Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Fan Edition is a 120Hz phone for $699

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  The Samsung Galaxy S20 FE comes in a range of colors. [credit: Samsung ]

Today, Samsung held its third product event in a month-and-a-half to launch the "Galaxy S20 FE," a value-oriented take on the company's flagship smartphone line. If these Samsung phones are getting hard to keep track of, that's because, by our count, this is the company's 11th "flagship" smartphone model for 2020, after the Exynos and Qualcomm versions of the Galaxy S20, S20 Plus, S20 Ultra, Note 20, and Note 20 Ultra.

This particular model seems worth keeping track of though, since Samsung aims to bring some premium smartphone features down from the stratospheric price of earlier models. For $699, you get a 6.5-inch 2400×1080 OLED display with two big features: 1) it's 120Hz, just like the $900 OnePlus 8 Pro, and 2) the display is flat, instead of the distorted, curved screens that usually ship on high-end Android phones. In the United States, the phone gets a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 4500mAh battery. The phone has wireless charging, an optical (not ultrasonic) fingerprint reader, NFC, a MicroSD slot, IP68 dust and water resistance, and ships with Android 10. For cameras, you have a 12MP main camera, a 12MP ultrawide, and an 8MP 3x telephoto. The front camera is a 32MP sensor in a hole-punch display cutout. The back is plastic, while the front is Gorilla Glass.

The "FE" in "Galaxy S20 FE" stands for "Fan Edition," a name the company last used when it scraped together the leftover, un-exploded Galaxy Note 7 parts to make the Galaxy Note FE. The Note 7 was infamous for having a flawed battery design that would short-circuit and cause the phone to catch fire or explode. After two recalls and a long investigation, Samsung re-released the Note 7 with a smaller battery as the "FE." It's not clear why Samsung chose to resurrect the "Fan Edition" branding and reference one of the darkest moments in the company's history. But I'm no marketing expert.

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