What's up. I'm arfat here, new intro and new phone. This is the Samsung Galaxy S 21 fan edition, even though now it's 2022 and we're probably like a month away from the new Galaxy S 22, but we have a new S 21. Huh? So I've had my hands on this phone for a couple days now since last year. Uh, but I feel like this is a super safe bet of a phone. It's very tame doesn't make any mistakes, maybe even a little bit boring, but this is something a lot of people are gonna like. So this is the second fan edition now that we've seen. So we're kind of learning the formula of how Samsung likes to do this. And basically, it's kind of the same way Apple's been doing these and a lot of other fun manufacturers do this, but it's a lot of one-year-old parts that get put back together and in a cheaper phone.
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And this is a nice green it's flat for one. I like that. It has thin even bezzles with a slightly thicker chin. And then it has a fingerprint reader down low here at the bottom, underneath the display, plus a selfie camera cutout at the top middle for the 32-megapixel selfie camera. I think this is a win for Samsung the display company. They're just still so good at screens that this is right up among the best brightest ones you'll find in phones in this class. It has a 240 Hertz touch sample rate. It's super responsive. I mean, yeah, this, this screen is the flagship for sure. And the design is just super safe. It looks just like the regular S 21, but this is a new matte, dark gray with the camera module. Again, push right up to the corner and curve over the side of the phone. And the biggest repeated part of that formula is the price. So they're launching with this phone at six ninety-nine. Now the S 20 fan edition secured my F phone of the year award back in 2020, won a trophy and everything for launching at that price, and standing out. But now, well, the landscape has changed a lot since then. There's a lot more competition at this medium flagship tier price. And so this phone isn't as much of a standout win as it was over a year ago. O I think you'll see what I mean. So inside it's the high-end stuff, not over the top bleeding edge, but right at the flagship level snap and triple eight and either six or eight gigs of Ram, a 40 500 million power battery triple cameras and upfront featured is a 6.4 inch 10 80 P 120 Hertz ammo lead display.
It's got IP 68 water resistance, 15 wat wireless charging. It's got reverse wireless charging, all pretty much flagship stuff. But from this exact moment on, you can see the fan edition formula kick in here where they start to cut a few corners and drop a few things down to save that price. And so the real question will be, do you care about those sort of minor tweaks? So with the design and you might have been able to see this already, it's a plastic back, and also they didn't quite fully commit to Matt black. So it's like, it's this dark gray that unfortunately picks up a bit more fingerprints than I would like. And there are also these metal rails all the way around, which are more durable and less likely to crack when you drop them. And it explains these little cutouts on either side for your antenna to pass through for millimeter-wave.
Now the regular S 21 was also plastic with my metal rails, but the fan edition cuts that back even a little bit further where the camera cutout isn't a part of the rail anymore. So there's a seam between that. So you can see here on the regular S 21 metal rail includes the camera bump here on this new fan edition. That's an all-plastic back. So I still like the camera bump design. Uh, this is a problem. Be the least impressive version of it. You might not even notice any of this stuff if you put the phone in a case, but that is a real difference. And then there are even smaller things like this phone is even though it has a larger battery than the S 21 it's super light. And I think that was, you know, I first took it out the box and it felt kind of like one of those fake dummy phones where it's really big but doesn't have much weight, but yeah, it's probably just cuz I'm coming from phones that have more metal and glass.
Also the fingerprint reader underneath the display it's right around the same spot as a regular S 21, pretty low on the display here. But it's an optical fingerprint reader instead of the ultrasonic ones on the rest of the S 21 line. So you can see it's shining the light on your finger before unlocking. Now, again, this is minor and this one still does seem to be pretty quick. I registered both my thumbs. It's still faster than the pixel six is 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. And Samsung's more expensive fonts. There's a single speaker at the bottom, which is part of a stereo system with the ear P speaker. But it's still pretty easy to block this one. And you'll notice when it's blocked, even though the earpiece is still put in that sound and the haptics is overall a small step down from the other flagships, the S 21 S the pixels, even the one plus nine 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 ultra-wide, and an eight-megapixel three times telephoto. And they're very solid. You've got OIS on that main camera. It puts out sharp images with a shallow depth of the 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 plus camera hanging with a lot of flagships, but not beating any. And then maybe most importantly is the fact that this S 21 series will be outdated or old. The second the S 22 series comes out, which is right around the corner. And they typically also drop the prices of the S 21 series. When the S 22 series comes out also on a sustainability note, there was no charger in the box.
It's that small box again, that 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 does 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, doesn't make a big difference. Not really. Does the optical fingerprint reader on the front versus ultrasonic mean anything? Most people no. Does the eight-megapixel telephoto camera on the back versus the previous 64 megapixels with a bigger max zoom matter nine out 10 people probably won't notice. And so honestly this would all be fine with me on this phone. If the S 21, wasn't just sitting at 6 99 for most of the past few months, and right now refurbish ones are going for 5 99 on Amazon.
So that's the crazy part of this phone's existence. Now in 2022, it's like the S 21 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. Some were between pixel six, which is an incredibly good value at 5 99 with an arguably better camera and software experience. And then the higher-up phones, some of which are even in Samsung's lineup. So the fact that this Fe is so similar to the S 21, but is launching so close to the S 22, that's the swing and a miss. I think this phone would've killed at like 5 49 or even 5 99 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.
And I've talked, this has happened to Samsung before the, uh, note 20, you might remember was the recipient of the bust of the year T 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 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, like, they're gonna really like this phone, but if you take your, uh, 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.
