Design and build

According to Samsung the Galaxy Fe is a smartphone built for the fans not sure what that means exactly but it does bring premium features like a flagship chipset and high refresh rate screen for a competitive price not all Galaxy FEs are the same there is a 5G capable version which uses a Snapdragon 865 ours is the 5G model and it has this smooth cloud navy finish overall it looks elegant though you will notice in the picture below that the bag is made of plastic here not premium gorilla glass the frame is aluminum though and you still get full ip68 water and dust resistance you’d expect from a high-end samsung phone.

6.5″ Super AMOLED, 120Hz refresh rate

On the front is a flat 6.5 inch super amoled displaywith a small punch hole for the selfie cam the resolution is a bit lower than the regular S20 at 1080p but it still brings that fast 120hz refresh rate and it’s worth noting that if you turn the regular S20s display to its fast 120hz refresh rate its resolution would dial down to 1080p as well the high refresh rate makes scrolling and moving elements on screen look much smoother to the eye it isn’t adaptive to content like some other solutions we’ve seen though as you’d expect from a samsung the Galaxy S20 FEs amoled is great with nice contrast super deep blacks and vivid colors you can adjust colors to be fairly accurate to specific color spaces and settings and brightness is just as good as the other S20 models we measured 400 nits maximum with the manual slider and it boosts up to 820 nits when in auto mode in bright conditions.

Optical display under fingerprint reader

Unlocking the phone is done with an optical under display fingerprint reader rather than an ultrasonic one like you’d find on other samsung flagships this isn’t the fastest reader around but it is quite reliable.

Stereo speakers, no headphone jack

For audio the Galaxy S20 fe has a stereo speaker setup with one bottom firing speaker and the earpiece acting as the second one it’s quite nice the phone scored a good loudness rating in our tests and the sound is clean with well-defined highs and decent lows unfortunately this device that’s built for the fans doesn’t include one of the fan favorites a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack you’ll have to buy a usbc adapter if you want to plug in.

Storage options

Your storage is expandable though on top of the 128 or 256 gigs on board

Android and oneUI 2.5

The S20 fees interface is samsung’s latest one ui 2.5 over android 10. it’s the same as you’d find on the other Galaxy phones you get support for gesture navigation as well as a system- wide dark mode which can be configured for certain times of the day edge panels give you quick access to customizable shortcuts by swiping on the edge of the screen it also contains useful features like the ,toolbox and there’s something called smart pop-up view it allows apps to appear as a floating bubble when they have a notification for you clicking on this will open a floating window great for multitasking and there’s a game launcher that groups all of your games in one easy to find place and provides you some interesting stats for your gaming.

Snapdragon 865 performance

Under the hood of our galaxy S20 fe is a flagship grade snapdragon 865 chipset and it provides support for 5G networks however the 4G only version will come with either a snapdragon or exynos chipset depending on the region performance here is excellent as you’d expect from this level of hardware benchmark scores aren’t quite chart topping as the newer snapdragon 865 plus exists but you wouldn’t be disappointed here for intensive tasks or gaming the performance is also quite consistent and we didn’t notice any significant ? throttling due to heat.

Battery (4500mAh), charging speed and wireless charging

Powering the galaxy S20 fe is a 4500 milliamp hour battery the same capacity as the s20 plus and the note 20 ultra this phone aced our battery life tests with the display set to 120 hertz it was able to score an awesome 110 hour endurance rating and turning the refresh rate down to 60 hertz resulted in a bump up to 118 hours the galaxy S20 fe supports fast wired charging up to 25 watts however the phone comes with a 15 watt adapter in the box with it we were able to charge the phone from a dead battery to 37 percent in half an hour not terribly slow but not very impressive either there is support for 15 watt wireless charging too as well as reverse wireless charging where you can use the s20 fe to charge other devices.

Camera specs

The galaxy S20 fe has the same 12 megapixel main camera with ois that you’d find on the other S20 models its other two cameras are different though its 12 megapixel ultra wide cam has smaller pixels and there’s an 8 megapixel three times telephoto cam.

Daylight photos image quality

During the day 12 megapixel photos from the main camera are sharp detailed and noise free they’re very similar in quality to those from the galaxy S20 plus ,the colors aren’t as punchy here the s20 fes portrait mode produces okay results the edge detection can get confused by more complex backgrounds but in more straightforward scenarios ,you get good subject separation in a fashion similar to the main cam 12 megapixel ultra wide photos have more restrained colors than you get from the galaxy S20 plus dynamic range is on par though and the results from the fan edition are actually a bit sharper the telephoto camera outputs images at 3 times zoom but these come out in 12 megapixels so there is some upscaling involved sharpness is still decent though comparable to the S20 plus telephoto and the noise performance is better here.

Low light photos image quality

In low light images from the fe’s main camera are quite similar to those from the s20 plus highlights around light sources aren’t quite as well contained as on the plus model the fe has a bit more detail and more noise as well if you switch on night mode the results are almost identical to those of the more expensive model you get the same level of detail and hardly any noise highlights are well preserved and you get a boost in the midtones nighttime photos with the fes ultrawide come out a bit better than those from the s20 plus colors are more saturated and there’s lower noise however the s20 plus does have more preserved detail with night mode on the fes ultrawide is flat out superior to the s20 plus with consistently better sharpness when zooming at night with the telephoto the fe produces better results as well with improved detail lower noise and wider dynamic range than the s20 plus the difference isn’t as pronounced with night mode on though both produce some pretty good photos.

Selfie camera

The fan edition selfies are taken with a 32 megapixel front-facing cam and there is no autofocus here these come out at 10 or 6.5 megapixels depending on the crop and the quality is decent you get well detailed images with pleasing skin tones and nice dynamic range.

Video quality

Videos can be recorded with the main camera in up to 4K at 60fps the quality is adequate with likable colors and good dynamic range but sharpness and detail are inferior to the other S20 models the same can be said for the ultrawide cam which can record in 4K at 30fps there’s pleasing colors and wide dynamic range but sharpness leaves more to be desired zoomed 4K videos from the telephoto cam are great comparable to those from the S20 plus colors are on point dynamic range is wide and there is plenty of fine detail electronic stabilization is available in all modes on all cameras on the main cam it works great we had a less than pleasant experience from the ultrawide though the frame rate isn’t steady with the stabilization on and you get some jerky movement every now and then the telephoto is somewhere in between the frame rate is constant but it’s still a little shaky.