If you’ve decided to skip the earlier Galaxy S20 models as well as the Note20 series, then perhaps Samsung’s latest flagship entry may suit your fancy. As previously reported, the Korean tech giant had recently launched the new Galaxy S20 Fan Edition (FE), and what sets the phone apart from its siblings is the fact that it comes with a Snapdragon 865 chipset.
This alone has gotten fans excited, as the Malaysian release of the earlier S20 models had arrived with the Exynos 990 SoC instead. Having spent some with it, here are my thoughts of the new Galaxy S20 FE.
The FE is almost similar to the Galaxy S20 Plus in terms of look and feel. The differences being its 6.5-inch Super AMOLED display being a flat panel rather than curved, and its rear case features a frosted metallic finish instead of the glossy look found on the earlier S20 series. Weight-wise, the S20 FE feels just nice and is less heftier than the Ultra variant. Pretty much a comfortable one-hand experience, at least in my personal opinion.
The phone’s display is as impressive as its other S20 siblings, but features a lower resolution at only 1080 x 2400 pixels. Its refresh rate comes at 120Hz as default, but you can always manually switch to 60Hz if you wish to conserve the phone’s battery life. Speaking of which, the phone comes with a battery capacity of 4,500mAh with fast charging support at 25W via USB-C and 15W through wireless. It also provides 4.5W reverse wireless charging if required.
Performance is where the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE shines in terms of running applications and multi-tasking, thanks to the Snapdragon 865 chipset and 8GB of RAM. For testing, I booted up the graphics intensive Genshin Impact as one of the apps I use for benchmarking. On the highest setting with the fps limit set to 60, the game maintained a high frame rate in most instances but will occasionally dip down to 40 or so frames in areas with high polygon count and on-screen effects.
The FE retains most of the triple camera sensors that are also featured on the S20 and S20 Plus, but trades the 64MP telephoto with an 8MP instead. Much like its siblings, photos taken with the cameras appear sharp, detailed and rich in colour. Surprisingly, the 8MP telephoto isn’t missing that much from the 64MP, but artifacts and muddiness will start appearing when zooming beyond its 3x optical capability. Video-wise, the phone is able to record up to 4K resolution at up to 60fps.
The Samsung Galaxy S20 FE provided a good first impression so far. But given that this is just a hands on with the device, I’ll save my thoughts regarding its overall performance for a full review. The new Samsung flagship smartphone is available now in Malaysia and is priced at RM3,399.
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