Samsung announces the Galaxy S20 FE with a Snapdragon 865 for $699

During its "Unpacked for Every Fan" event today, Samsung announced the Galaxy S20 Fan Edition, or FE. As the name indicates, this is a new variant of the Galaxy S20 family, which was introduced back in February, but with some changes to make it more affordable.

The Galaxy S20 FE has the same chipset as the standard Galaxy S20 series - the Exynos 990 for 4G variants in some regions, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 for the 5G model worldwide - so performance shouldn't be sacrificed. It does come with less RAM, though, maxing out at 8GB. Storage also tops out at 256GB, a step below the 512GB of the Galaxy S20.

The biggest differences from the Galaxy S20 are in the design, display, and cameras. Unlike the regular S20, the S20 FE is made of plastic, and it comes in six different colors - Cloud Red, Cloud Lavender, Cloud Orange, Cloud Mint, Cloud Navy, and Cloud White.

The 6.5-inch display also has slightly thicker bezels all around, and this time comes in Full HD+ resolution (2400x1080), instead of Quad HD+. It still supports a 120Hz refresh rate, but it misses out on HDR10+ certification from the more expensive siblings.

The camera setup is also different, though the primary 12MP camera is exactly the same. There's also a 12MP ultra-wide lens, but with a slightly bigger 123-degree field of view and smaller 1.12μm pixels compared to the regular S20. The telephoto lens is the most different stepping down from 64MP to just 8MP and a much smaller 32-degree field of view. You still get features like night mode and 30x "space zoom" (with 3x optical zoom), though. As for the selfie camera, it's a 32MP sensor with fixed focus, whereas the other Galaxy S20 models have autofocus.

What makes the Galaxy S20 FE stand out, though, is the price. In the U.S., it costs $699 with a Snapdragon 865 5G chipset, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of internal storage. Unfortunately, there are no configuration options in that region, and we couldn't find the higher-tier models in European markets either. You can pre-order it today, and it ships on October 2.