It was bound to happen sooner or later. After countless "static" leaks, the time finally came to the Galaxy S21 fan edition to check out the action in close to 7 minutes, when people in Italy HDblog quick video tour the most important specs and features of the long-overdue cheap Samsung high-end phone are still not official.
It is clear that this is a fully working, fully finished, fully polished unit, and what we see here is presumably a batch that will be commercially released in European countries such as Italy in just a few weeks.
Unsurprisingly, it's too early for a proper and thorough camera review of the Galaxy S21 FE 5G, but the following premature unboxing and first impression videos are enough to reveal a whole lot…We've known this for a long time, and also revealed at least a few last-minute surprises.
All you need to know about S21 FE specifications
Unless you've been hiding under a rock somewhere (far away) in the Appalachian mountains for the past six months, you won't be shocked to know that this low-cost flagship Android phone from early 2022 will be powered by the Snapdragon 888 processor from 2021.
You can blame the global chip shortage, which has affected almost every major smartphone vendor in the world, but if there's one thing that doesn't rely on chipsets or other internal components, it's the phone's operating system.
It's certainly nice to see therefore that Samsung plans to load the 5G GALAXY S21 FE with Android 12 in the right box in terms of software, as a report suggested a few weeks ago, contrary to what many others have mentioned.
Another surprise is that the triple rear-facing camera arrangement includes not two but three 12 MP sensors, and while given how many credible sources and industry insiders call for a 12 + 8 + 12 MP setup, this 12 + 12 + 12 MP system could ultimately prove to be a regional thing for all sorts of things.
The rest of the specs and features should be the same worldwide, including dynamic 6.4-inch AMOLED FHD + 2x display resolution and 120-Hz refresh rate support, a 32-pixel front-facing camera, a large 4500 mah 25W charging, battery capacity and 6GB RAM paired with 128Gb of internal storage space in an entry-level configuration.
Today's unboxing video also scrapped the 3.5mm headphone jack, micro-SD card slot, and binding charger altogether, while confirming that the upcoming phone will measure 155.7 x 74.5 x 7.9mm and weigh 177 grams.
Galaxy S21 FE price and release date
This isn't something that can be revealed out of the box, but fortunately, we already have all the information we need to put the whole Galaxy S21 FE usability puzzle together without worrying about a lot of things going wrong.
According to multiple reliable sources, the bad boy is now slated to launch as early as January 11, 2022, at least in certain markets around the world, after the company officially announced it on January 4. Still, Samsung has changed the release date of the phone several times since August 2021, so we wouldn't be surprised if the S21 FE 5G was pushed one last time to late January or even early February.
That makes it almost impossible for snapdragon 888 to stand out from the faster Galaxy S22 trio, which is widely expected to ship by the end of February with snapdragon 8 Gen 1 built-in.
Despite all the price rumors lately, the most affordable Galaxy S21 FE will probably cost $699 in the U.S., plus $50 or $70 for 8GB of ram and 256GB of local digital storage. That sounds good…But after all this time, it may also be irresistible.
