Return of the Fan Edition
Samsung is piggybacking on the success of the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE with another Fan Edition, this time of the Galaxy S21 series.
As a device, Samsung Galaxy S21 FE packs a 6.4-inch, FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate. It also has a 7.9mm body, and packs core flagship features like NFC, IP68-rated water and dust resistance, Bluetooth 5.0, and triple rear cameras with a 12MP primary shooter. This means that the Galaxy S21 FE's components are quite a bit similar to the Galaxy S20 FE.
Fortunately, the starting price now at $978 for the 128GB Galaxy S21 FE is about $100 lower than the Galaxy S20 FE's debut.
Galaxy S21 FE's appearance is largely inspired by the original Galaxy S21 design language. Familiar cues are its rear camera hump, which adopts the S21 series' Contour Cut chamfered plateau that ensures its lenses are flushed with its body. A key difference lies in its finish, where Galaxy S21 FE drops the two-toned look in favour of a uniform, single-colour back.
Strangely, the phone only has four muted pastel colourways. S21 FE's lack of colour tone and options makes it less exciting, especially next to the fun looking S20 FE choices.
A key difference in S21 FE's display (when compared to S20 FE) is the update to Samsung's Dynamic AMOLED 2X display (up from the previous Super AMOLED variant). That means the S21 FE now supports HDR10+, while the older model doesn't. The S21 FE's display also has a higher touch sampling rate of 240Hz.
Beyond that, the S21 FE's FHD+ resolution display stands at 6.4 inches across. This is 0.1-inch smaller than the S20 FE, but it still sits between the Galaxy S21 and S21+'s respective 6.2 and 6.7-inch display size. Colour reproduction is expectedly vibrant, fairly accurate, while details still look sharp.
We did notice minor issues with the built-in motion smoothness algorithm when playing back some YouTube videos that support 60FPS – it compensates for the sync and timing, but you'd notice jumps between cuts. This is likely not a persistent problem, since it could be fixed with a firmware update.
There's no difference in the S21 FE's speaker layout and audio signature. Just like the S20 FE, it borrows the call speaker to create stereo sound with its additional bottom-firing grilles. The sound is still mid-heavy with biases in percussion and vocals. The only thing that didn't make it to the S21 FE? A microSD card slot.
Singapore gets the Galaxy S21 FE with an Exynos 2100 processor, instead of SD888 like other territories do. It's the same chipset backing the local Galaxy S21
series, so you can expect similar performance.
With its 4,500mAh battery, the Galaxy S21 FE lasted 666 minutes in our tests; a little disappointing considering the S20 FE from last year had 100 minutes more run time. That said, it tallies with the S21 series sharing the same chipset.
Like the S20 FE, the S21 FE also offers 25W wired fast charging and 15W wireless fast charging with compatible charging pads. It took roughly 70 minutes for the S21 FE to charge from 0% to 100% on a third party fast-charger. Why third party? Because Samsung doesn't bundle a charging adapter with this device.
With the previous Galaxy S20 FE, we said that Samsung defied expectations and made a true Fan Edition device that packed core flagship expectations into a budget flagship price tag without sacrificing quality.
The Galaxy S21 FE actually offers the same value for money, but repeating its winning formula does make it fall short in certain ways. For one, the improvements between Galaxy S20 FE and S21 FE are minor. Short of the added HDR10+ support and another year of software support, you're not going to see any real difference between these devices in dayto-day use. Coupled with Singapore getting Exynos 2100 processors for its Galaxy S21 FE units when other countries get Snapdragon 888, we can't help but feel a little shortchanged.
However, if you aren't looking for an upgrade to an S20 FE, the Galaxy S21 FE is still a great budget flagship alternative. If anything, its starting price of just $978 actually puts it below much of the competition in this market segment.
MISSED THE S20 FE? THE GALAXY S21 FE IS STILL A SENSIBLE BUDGET FLAGSHIP UPGRADE.