Galaxy S20 FE feels fully nourished product from Samsung.
The Samsung S20 series had started off with a great start in 2020 as all the three models i.e. S20, S20 Plus, and the S20 Ultra are some of the best flagships out there. They have all the best internals with the Galaxy S20 Ultra (Review) having a larger 108MP camera, 5000mAh battery, an Exynos 990 chipset, and has a massive 6.9 inches display.
The Galaxy S20 FE is a cheaper alternative to the Galaxy S20 series that has almost all the flagship internals at a lower price tag. Like the Galaxy S20 series, the Galaxy S20 FE has a 120Hz display, an Exynos 990 chipset, a large 4500mAh battery, and has support for wireless charging and reverse wireless charging.
But Samsung has cut a few corners as now there is a Full HD display, no huge resolution cameras, and the build is made of plastic. So do these small changes to the Galaxy S20 FE provide the flagship experience and is it a true value for money option in the market?
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Design:
In terms of design, the Galaxy S20 FE sports almost a similar look as that of the Galaxy S20 series lineup. At the back, you get a similar camera bump as present on the Galaxy S20 lineup that includes three cameras with a LED flash enclosed in a rectangular housing.
Instead of the glass back on the regular Galaxy S20 series, there is a polycarbonate back. But this polycarbonate back has a matte finish to it which makes it quite solid to hold and looks premium. This matte finish does catch a few fingerprints.
Along the sides, a metal frame runs that houses the volume buttons, and the power button on the left and the right side remains clean. When compared to the Galaxy S20, the smartphone is slightly thicker and weighs at 190 grams which is quite good to handle due to the plastic back and perfect weight distribution all around.
And at the front, there is a single punch hole cutout for the front camera on the Galaxy S20 FE that is found on the Galaxy S20 series but here the display is slightly flatter. On the top, there is a SIM card tray which is a hybrid slot and a secondary noise-canceling microphone and at the bottom, there is a loudspeaker vent, a USB Type-C port, and a primary microphone.
The front of the Galaxy S20 FE is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, not the Gorilla Glass Victous as found on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra (Review). The bezels are almost minimum to the sides which makes it look very much appealing.
The Galaxy S20 FE is provided in six different colors that include the Cloud Navy, Cloud Lavender, Cloud Mint, Cloud Red, Cloud White, and Cloud Orange. This makes it shand out from the crowd. Though the back is made up of plastic, there is support for wireless charging and also reverse wireless charging.
Another big change in the display is the presence of an optical in-display fingerprint scanner instead of the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner found on the Galaxy S20 series, Note 20, and the Note 20 Ultra.
The support for IP68 rating means it is dust and water-resistant but there is no 3.5mm headphone jack which was also seen on the Galaxy S20 series of smartphones. Overall, the design may feel a bit cheaper with that plastic back, but you do get all the necessary things that Samsung has not skipped.
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Display:
Instead of the regular Galaxy S20 series of smartphones, which have a Quad HD display, the Galaxy S20 FE has a Full HD+ (10180x2400 pixels) display. The display is of 6.5 inches Super AMOLED display and has a screen to body ratio of 20:9 with a pixel density of 393ppi. However, this display has still got a 120Hz refresh rate.
The regular Galaxy S20 series of smartphones have a 120Hz display but it is limited to Full HD resolution instead of Quad HD+. This higher refresh rate makes scrolling through webpages smoother, switching between applications is not a hassle and playing games feel smooth.
In the settings, you can switch between 60Hz and 120Hz simultaneously, and since this is an AMOLED panel, watching videos or playing games feel really good as the viewing angles are good and the level of color saturation in the display is excellent.
Coming to brightness, under direct sunlight, the display is easily visible and the auto-brightness sensor works really well. In dark or low-light conditions, the display is easily visible and there are the Blue Light Filter and Reading mode.
There is support for HDR content but somehow the Netflix could not be run on the Galaxy S20 FE in HDR mode. There are two screen modes- Vivid and Natural where Vivid is turned on by default. The Vivid provides a warmer tone with more saturated colors and Natural for sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamut mode.
You do miss on the Adaptive refresh rate where a smartphone can switch between two different refresh rates depending on the load of the application. The Always-On display can be customized to different styles and the edge lighting works well on the display.
Still, the AMOLED display and the higher refresh rate makes the Galaxy S20 FE worth considering for media consumption and playing games.
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Performance:
Like the regular Galaxy S20 series, the Galaxy S20 FE is either powered by an Exynos 990 or a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset in the market globally. In India, we get the Exynos 990 chipset which is not as powerful as the Snapdragon 865 but still, it is quite powerful.
Like the Snapdragon 865 that is used in most of the flagships, the Exynos 990 is an octa-core chipset which is divided into three clusters that include two Mongoose M5 cores clocked at 2.7 GHz, another two ARM Cortex A76 cores clocked at 2.5 GHz, and four lower core clocked at 2.0 GHz based on ARM Cortex A55 coupled with a Mali G77 MP11 GPU.
In regular day-to-day activities, the Galaxy S20 FE could easily handle everything whether light or heavy applications, multitasking felt smooth, playing heavy games like Call of Duty and Asphalt 9 without any issue but still the gaming on the Snapdragon 865 feels a tad better.
Call of Duty ran fine at the HDR graphics settings without breaking a sweat but the back of the Galaxy S20 FE felt a bit warm which is mostly noticed on the Exynos counterpart. There is no cooling technology either.
The Galaxy S20 FE has two storage variants that include 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128/256GB storage. There is no 12/16 GB RAM options as seen on the Galaxy S20 Ultra. Here the storage speeds are of UFS 3.0 instead of UFS 3.1 seen on other flagships, so application loading, read-write speeds are faster.
Moving to benchmarks, the Galaxy S20 FE scores 923 and 2676 in single and multi-core tests on Geekbench 5.1 and 529087 on Antutu v8 which makes it a very good performer but still the scores are lower than the Galaxy S20 FE having the Snapdragon 865 and also than the Apple iPhone 11 Pro having the A13 Bionic chipset.
Overall, in terms of gaming and performance, Samsung has not made any compromise and the Galaxy S20 FE continues to appeal but could have been better if there was a Snapdragon 865 under the hood.
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Software:
The Galaxy S20 FE runs on OneUI 2.5 built on top of Android 10. OneUI like the OxygenOS has been getting better with each software update and removes much of the bloatware. It is the same software found on the regular Galaxy S20 series and the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.
You get all the Android 10 features like a system-wide dark mode, Android 10 navigation gestures, etc. Samsung has thrown a plethora of features that includes a screen recorder, Focus Mode, Blue Light Filter, DeX mode to switch between your sweet moment instead of the regular phone usage that is similar to the Zen Mode on the OnePlus devices.
The Galaxy S20 FE gets the newer Edge panels with larger icons and provides easy access to some applications, tools and also there is also Edge Lighting which lits the border of the display whenever a new notification comes in.
There are a lot of themes built-in and icons in the app drawer and home screen can be customized in terms of icon size and also layout. There are some third-party applications pre-installed like Netflix, Opera browser, etc. and some Samsung specific applications like Quick Share, Samsung Apps, Music Share, etc.
To the left of the screen, swiping it shows the Samsung Daily instead of Google Feed which would have been better as it was first seen on the OnePlus and Xiaomi smartphones. Samsung Pay also returns with support for NFC.
Coming to software updates, Samsung is now providing 3 years of Android updates and security patches to improve smartphone performance and improve multi-tasking further. The OneUI 3.0 update will be coming soon and Android 11 is also around the corners.
With the OneUI 2.5 and the 120Hz refresh rate. the Galaxy S20 FE provides a really good software experience.
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Camera:
In terms of camera, the Galaxy S20 FE impresses with its triple camera setup. It may not have a huge 108MP main camera as that of the Galaxy S20 Ultra but is almost quite close to the Galaxy S20 and S20+ in terms of cameras. The cameras are:
- 12MP f/1.8 Samsung ISOCELL S5K2LD sensor for the main camera with dual PDAF and OIS
- 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera with a 123-degree field of view
- 8MP f/2.4 telephoto camera with digital zoom up to 30x and 3x optical zoom
It may not have as good details as on the 108MP main camera on the Galaxy S20 Ultra but still provides very much close to the Galaxy S20 and the S20+. The noise present is very less and the contrast is good though focusing needs a bit of work.
Turning on the HDR mode will result in some oversaturation in colors and has higher contrast also. At night, the images have a good amount of details with punchier and sharper colors. The dynamic range is good and the details are slightly better than the Galaxy S20.
The contrast takes a bit of hit and there seems to be some over-exposure in the surroundings. Turning on the Night Mode does reduce the noise, improve the long exposure in images, dynamic range, and also bring out slightly better details.
However, it still not as good as that of Google Pixel 5 or the OnePlus 8 Pro (Review), but does a good job. Google's Night Sight and OnePlus's NightScape have better low-light photography compared to the Night Mode on the Galaxy S20 FE.
The secondary camera is a 12MP ultrawide camera instead of the 64MP one found on the Galaxy S20 and S20+. You get a good amount of details with a good dynamic range and the exposure is well maintained. The colors look good but not as punchier as seen on the 64MP ultrawide camera found on the Galaxy S20 and S20+.
The 123-degree field of view captures more amount of subject into the images but sometimes when zooming it to 0.5x, those details look a bit softer. At night, the images captured from the ultrawide camera come out good but considering the segment, the OnePlus 8 Pro and the Galaxy S20 Ultra perform much better here with better dynamic range and contrast.
The Night Mode for the ultrawide camera works perfectly well as it brings in the highlights in shadows and reduces noise a fair bit. Still, there are areas of over-exposure and the dynamic range needs some improvement. The images look softer but Night Mode manages to improve it slightly.
There is no dedicated macro camera for those close-up images but still focusing close to a subject in the image using the main camera, the colors look good but there is a lot of noise and the dynamic range is not so good. And plus the ultrawide camera can do close-up macros on other smartphones which is simply not present here.
The third camera here is a telephoto camera which is 8MP. When you zoom till 3x, the images have excellent details with good color saturation and have a cooler tone. But the contrast and dynamic range are not as good as that on the main and ultrawide camera but still, you can say above average.
For some reason, not sure, the telephoto images from the Galaxy S20 FE results in 12MP images by default. Now moving to 4x, 5x, and up to 10x, the images have a good amount of details and the dynamic range as said is above average.
Moving above 10x, the colors look washed out, the dynamic range takes a hit and at 30x digital zoom, the images seem to look just average resulting in more amount of noise and almost bad contrast.
The Galaxy S20 Ultra with 100x SpaceZoom is almost similar to the 30x SpaceZoom on the Galaxy S20 FE. However, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra with the 50x SpaceZoom, does a much better job with good colors and dynamic range.
At night, the details are good with slightly better contrast and the dynamic range is good. However, at 3x, there is some amount of noise and the details are slightly better. Moving to 30x, the colors look washed out and the noise is present there. Turning on the Night Mode improves the noise and brings in some better color reproduction but still, it needs improvement.
There is no dedicated depth camera but still, the portraits from the main camera come out good with proper background blur and the edge detection works well also. The dynamic range is good and there is a Live Focus Mode to provide that accurate background blur and result in better subject separation.
On the front, the Galaxy S20 FE gets a 32MP f/2.0 camera which results in 10MP images by default. The front camera provides a normal and ultra-wide feel to the selfies which come in handy when taking selfies in a group.
The selfies have a good amount of details and the dynamic range works pretty well. The skin tones look natural and the noise is well masked off. While zooming into the selfies, there is some amount of softness in detail but still, it is pretty good.
Moving to portraits, the Live Focus Mode on the front camera results in proper subject separation and the results come out with good dynamic range and edge detection.
In terms of video, though the chipset supports 8K video recording, it is not present here. The maximum video resolution goes up to 4K at 60fps. There is OIS which provides better stabilization and the video has good color saturation and the level of noise is lower also.
Moving to 1080p, you can shoot at 30 and 60fps and here with OIS, the EIS kicks in providing really good video footage with less noise and good dynamic range. It is not as good as the 1080p video shots from the regular Galaxy S20 series. Basically, the OIS is present only on 60fps whereas EIS comes into the picture in 30fps videos.
The 4K video from the ultrawide camera is decent and the dynamic range is average. Switching to 1080p resolution, the Super Steady mode kicks in providing a better dynamic range and improves the noise present in the background.
At 4K, the videos have an average dynamic range and still not so good as the footage from the main and ultrawide camera. The 1080p videos from the telephoto camera have good details but suffer from a lot of noise and the dynamic range is not so good.
There are a couple of other video modes like Slow-Mo where you can record slow-motion videos in 1080p at 960fps, Super Slow-Mo, Panorama, Hyper-Lapse, Pro video, and Live Focus Video. Coming to the camera, you have a Pro Mode, Live Focus for portraits, Panorama and Single Take.
Here the Single Take clicks some few images and chooses the best one that has no blur and Pro Mode where you can adjust the shutter speed, adjust the ISO levels, white balance, and also the saturation in the images.
Overall, the camera performance is good on the Galaxy S20 FE is good as it provides a telephoto camera that many manufacturers have skipped and provided a macro and a depth camera. The telephoto camera is not so good and needs some improvement but still, it provides a great camera experience.
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Battery Life:
The Galaxy S20 FE like the Galaxy S20+ sports a 4500mAh battery which is adequately good for a Full HD+ display with a 120Hz refresh rate, This 500mAh battery capacity lower than that of the Galaxy S20 Ultra. OneUI 2.5 provides quite a few customizations to the battery life also.
With normal to heavy usage that includes playing Call of Duty for 3-4 hours, with the Wi-Fi turned on and also streaming content from Netflix, Youtube, the Galaxy S20 FE lasted for one single day with 15-20 percent left and the display is set at 120Hz.
With the Exynos 990 and 120Hz display, the battery life is not as efficient as the Snapdragon 865 model as the Snapdragon counterpart gets 6-7 hours of screen on time which is more than the Exynos model.
The standard screen on time recorded was 5-6 hours with display set to 60Hz and the battery can easily last for one and a half days with moderate usage. The battery life is good but inside the box, Samsung has provided a 15W fast charger instead of the 25W fast charger provided in the Galaxy S20 series and the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.
Other than fast charging, though it is the cheapest in the Galaxy S20 series, there is support for 15W fast wireless charging and 9W reverse wireless charging. So you can use a set of Samsung Wireless Earbuds and when kept on the back of the Galaxy S20 FE it will charge efficiently.
With the 15W fast charger bundled inside the box, the Galaxy S20 FE can go from 0 to 100 percent in around 2 hours which is pretty slow compared to the Warp Charge 30T on the OnePlus 8 Pro and also SuperDart charging on Realme X50 Pro. Using the 25W fast charger, it takes 1hour and 25 minutes to charge it completely.
When it comes to battery life and charging speeds, the Galaxy S20 FE does a decent job and though it is having a plastic back, there is support for wireless and reverse wireless charging.
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE Audio Quality:
The Galaxy S20 FE has a stereo speaker setup that includes the sound from the top earpiece as well as from the bottom facing downward speaker. The sound quality is really good with a higher level of loudness and there is also support for Dolby Atmos.
The loudness is not as good as the Galaxy S20 Ultra or the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra but still, the loudness levels are good. However, you do miss on the 3.5mm headphone jack like the regular Galaxy S20 or Note 20 series but using the USB Type-C port, the audio through it is good.
Verdict:
The Galaxy S20 FE is a very good all-rounder and provides a perfect flagship experience at a cheaper price compared to the regular Galaxy S20 series and the Note 20 series. It provides a 120Hz display, excellent performance, and gaming, a good set of cameras, and a great software experience.
However, since this smartphone is priced cheaper compared to the regular Galaxy S20 series, it does miss out on some of the things like glass build, the cameras are decent but not as good as found on the Galaxy S20 Ultra or the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra which have 108MP main camera and better telephoto cameras.
The display is Full HD+ instead of Quad HD and coming to battery life, it is good and can easily last for long hours but when compared to the competition, the charger provided in the box feels a bit short as you only get a 15W fast charger whereas the competition is offering 50 or 65W fast charging.
But talking about the plastic back, Samsung has not skipped on some essential features like IP68 rating, wireless and reverse wireless charging, etc. and the Galaxy S20 FE has good audio quality. One of the biggest omissions is the 3.5mm headphone jack.
If you look past that plastic build, not so flagship cameras, and the faster charging as seen on the flagships, what you get is a great display with a 120Hz refresh rate, excellent performance with Exynos 990 or Snapdragon 865 chipsets which are the flagship ones, good battery life and great software experience and all the features make it feel a true flagship.
Samsung has yet another winner in the that provides many flagships a run for its money and is a true value for money option in the market.
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