Samsung Galaxy S21 FE
If Samsung slashes the price, this could be a fine mid-range phone. Right now,now it’s massively overpriced
SCORE
PRICE 128GB, £583 (£699 inc VAT) from samsung.com
The Samsung Galaxy S21 FE really rea challenges the idiom “better late l than never”: arriving almost a year after the other phones in the S2 S21 family, the FE lands as we await new news of the Galaxy S22 range. This Fan Edition is purportedly the budget member of the Galaxy S21 range, but, bu right off the bat, price is a problem. A At £699, it’s almost identical to the stre street price of the S21 ( see issue 318, p68).
You’d be forgiven for confusing the t Galaxy S21 FE with its non-FE siblin sibling: other than its larger size, it’s a dead ringer. Until you touch it, that is, for this is a plastic rather than metal phone. The positive to this is that it’s less prone to scratches and easier to grip, but it feels cheaper than the S21. It shares the S21’s strikingly slender design, though, and you have to admire the barely-there bezel around the 6.4in AMOLED panel.
This positions the FE between the 6.1in S21 and 6.7in S21 Plus in the family line-up. Like its sibling, the display has a 1,080 x 2,400 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. Another point of similarity is Samsung’s Dynamic AMOLED 2X technology, which ensures the screen is both vibrant and bright. Streaming TV shows and playing games on the phone is a treat.
Breaking up the display is a cut-out for the front-facing camera along the top edge, which is an upgrade on the S21: 32MP rather than 22MP. Snaps looked bright and detailed, even in low-light settings, but I avoided the Portrait mode owing to its sometimes inaccurate application of bokeh blur.
The main 12MP camera and 12MP ultrawide lens are both holdovers from the S21, but while the S21 also has a 64MP telephoto camera, the FE makes do with 8MP. Still, it’s paired with the same lens, which allows for 1.1x optical or 3x hybrid zoom; few will notice the difference in practice.
Pictures taken on the main camera were extremely colourful, as you’d expect from a Samsung phone; I suspect the brand’s scene-optimisation software has never heard of oversaturation. The results are instantly social media-worthy, especially when taken in well-lit situations.
I also appreciate how pictures taken on the three different cameras share a colour profile. Many phone cameras don’t have these in sync, so jumping between a zoom and standard shot can affect how colours and brightness look. For the S21 FE, no matter what zoom level I picked, shades looked the same.
Both the front and rear cameras can hit 4K resolution and 60fps, which is a surprise for the front camera as few phones hit 4K selfie recording. The Galaxy S21 can actually record 8K video, so the FE will disappoint the few people in the world who want that on a phone.
The he FE makes no sacrifice on speed, with the same Exynos chip as the S21. That’s s the chip in European phones, at least, but Samsung sent us a unit with the h Snapdragon napdragon 888 found in the US versions. ons. In practice, there’s little d difference: ff rence: this is a stupidly quick phone h e for general use and gaming. However, ever, I expect the S22 family to shift up yet another gear to the newly unveiled iled Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC.
The he S21 FE runs Android 12, with Samsung’s ung’s One UI 4 laid over the top. The 8GB GB of RAM (6GB on 128GB variants), nts), processor and screen refresh rate should hould have made navigating the FE’s menus a breeze, but swiping b between een home pages, opening apps and d unlocking nlocking the phone felt sluggish. In particular, rticular, using the menu’s search function ion to find a particular app was often f laggy. This should be solved by an update, pdate, though, and this sluggishness ishness was only an issue for the phone’s e’s menus. When using apps, the phone h e felt snappy.
I was also surprised by the poor battery ry life, especially with a 4,500mAh 0mAh unit inside. With average use – some social media browsing, music streaming and the odd game and photo capture here and there – I found the battery barely survived a day between powering. Heavy use meant I needed to charge the mobile in the early evening to keep it ticking until the next morning.
The FE’s 25W charge rate is also uncompetitive compared to some of the fast-charging phones on the market, many of which go up to 65W or even 120W. At 25W, the FE takes about an hour-and-a-half to go from empty to full. A charger isn’t included in the box, either.
More positively, the Galaxy S21 FE also offers 15W wireless powering and 4.5W reverse wireless powering, the latter of which lets you juice up other mobiles. Those aren’t fast speeds either, but at least the options are there.
So, where does this leave the S21 FE? In short, overpriced. The only advantage it offers over the S21 is its larger screen, but otherwise the older phone is better specified in every way. TOM BEDFORD
“Pictures taken on the main camera were extremely colourful, as you’d expect from a Samsung phone”
SPECIFICATIONS
8-core 2.84GHz/2.42GHz/1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G 6GB/8GB RAM Adreno 660 graphics 6.4in 120Hz AMOLED screen, 1,080 x 2,400 resolution 128GB/256GB storage 12MP/8MP/12MP rear cameras 10MP front camera Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5 NFC USB-C connector 4,500mAh battery Android 12 75 x 7.9 x 156mm (WDH) 177g 1yr warranty