Samsung Galaxy S21 FE 5G Review: A great phone hampered by a delayed launch

Should you rush out to buy a Galaxy S21 FE?

The philosophy behind Samsung’s Fan Edition (FE) phones is simple: Give the fans an affordable alternative to pricier flagships while keeping the price as reasonable as possible. The formula proved successful for the Galaxy S20 FE, which offered the best of what the S20 had to offer but at a cheaper price, and with shockingly few caveats.

Samsung’s Galaxy S21 FE 5G follows the same blueprint but finds itself coming out at an awkward time, close on the heels on the S21, and with the Galaxy S22 expected soon. At its core, it aims to distil the experience of a premium flagship at not-so-premium prices. Does it succeed? Let's find out.

Design

The design for the S21 FE follows the fundamentals of the S21 series closely, with an extravagant camera bump and smooth, rounded corners that feel very nice while in the hand. A metal frame holds the phone together and Samsung opts for a plastic back on the FE, as opposed to the glass and metal finish of the S21.

There are also no metal rails around the camera, which means it doesn’t draw much attention to itself. Whether or not, you thought that design choice was bold, it certainly feels a lot more muted without the fanfare.

It’s also a lightweight phone at 177g, which combined with the 7.9mm thickness, makes it very comfortable to use one-handed.

At the bottom of the phone, is the microphone, speaker grille, SIM card tray and a USB Type-C port. The volume and power buttons have been placed on the right side of the phone and on the top is the lonely microphone. A small pinhole front-facing camera sits at the top of the display and on the back is the rear camera module, with the flash oddly separated and placed to the right of the module.

If I were to nit-pick, I would say without the metal borders, the camera bump kind of blends in with the back, at least on the Olive review unit we received but that’s a subjective complaint. There is also no headphone jack or microSD slot.

Overall, it’s a neat design with a large emphasis on clean presentation, and an elegant look.

Display

A 6.4-inch AMOLED display adorns the front of the phone, with a refresh rate of 120Hz and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection. It also has HDR 10+ support, and is a vibrant, sharp display that I have no complaints against. It also gets bright and is great for consuming content.

Colours come out looking good, with deep blacks as expected from AMOLED’s and impressive contrast. Everything from photos to movies and text pops on this screen. The 120Hz refresh rate means every motion on screen looks smooth, and there is an option to turn the refresh rate down to 60Hz to conserve battery life.

Oddly, there is no option for an adaptive mode, that manages the refresh rate on its own. You are going to have manually toggle between the modes in settings if you are in a pinch and running low on battery.

Performance

Depending on where you live, the S21 FE will ship with either a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC or Samsung’s in-house Exynos SoC. In India, the Galaxy S21 FE ships with a Exynos 2100 SoC, which is the same model that is used in the S21 flagships.

It’s a solid chip, that runs Android 12 smoothly. Apart from a few hitches (usually when updates happen in the background) the phone doesn’t slow down. I could run most games at solid framerates without too many drops and switching between apps while multi-tasking was smooth and responsive.

Apps open and close quickly too. I honestly did not really need to close apps in the background too often and OneUI 4.0, which is Samsung’s skin for Android 12, seems well optimised for performance. Sadly, there is some bloat here, but it isn’t egregious enough. If you are willing to spend some time customising it, you will realise that OneUI 4.0 offers a variety of options for you to consider.

If its not to your taste, you can simply swap out the launcher to one that you prefer from the Play Store. Samsung also lets you remove most of its apps, and the rest, don’t really detract from the experience.

The SoC also has support for various 5G bands, WiFi 6, Bluetooth, and NFC. The phone’s stereo speakers are Dolby Atmos certified and can get loud if a bit muddied with noticeable loss of clarity at louder volumes. Most people aren’t going to use a phone’s speakers for consuming media anyways, so it isn’t too much of a problem. What is a problem is the lack of a headphone jack, which has become annoyingly common practice.

Camera

On the back of Galaxy S21 FE is a triple camera module featuring a 12-megapixel primary camera, 8-megapixel telephoto camera with optical zoom up to 3X, and a 12-megapixel camera with ultra-wide.

Photos taken during the day came out looking sharp and detailed. The colours were reproduced well with a good amount of saturation. The primary camera does a good job with portrait phots as well, producing a nice background blur. You can also customise the blur strength, and Samsung gives you some filters to play around with while taking a photo.

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When using the optical zoom, the noise is more pronounced, but Samsung’s software optimisations do a good job of cleaning most of the picture up. You can easily get away with using up to 10X digital zoom but anything beyond that starts to get muddied. Night mode works okay but lacks some detail and sharpness compared to photos taken during the day.

Samsung’s post-processing does tend to crank the colours up a bit, and they pop more than they would in real life, leading some photos to look a little artificial. If you can stomach this, the S21 FE has an excellent set of cameras that should serve you well in most conditions.

Battery Life

The S21 FE ships with a 4500mAh battery and on most days, the phone managed to get through unscathed on a single charge. On heavy days, with a few sessions of gaming, streaming and impromptu photo shoots, the phone tends to struggle a lot more. You will see considerably less returns if you are a heavy user and literally use your phone for everything.

With light to medium usage, the battery life fares much better. If you are only using the phone to take a few calls and maybe check out a few apps, then the S21 FE can last a little more than a day on charge.

There is also a huge difference in battery consumption between the displays two refresh rates, 120Hz will net you significantly lower battery life, compared to 60Hz, which makes it all the more stranger that there is no option to automatically adjust refresh rate.

Under normal usage and a mix of using both refresh rates, I could get screen on times of between 8 to 9 hours, which should be fine for most people.

Sadly, Samsung has opted not to bundle a charger with the package, which means you are going to have buy one if you don’t have one already. The battery supports up to 25W of fast charge, which isn’t the fastest but does well in a pinch and gives your phone a quick top-up.

Conclusion

As good as it is, one can’t help but feel Samsung has launched the phone at an odd time. The Galaxy S21 FE 5G has two variants to choose from in India and currently you can buy the 128GB storage plus 8GB RAM variant of the phone for Rs. 54,999. The 256GB + 8GB variant will cost you Rs 58,999.

To offset this, Samsung is offering up to Rs. 37,400 on exchange if you buy from the company’s online store, along with exclusive no-interest EMIs and various bank offers.

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At that price, it is up against a lot of competition like OnePlus 9 or even the Asus ROG Phone 5, which offers similar specs at a much lower price. The Galaxy S20 FE has also significantly dropped in price since launch and makes a compelling case at a much lower price.

Then there is the fact that the Galaxy S22 is just around the corner, which will mean the next FE model would launch with shorter turnaround time.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE is a very polished and strong offering that has sadly suffered a little bit due to its delayed launch.