After skipping the Galaxy S22 FE last year, Samsung will allegedly launch two Fan Editions in 2023: the Galaxy S23 FE and Galaxy Tab S8 FE. If the leaked information proves to be correct, both are “Galaxy Lite” devices in all but name; And I’m not sure what Samsung is trying to achieve with them.
A SamMobile source claims that the Galaxy S23 FE will launch this fall with the Exynos 2200 chipset — not the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ as previously rumored. We had high hopes for the 2200 before the Galaxy S22 launched, but its lackluster benchmarks and battery drain led Samsung to go with the Snapdragon with the S23 series.
To balance that out, Samsung may drop the price of the S23 FE to $600, according to another SamMobile. (Opens in a new tab) a report. And you get a photographic boost compared to the S21 FE with its 50MP shooter.
However, how many of Samsung’s discerning “fans” think the $200 drop over the S23 is worth the cut? Especially since most people get their flagship phones for well under $600 through trade-in deals?
At the same time, you have the Galaxy Tab S8 FE, which may use a lightweight Kompanio 900T chipset and as low as 4GB of RAM. It will reportedly arrive around the same time as the Galaxy Tab S9, which should run cycles around the S8 FE with its overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip.
The Fan Edition brand is in danger of becoming a misnomer if Samsung continues to use it to fill a mid-range niche rather than cater to its fans. Smartphone experts polled say the Samsung FE plan, as it stands, will be an uphill battle.
Fan release date
Samsung made the Note 7 Fan Edition to salvage the PR disaster of the original exploding Note 7 batteries. launched only in South Korea, changed the battery and nothing else; It was an apology to the core fans who felt burned by the incident.
Samsung revived the Fan Edition designation years later for more economic reasons: it learned from focus groups that customers don’t like buying the Galaxy S low fat phones because they evoke a sense of lightness and “less”. Thus, the flagship killer Galaxy S20 FE appeared.
One of our site’s favorite phones for years has been the S20 Fan Edition, which strips away some of the unnecessary Galaxy S20 features while offering the same performance and display quality for just $700 ($300 off).
After the Galaxy S20 FE sold around 10 million units, Samsung permanently discounted its flagship flagship device by $200, erasing the margin that made the Fan Edition phone sound so attractive to buyers.
The Galaxy S20 FE’s singular success overshadowed other Samsung phones, making future Fan Editions even less special.
A shortage of chips caused Samsung to delay and consider canceling its Galaxy S21 FE, which led to nonsense for months before finally releasing it half-heartedly just a month before the Galaxy S22.
The Galaxy S21 FE wasn’t necessarily a bad phone, but as our reviewer put it, “The two-year-old processor and bad touches make this phone feel dated the moment you turn it on.” We weren’t particularly impressed with the Galaxy S21 FE Exynos variant, although the Exynos 2100’s performance is no less than the Snapdragon 888’s compared to the 2200-8 Gen 1’s Divide.
Unsurprisingly, the S21 FE didn’t sell well. As Matthew Orff, research analyst at Counterpoint, points out, the “strong promotional environment” around the Galaxy S22 means more consumers know about the flagship and its carrier deals, in which you can get a better phone “for free” through barter and contract.
Meanwhile, IDC’s research director Jitesh Ubrani told us last year that Samsung cut production of the phone last year because it was “having trouble with inventory buildup across its range of phones. So it wasn’t surprising when Samsung released the S22 FE.”
We’ll have to wait and see if the Galaxy S23 FE rumors are true, as the rumors surrounding the S22 FE launch have been proven false.
As for tablets, Samsung also sold “Lite” Tab models such as the midrange Galaxy Tab S6 Lite, ahead of the launch of the facelifted Galaxy Tab S7 FE in 2021.
The latter successfully bridges the gap between the 2020 S7s and 2022 S8s, allowing you to enjoy a massive 12.4-inch screen with impressive resolution at a reasonable price. But when I reviewed it, I noticed how the tablet can’t take advantage of all that real estate due to average performance.
You might get a more expensive Tab S7 FE with 6-8GB of RAM, but doing so gets you close to the price of the much superior Galaxy Tab S8; There just isn’t enough differentiation to make the Tab S7 FE compelling.
This same problem will almost certainly apply to the Galaxy Tab S8 FE, since the Kompanio 900T benchmarks under $400 for tablets like the Lenovo Tab P11 Pro Gen 2 with the Kompanio 1300T chip, our favorite mid-range Android tablet.
If the Tab S8 FE holds its $530 and above price tag with an industry-record memory boost, the Galaxy Tab S8 FE won’t draw much excitement. Especially if the Galaxy Tab S9 was launched around the same time!
Samsung wants its fan releases to be differentiated from its flagship releases
With the current economic downturn driving down smartphone sales — “the overall market is expected to decline in terms of both units and average selling price” — it’s a risky gamble for Samsung to return to the Fan brand, says IDC. Commercial Edition in its current form.
“Looking back two years ago, Samsung had three devices between $600 and $800,” Counterpoint’s Matthew Orff explained. Right now, there’s only the $800 Galaxy S23, with the $450 Galaxy A54 5G as the closest mid-range option.
Samsung restricted its mid-range offerings, Orf continued, because “U.S. consumers are moving toward the low end (under $300) market in the prepaid, and premium ($800 or more) segment in the postpaid market, with limited sales in between. “
Hypothetically, Samsung will challenge the $600 Pixel 7 with the Galaxy S23 FE, as the Exynos 2200 and Tensor G2 will likely have similar benchmarks. But it’s not like Pixels are selling in droves, either. Counterpoint’s position is that “it will be very difficult for Galaxy FE devices to do well at this price point due to the promotional environment and proximity to the base Galaxy S23 model.”
Ubrani is a little more optimistic about the Galaxy S23 Fan Edition’s chances. Despite the poor economic conditions, “smartphones in the mid-to-high end and above (about $400 and up) will see some growth over this period,” and “the new FE will fit nicely into this category.”
He confirmed that he’s “not sure they’ll use an Exynos chip,” so it’s still possible they could end up with a Snapdragon. But if Samsung Do Using it, he doesn’t see it as a downside because “it would create more separation between the FE version of the phone and the regular S23. In the past, there was a lot of overlap, which didn’t help either phone.”
Nobody wants to downgrade a phone they’ll use for years if they’re only going to save a hundred bucks. But if Samsung can pull off the $600 price point, that’s enough of a difference to make it more attractive (in theory). This will ensure that Samsung does not deal with “excessive inventory” as it has done in the past.
But he also noted that the Exynos chip will sell better “as Exynos has been more popular in the past,” so Samsung’s plan to sell the Exynos version in the US could hit snags.
For the Galaxy Tab S8 FE, Ubrani said again that it’s more about “distinction” than anything else. With a phone, you can downgrade the cameras, displays, touch hardware, or other technology to reach a lower price without hurting performance too much. But with a tablet, he says, most of the cost-saving changes have to be “under the hood.”
“Fan Edition” is an overly ambitious name
Most serious Samsung buyers who pay close attention to specs won’t pay attention to “compromising” phones or waiting for the drop; They will only buy the Galaxy S23 Ultra up front. More than 60% of pre-orders for the Galaxy S23 were for the Ultra, and the Note-like S22 Ultra has allegedly been one of Samsung’s best-selling flagship phones in years.
So Samsung’s Ultra phones may be the real “fan editions”. But not every Samsung fan has the disposable income to spend that kind of cash each year, so the Fan Edition phone could give more thrifty buyers a taste of the flagship life. The same goes for the Galaxy Tabs, since most of them are quite pricey without the benefit of carrier deals to offset the cost.
The Fan Edition promises a perfect balance of quality and affordability that is hard to achieve.
But if these Galaxy S23 FE leaks are true, Samsung is taking a gamble on people who buy devices powered by the Exynos chip from early 2022 and the Kompanio 2021 chip to save a little money. People who don’t read tech blogs obsessively may be Find them tempting, or those who come on the budget side of things they still view them as upgrades.
But I doubt we’ll see the Galaxy S23 low fat The Fan Edition phone is on any best Android phone lists unless Samsung tweaks the Exynos 2200 to address some of its criticisms. Sure, it sounds more like a calculated risk to target a specific demographic than a love letter to fans. And this is the problem inherent in the name: It promises a perfect balance between quality and affordability that is hard to achieve.