Samsung is the biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world. The Galaxy S series is not only the company’s flagship family but the flagship series of Android in general. As such, when the company launched the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, some may have thought it was just releasing a fun phone for its fans, at least based on the name (“FE” stands for “Fan Edition”).
However, it’s likely Samsung had more nefarious purposes in mind for the Galaxy S20 FE. The phone’s features, design, and price put it in direct competition with the latest phones in the “affordable flagship” segment — most notably those from OnePlus. Although OnePlus has been around for about seven years, this is the first time Samsung has so aggressively tried to grab customers directly from OnePlus’ usual market.
As a long-time OnePlus fan, I wanted to try out the so-called “OnePlus killer” myself. I used the Galaxy S20 FE for about three days to get a feel for it.
In our original review of the Galaxy S20 FE, we mostly compared it to its $1,000 namesake. I think approaching it from a different angle, though, might make it a bit more clear just how good this phone is — as well as why Samsung still has work to do if it wants to steal all of OnePlus’ customers.
As I said before, our Samsung Galaxy S20 FE review mostly compared the device to the vanilla Galaxy S20. The Galaxy S20 is, by far, the better phone of the two. It has better specs, a better build, better cameras — the phone is just better.
However, while recent sales have dropped the phone’s price, it still has a $1,000 MSRP most of the time. At $300 less without any discounts, the Galaxy S20 FE isn’t really in the same ballpark. The Galaxy S20 is a bonafide flagship, while the S20 FE is a premium mid-ranger. In that sense, comparing it to the Galaxy S20 isn’t really fair.
