Hey, what’s up? MKBHD is here. New introductions and new phones. This is the Samsung Galaxy S21 Fan Edition, although now it is 2022 and we may be a month away from the new Galaxy S22, but we have a new S21. So I have been holding this phone for a few days since last year. But actually I feel like this is a highly secure bet of the phone. It's really cool, it's a bit boring, but this is something that a lot of people like. So this is the second Fan Edition we have seen, so we are learning the formula for how Samsung likes to do it, and basically it is the same way that Apple is doing SE and many other phones. Manufacturers do this, but it's a lot of one-year-old parts put together and in a cheaper phone. And the biggest repetition of that formula is price. So they are selling this phone for 699. Now that the S20 Fan Edition has won my best phone award in 2020, it has won an award and everything for release at that price will stand out, but now, too, the landscape has changed a lot since Then come. There is more competition with this mid-range smartphone price, and so this phone is not as dominant as it was a year ago. So inside it is something of high value. Not the top bleeding edge, but the top level. Snapdragon 888 and six or eight gigabytes of RAM, 4500 mAh battery, three hours of camera and front-facing features are a 6.4-inch 1080p 120 Hz AMOLED display, and this is a beautiful screen. It's flat for one, I like it. It has even thinner bezels with a slightly thicker chin, and then it has a fingerprint reader down the bottom of the screen, plus a selfie camera cutout at the top-middle for the 32-megapixel selfie camera. I think this is a win for Samsung, the maker of the screen. They are still very good for the screen, which is rightly one of the brightest phones you can find in this class of phones. It has a sample rate of 240-hertz. It is very reactive. I mean, yes, this screen is a smartphone for sure. And the design is the safest. It definitely looks like the regular S21, but this is a new dark gray look with the camera module again slid to one corner and curved at the side of the phone. It is IP68 water resistant, 15 watts wireless charging. It has reverse wireless charging. Everything is remarkable. But from now on you can see the Fan Edition formula starts here where they start cutting a few corners and dropping some things down to save that price, and so the real question arises, do you care about either category? Is that right? Minor modifications? So with the design and you can probably already see it, it's a plastic back and they are also not entirely committed to black, so it is this dark gray that unfortunately takes more fingerprints. Me a little. Desirable, and also have these rails around, which are durable and less prone to cracking when you drop them, and it explains these small cuts on each side for your antenna to pass for millimeters.
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Now the regular S21 is also plastic with rails, but the Fan Edition has reduced it a bit further so that the cut-out camera is no longer part of the rails. So there is a seam in between. So you can see here on the regular S21 rail that includes the camera. Here on the new Fan Edition, that's all plastic backs. So I still like the camera design. This is probably the least interesting version of it. You may never notice this if you put your phone in a case, but that's really different Sure. And then there are the smaller things like this phone, even though it has a bigger battery than the S21, it's a lot brighter and I think that's you know, I took it out of the box first and it felt Same with. Of those fake phones that are really big but do not weigh much. But yes, maybe I'm from a phone with more metal and glass. Also, the fingerprint reader under the screen is in the same place as the regular S21, it is very low on the screen here, but it is an optical fingerprint reader instead of the ultrasonic device on Remaining S21 cable. So you can see it glow on your finger before unlocking.
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Now, again, this is minor, and this one still does seem to be pretty quick. I registered both my thumbs. It's definitely still faster than the Pixel 6's optical fingerprint reader, but it might not work with some moisture on my hand or some wear and tear on the screen as well as the ultrasonic ones in Samsung's more expensive phones. There's a single speaker at the bottom, which is part of a stereo system with the earpiece speaker, but it's definitely still pretty easy to block this one, and you'll notice when it's blocked, even though the earpiece is still putting out sound. And the haptics are overall a small step down from the other flagships, the S21s, the Pixels, even the OnePlus 9 Pros of the world, not quite as tight and precise. And then the triple cameras back here, you got one 12-megapixel primary, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and an 8-megapixel 3x telephoto, and they are very solid. You've got OIS on that main camera. It puts out sharp images with a shallow depth of field. Great dependable shots in good light, as you'd expect. Sometimes a bit noisy or blurry in low light, but seriously not bad. I'd give this easily a B+ camera, hanging with a lot of flagships but not really beating any. And then, maybe most importantly, is the fact that this S21 series will be outdated or old the second the S22 series comes out, which is like right around the corner, and they typically also drop the prices of the S21 series when the S22 series comes out. Also, on a sustainability note, there was no charger in the box. It's that small box again that basically just comes with the phone, a cable, and some paperwork. So I guess that's even more flagship experience stuff, if you wanna look at it that way, but certainly nothing better. So the real question with the Fan Edition, again, is do any of these little shortcomings take away from the flagship experience that it's getting you? Do they matter to you? Like the little extra bit of plastic on the back, does it make a big difference? Not really. Does the optical fingerprint reader on the front versus the ultrasonic mean anything to most people? No. Does the 8-megapixel telephoto camera on the back versus the previous 64-megapixel with a bigger max zoom actually matter? 9 out of 10 people probably won't notice. And so honestly this would all be totally fine with me in this phone if the S21 wasn't literally just sitting at 699 for most of the past few months, and right now, refurbished ones are going for 599 on Amazon. So that's the crazy part of this phone's existence now in 2022. It's like the S21 Fan Edition was lighting the market on fire with basically giving us all this flagship stuff for like $300 less than expected, but now in this new landscape, you've gotta fit somewhere between Pixel 6, which is an incredibly good value at 599 with an arguably better camera and software experience, and then the higher-up phones, some of which are even in Samsung's own lineup. So the fact that this FE is so similar to the S21 but is launching so close to the S22, that's the swing and a miss in my opinion. Like I think this phone would have obviously killed that 549 or even 599 or something like that, but it didn't. This launch price and timing is what sort of just blends it in with the rest of the market. This has happened to Samsung before. The Note20, you might remember, was the recipient of the Bust of the Year trophy because it was just a phone that was, it was fine, but it just priced itself out of where it was supposed to land in the market, and it was actually not a bad phone at all. This is not a bad phone at all and I think lots of people who buy it with the blinders on, they're gonna really like this phone. But if you take your blinders off, there's a lot more around in this landscape around this price which is a much more interesting decision. So great performance, familiar software, really nice cameras, a battery upgrade, and, of course, Samsung's awesome display. This is a great phone. But, you know, at this price, people are gonna be cross-shopping. They might wanna take a risk on a Pixel or on a OnePlus 9 or, I don't know, an iPhone SE for that matter. There's a whole bunch more happening in this region. Ball's in your court. What do you think of the S21 Fan Edition? Let me know. Either way, that's been it.
