The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S21 FE is possibly one of the worst-guarded secrets in the phone industry, and the latest addition to its leak saga comes from a South African bloke who managed to buy one from a retail source and shared an unboxing video and images of the device. The newest addition to Samsung's Fan Edition family has already appeared on its official website, while leaksters have dumped everything from official renders and its specs sheet to detailed hands-on videos online.
The phone is expected to make its official debut at Samsung's next Unpacked event in the first week of January. It will be a watered-down version of the vanilla Galaxy S21. If the leaks are anything to go by, Samsung is making some concessions in the camera department and the charging prowess, while the design and the rest of the innards remain more or less the same. As for the asking price, reliable sources have predicted a starting price of $699, which is palatable for the hardware on the table.
The latest leak comes from a Reddit user who claims to have purchased a Galaxy S21 FE unit "through a mostly retail channel" in South Africa for ZAR12,999, which roughly translates to a tad hefty price tag of about $830 based on the current conversion rates. The accompanying hands-on video shows the phone in its olive green trim, which looks like a pale shade of khaki. However, the phone is also said to be available in purple, white, black and silver shades too. The early Galaxy S21 FE buyer also shared some camera samples alongside key details of the imaging hardware, which fall in line with what leaks have predicted in the past few months.
Another Day, Another Galaxy S21 FE Leak
At this point, even the full official product brochure of the Galaxy S21 FE has popped online, and the only thing that remains to be done is the namesake official announcement just over a week from now. Let's move on to the specifications. The phone is rumored to offer a 6.5-inch Full-HD+ OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. However, there is no adaptive refresh rate tech to be seen here akin to the Galaxy S21 Ultra or the iPhone 13 Pro. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 SoC runs the show inside, but some regions will reportedly get an Exynos version of the phone, paired with six gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of onboard storage. There is no scope for storage expansion via a microSD card, though.
At the back is a 12-megapixel primary camera, assisted by a 12-megapixel wide-angle snapper and an 8-megapixel telephoto camera. Over at the front is a 32-megapixel selfie camera sitting in a center-aligned hole-punch cutout, in accordance with Samsung's Infinity-O design language. A 4,500mAh battery keeps the lights on, supporting 15W fast charging in tow. Unfortunately, Samsung appears to have nixed wireless charging as a cost-cutting measure.
Source: Reddit