When I was watching video reviews about the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE, almost all of them say that it is too expensive and you can get a better smartphone, especially within this price range.
So in this video, I’ll tell you whether or not it is true and if I do recommend this phone to you.
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Specs
Now since this review unit doesn’t come with a box, so here are the specs of the phone here in Malaysia, feel free to pause this video if you want to see the exact variants available and the price as well.
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Build & Design
Next, let’s talk about the build and the design. So since the phone has a plastic back the phone is very light in the hands at about 177 grams, definitely lighter than most mid-range smartphones that I have recently held.
I love how the side has an aluminum finish and had a matte silver finish to the phone, which helped in the overall grip of the phone.
Speaking of a matte finish, the back is also in a matte-colored finish, and the one that I have is in White and it also comes in Graphite, Lavender, and Olive as well.
[easy-image-collage id=6273]
In terms of the overall design, it looks very identical to the S21 series of smartphones, but I personally really love the single tone color rather than the double tone finish that the regular S21 had.
Some may argue about the whole plastic back but the fact is that it is just better and more durable compared to phones like the Pixel 6, which although it looks premium and all but in terms of durability on the Pixel 6… na-ah.
What’s also interesting is that the front is a Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, the toughest glass from Corning, till today again, not a compromise of durability over here.
And I did really appreciate the fact that the phone also had an official IP68 Dust and Water-resistance as this would be something that Samsung could have not had on an FE version of a smartphone.
Next, looking at the ports and buttons, looking below, other than the USB-C port, just next to it, there is the SIM card slot that supports up to a dual SIM, then there is one of the two stereo speakers over there, where the other is on the earpiece area.
Then on the right there is the volume rocker and the power button.
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Display
As for the phone’s screen, it comes with a 6.4-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, it has HDR10+ and a high refresh rate up to 120 hertz, and it has a FHD+ resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels.
As usual, the screen is very nice and bright, just like Samsung phones have always been.
As for playback on Netflix, it has Widevine L1 support with Full HD and HDR 10 playback as well, so that was sweet. The screen looked nice and vibrant during YouTube as well.
The screen is flat so it’s not as curved on the sides like the flagships and there is an in-display fingerprint sensor that uses an optical sensor instead of the ultrasonic ones that you’d find on a flagship once again, but all in all it does unlock very quickly.
And once again, since it has a high refresh rate of 120 Hertz, the overall refresh rate and the usability when it comes to daily, really felt like I was using a flagship.
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Cameras
As for the camera specs:
- the main lens is a 12-megapixel f 1.8 main lens;
- a 12-megapixel, f 2.2 ultrawide lens, and;
- an 8-megapixel telephoto lens, with 3x optical zoom and 30x digital zoom or Samsung calls it the Space Zoom
Then the front camera is a 32-megapixel f 2.2 aperture lens.
In terms of the picture quality, here is where it was flagship level indeed for the ultrawide, the main lens and even the telephoto lenses during the day.
And I even put a poll for people to guess what smartphone that I took the pictures with and most of them guessed that it was a flagship, especially the front camera shots as you guys can see, with amazing dynamic range and edge detection whether or not it is on the regular selfie and portrait mode, especially the rear portrait shots as well.
While I am not a huge fan of using digital zoom shots, but if you really want to, it is nice that the 30x Space Zoom still looked very decent as you can see in these two shots.
As for the night mode shots, it looked great for all of the lenses including the telephoto lenses as well.
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[Check out my YouTube video for more photo & video samples!]
Then as for video, the rear can record up to 4k 60 frames per second where the image stabilization for the 30 fps recording was really good for the ultrawide and the main lenses, and you can toggle the Super Steady mode where it will record up to 1080p instead.
Then when it comes to the front camera, although you can record up to UHD up to 60 fps, but I did find that the image stabilization was better on FHD+ up to 30 fps. Do check out my YouTube video for a video and audio recording test on the phone.
Then, there are other additional software features on it and out of all, I really love the dual video that features recording for the front and rear camera at the same time.
And of course the selfie portrait video as well, which looks amazing on the phone as well.
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Software
So the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE ships with Android 12 and One UI version 4.0, and yes, I can officially say that One UI version 4 is my favorite Android Skin in my humble and personal opinion, even better than Oxygen OS.
Now in case you didn’t know what’s new on One UI version 4, here is a quick look on what I really love about it.
First, there is the color palette, where you can easily change the color according to the choice of colors of your wallpaper and yes, this is nice compared to typically needing to download a whole icon pack or theme just to do the simple color-changing palettes.
I also really appreciated the newly refreshed widgets lists where if you click on them you will be able to see a preview of how the widgets will look like and the number of widgets available for it.
Then there is a brand new Device Care Menu, where not only you will see the battery performance and a nice indicator to show if your battery is running well, but also there are other useful information like storage and memory at a glance and there is a nice battery protection feature that limits the maximum charge to 85%.
Then now there are some privacy updates like showing you a green indicator when the app you are using has the camera or the microphone turned on.
Then if you haven’t tried Bixby routines, you are surely missing out as there are many IF THIS and THEN features that you can do like say, which will come in handy for many situations.
Yes, there are even more features on the One UI version 4 but these are my favorites so far.
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Battery
So the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE has 4500 milliamps of battery.
When I was using the phone, I did notice that the overall battery drain was really good because when I was at 100%, I still could get up to 2 hours and 6 minutes of screen-on time and it only went down to 69% battery, with about one and a half hours of gaming on Genshin Impact and about 23 minutes of PUBG Mobile, which was really impressive indeed.
And all in all, after watching 51 minutes of YouTube and just browsing, I got close to a massive 7 hours and 32 minutes of screen on time, when I was at 10 percent battery and yes, with dark mode turned on and motion smoothness at high, so yes the battery life on the phone was very good indeed.
It supports up to 25 watts wired fast charging and with the 25 watts charger it got me from 0 to about 45 percent at 30 minutes but of course, keep in mind that there is no charger inside of the box.
However, what’s more interesting is although it has a plastic back it still supports wireless charging up to 15 watts and there is reverse wireless charging as well.
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Gaming
So as usual I started the gaming test on Genshin Impact, where with Medium Settings, 60 fps and Motion Blur turned off.
The game ran smoothly without any micro lag or stutter, there was no huge battery drain or any overheating issues, where surprisingly even after 20 mins of gameplay it still never felt warm and it was very comfortable in the hands.
As for PUBG Mobile, the graphics were at HDR and the Frame Rate was set to Ultra. And here is where I found it weird that PUBG Mobile doesn’t go up to UHD, so hopefully there will be a software update on that.
Like Genshin Impact, game play was also really smooth and there were no heat issues even playing games for up to half an hour and once again, playing PUBG Mobile for a long time with the phone also felt good in the hands.
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Conclusion
So in conclusion, similar to the S20 FE which I have reviewed before, I would give this S21 FE my biggest recommendation, simply because of what the phone offers as of now, where it checks all the right boxes to make it a very compelling smartphone.
The battery life is amazing, screen and the cameras are very close to a flagship and I just did not have any issues when I was using the phone daily.
If you are interested in seeing my review of the Samsung Galaxy S21 flagship, the S21 Ultra, or even the previous S20 FE, you can see it over here:
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G – https://youtu.be/3Z7ZO3K7HQY
Samsung Galaxy S21 5G – https://youtu.be/5nVQDdsErag
Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G – https://youtu.be/58bZQN43zok
Get the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE at the link below:-
https://invol.co/cl8lm2s
