic. It feels pretty sturdy like the build quality is great here, but I think it is plastic. It doesn't feel as cold to the touch as you get from metal and glass. So that's something to keep in mind it's one of the sacrifices you make taking those steps down to be cheaper and actually that's something.

Samsung has been doing quite a bit because even the note 20, which is still a premium smartphone that had a plastic bag, you have to go for the note 20 ultra, which I also reviewed a couple of weeks ago. You'd have to go for that to get the glass build, but it's a fine sacrifice like I said it feels great. So there's no issue there, but there's another engrained back here, which is the cameras so usually in a galaxy s20. The base, one you'd get a 12 megapixel primary camera, a 10 megapixel ultra-wide and a 64 megapixel telephoto camera here. The primary camera is the same.

So that's 12 megapixels without the same specs that doesn't change, but the ultra-wide, which is the one on top here, is also 12 megapixels. But there are it's a smaller pixel size. There are some sacrifices there um, it still doesn't have an optical image stabilization. I believe so that that's still there and no well sorry, the ultra white doesn't have optical image stabilization. That's the demo photo.

I was mixing them up, so you do miss out on that pixel size, though it's a little small, where it's gotta get a little less light, it's not as great in that sense and then the telephoto it's only eight megapixels instead of 64. , so that's probably the biggest downgrade there. It does have optical image. Stabilization like I was saying and face detection autofocus, and it supports optical zoom up to 3x and digital's over 30x. So it still has a lot of those base like the general features, but you have a much more resolution, so it's not going to be quite as great.

So this is some language you make, and I think that's kind of the point uh, because a lot of people they always you see online. A lot of people complaining. They're saying that they like to stop to your specs, like the snapdragon processors, the top tier ones, and things like that and Samsung is basically just trying to offer a very high performance and premium experience in that sense without those things that some don't consider it essential. So that's what's happening here now going around the phone here we do have the usual array of buttons. The power button slashes pix view button.

You can actually turn this phone off with just this button. If you press and hold it is'll, just summon Bixby, which is very annoying, but that's just the way Samsung does things whatever the volume rocker here, uh, it's the usual layout. It looks pretty nice um up here. You have a microphone on the sim card slot. This side is as clean as it gets.

There's absolutely nothing here, then, on the bottom, we do have a speaker grille, an USB type-c port that charges, and at least at 15 watts that's the charge that comes in the box. I think it might support that to 25, and then we have another microphone down there and then, of course, here at the front we have the display. So I'm going to turn it on. Oh, it's already on okay, we're just going to set this up, but in the meantime let me just say: I'm very confused by uh Samsung's ideas here. Well, it's the strategy.

They have with advertising these phones. So here's the thing. Well, let's just take video everything and the note 20 ultra that I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. That is only available with 5g, with a numerical rear wherever you buy it, it supports 5g, but it's available in Europe with the Enos 990 processors and in America it has a snapdragon 865 plus. So obviously the Enos 990 supports 5g.

That's not the problem for Samsung, but with this phone they have the 5g variant in the US with the snapdragon 865, the 4g variant in Europe with the Enos. But then the 5g variant in Europe still has a snapdragon 865. I don't understand why they did it that way. I just don't get it, but I'm not complaining, because this is a 5g version and my experience with the Enos on the note 20 ultra was not great, so I'm more I'll be more than happy to use this and get the snapdragon 865 instead and see how much better. That is because it does seem a lot better in terms of battery life, especially, so I'm I'm excited for that.

I just don't get it. Why is it not using the Enos in this case uh, since obviously it supports 5g? Why does the Enos version only have 4g in this phone when it supports 5g? On the note 20 ultra I'm, I don't quite understand that, but whatever that's just me being weird or in the way, I guess uh. So here we have uh Samsung's. This isn't the annoying part of Samsung setup. I didn't log into any account, so that's whatever, but there's this all these apps that they want to install.

I mean some of them are Samsung apps like of course, Samsung notes and stuff, this stuff that might be useful to you, but a lot of it is kind of optional. It's these partnerships, like with Microsoft, there's a lot of Microsoft stuff here I do use these apps, but if you don't, it's kind of just annoying to have them prompted here and be selected by the font, but whatever I'm going to confirm this, they might even prompt a couple more. I think they do yeah. So these are location based. These are recommended apps, based on where you are and the stuff that's popular.

Where you live again, I do use the second one whoops. I do use the second one, but it's just annoying that these things are always pre-selected. I really don't care for this um we're gonna also skip the Samsung account, so you're looking at the display here- and this is another downgrade, of course, for the s20 Fe, but I don't think it's a major one. So the biggest thing here is that it's not quad HD, like the s20 family. This is full HD.

This is a 6.5 inch display full HD and it, but it still does support 120 hertz refresh rate, and I think that's a very conscious and smart choice by Samsung. I say all the time that I really don't care much about call HD on a screen. This is small and I don't to 1080p- is completely fine for me and that's still the case. So this feels absolutely fine in terms of the resolution and having that high refresh rate, that's something that I value a lot more and that I think a lot more people value more. So that's a very smart decision about a very smart cost, cutting measure, of course, but it works perfectly fine in terms of this still being a flagship, but now with that um with that lower price point and, of course, all the resolution that comes with it, but it's totally fine.

This looks absolutely great it. I don't know if it looks as good as it would look on other Samsung phones in terms of the converse, but it looks great it's the viewing angles are amazing on this, it's perfect. So it's its a great display. Nonetheless, you're not really missing out by turning it down to foam hd, which, by the way, if you have a galaxy s20, and you set it to 120 hertz, refresh rate you're, still going to be using full HD because it doesn't support 120 hertz at quality resolution. So, like I was saying this is completely fine.

It's great. I really like that choice. Another downgrade, though again the camera here, which is in the tiny notch you can barely tell there. It is um. The camera here is 32 megapixels on that sounding camera, and that sounds good because on the s20 you get 10 megapixels.

But this is one of those perfect examples that resolution in the camera isn't everything, so this is likely not going to be as good. You see a lot of cheaper phones with this high resolution. Front-Facing cameras. It's not just about resolution. For example.

This is a fixed focus camera, while some galaxy s20 phones have autofocus on the selfie camera. So there's one of the sacrifices you make still it's fine. I'm one of those people that doesn't care too much about cameras most of the time, and I mean I have to test it. Of course, I have no idea how good it actually is, but for those people that don't care about the cameras, then this is probably fine. So that's in terms of the software.

I there's really not a lot. I can say here because this is the same experience. This is running android 10, one eye to 2.5. I think I actually am not completely sure. If yeah it is 2.5, so it's pretty much the same. I saw on the Galaxy Note 20 ultra.

I don't have a one UI 3 with android 11, yet I actually just saw that starting to roll out to some people, but I'm not sure. If that applies to Portugal, I can't find the update, but it is very much the same as you'd get on other phones there, other Samsung phones, I mean there's wireless power share. Still the link to windows feature pretty much. Everything you'd expect from a Samsung phone is still here. That's absolutely not new.

Nothing! That's changed significantly from other Samsung phones, so it's that's pretty much. It is really like I said snapdragon 865, which is actually better than you'd, get from something like the note 20 ultra here in Portugal at least because that has an Enos processor. It's got six gigabytes of ram. There are some configurations that have eight, but I have never seen them, and it's got on 128 gigabytes of storage there's also a configuration, at least in the US with 256, but I find this is more than enough for me. So completely fine, but another difference actually inside is that this has a 4500 William hour battery, which is bigger than the s20.

So that's actually a pause there. You do get that longer battery life compared to the very good galaxy s20. This is the same size battery as the Galaxy Note, 20 ultra. So that's pretty cool and considering this as that snapdragon processor instead of Enos, I'm really hoping I can get two days of battery life out of this. But of course, like I said, I'm just unboxing this now I have no idea, but we won't be checking that out for the phone review so stay tuned.

For that I think I covered everything. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you guys next time.

Source : Neowin