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00:00Hey, what's up, MKBHD here, okay, hear me out.
00:07Flagship phones getting much better and also much more expensive has made the overall landscape
00:15of phones much more interesting.
00:18Stick with me here.
00:19So there was a time, not very long ago, maybe like eight years ago, where smartphone prices
00:25used to max out at like $550.
00:29That was the highest it got.
00:31So these are phones like the Droid X and the Galaxy Nexus coming out, all in their day
00:36were amazing flagships.
00:37But basically, there were only two kinds of phones back then, flagships or not flagships.
00:43But as we've all seen, the prices of these flagship phones have not so slowly crept up
00:48since then.
00:49The Google Play Edition M7, one of my favorite phones, $599, RIP Google Play Edition.
00:55Then in 2014, the Galaxy S5 launched for $649 and the iPhone 6 Plus launched at $749.
01:03And by 2017, we had the iPhone X launching for a thousand bucks and raising plenty of
01:09eyebrows.
01:10So now fast forward to 2020 and a bleeding edge folding smartphone will run you anywhere
01:15from $1,500 to $2,000.
01:19And so we also just got the announcement here of the Galaxy S20 Fan Edition.
01:24And at first, at least for me, it was kind of confusing to try to answer the question
01:27like what is a fan edition?
01:30We saw we did the Note 7 Fan Edition back in the day when the Note 7 had its battery
01:35issues.
01:37But what is a fan edition?
01:38Is it just for fans?
01:40For only fans?
01:41But the phone itself has got a Snapdragon 865, just about the highest end chip available
01:46short of the 865 Plus.
01:48There's a nice big, bright six and a half inch 120 Hertz display, but it's a 1080P panel.
01:54And you can tell it's not their highest end.
01:56And typically I wouldn't call out bezels that are this thin already, but hey, there is a
02:00little bit of bezel here and it is a flat display, which I actually like.
02:04And you're also looking at a 4,500 milliamp hour battery with wireless and reverse wireless
02:09charging triple cameras at 12, 12 and eight megapixels, a 32 megapixel selfie camera and
02:16their smallest hole punch cutout ever, an IP 68 water resistant rating and a plastic
02:21back.
02:22So metal side rails and the whole rear is plastic and one of any of these six colors
02:27it comes in.
02:28So this one's blue.
02:29It looks even darker in person actually than it does in the official images.
02:33But yeah, so it's a, what is it?
02:34It's a, it's trimmed down Galaxy S20 basically with a better battery life and a better selfie
02:40camera cutout, but also worse cameras.
02:44I don't, it's hard to say exactly what the fan edition is, but then the 699 price tag
02:50ultimately solidified it for me.
02:53See the fan edition doesn't really have a theme yet.
02:55Matter of fact, you can probably make the argument that the biggest fans are actually
03:00the least likely to buy this fan edition, but really the fan edition is another variant
03:06of a phone Samsung can offer at another competitive price because that's what they do just because
03:12they can.
03:13Samsung right now offers a phone at basically every significant price from super budget
03:19all the way up to the highest end bleeding edge folding phones and everything in between.
03:24And we've known that this is Samsung strategy for a long time to just throw as many options
03:28at you as they can to see what sticks, but seeing it actually laid out in front of you
03:34is something different.
03:35If you actually go to samsung.com right now and sort their smartphones by price from low
03:40to high of all the phones they'll sell you right now.
03:44They'll offer you a phone at $99, $129, $199, $225, $325, $350, $425, $475, $499, $599,
03:59$650, $699, $750, $799, $850, $950, $1000, $1050, $1200, $1980, $3299.
04:09And there is much, much more.
04:10I didn't even show.
04:11So that is a lot of phones at a lot of different prices.
04:14And we've known, like I said, that this has always been Samsung's thing, but back when
04:19phones maxed out at 600 bucks, there was just a lot less variety of different things you
04:25could do with a smartphone to offer different people, different things.
04:29So my original point is now that the ceiling of smartphone tech has gotten so much higher
04:34and so much better.
04:35Yes, of course, naturally the prices of the flagships has gone up over time, but now there's
04:40also way more variety and way more difference between all these different middle smartphone
04:45prices than ever before.
04:47It's the birth of, and this flourishing of, this awesome mid-range price tier of great
04:52phones that take all the stuff from the high end and bring it down.
04:56And so the Fan Edition isn't just for fans, it's for anybody looking for yet another different
05:02phone that offers a compelling set of boxes checked at $699.
05:07So that's one thing.
05:08And then also Samsung revealed another thing really interesting in their briefing, which
05:12was sales volume.
05:14Now we didn't get exact numbers or anything, of course, but I found it really interesting.
05:18They mentioned that the Galaxy S20 Ultra, the flagship, was the most popular phone in
05:23the S20 lineup for the first month of sales.
05:26The one that made all the headlines, the one that all these early adopters and enthusiasts
05:30bought on week one.
05:32That was the most popular.
05:33But then over time, the volume buyers caught up and way passed it to the point where the
05:39Ultra is the least popular phone in the S20 lineup now.
05:43And the cheaper ones, the S20 and S20 Plus, are in the hands of way more people.
05:48So the curve for which phones people buy at which prices starts off looking like this,
05:54and then quickly starts to shift to this, way up.
05:58There are way more buyers and purchases and actual volume and sales at this lower to mid-range
06:04price than the high-end, even though we spend all of our attention on the high-end flagship
06:10stuff.
06:11So naturally for these smartphone companies, there's a lot of focus and a lot of attention
06:13being put into this mid-range price phone where there's a lot of customers and being
06:19able to offer them a bunch of different things, including really unique sets of boxes checked
06:24in phones like this, when also a lot of us enthusiasts are paying careful attention to
06:30what they're doing on the bleeding edge, on their highest end stuff.
06:34And if you think about it, that's why we use the word flagship, right?
06:38It comes from the ship in the group of boats that has the flag on it.
06:42The first one, the biggest, the most heavily armed, the most important one, the one to
06:47pay the most attention to.
06:48That's only partially true, but we'll just go with it.
06:51And that goes for all smartphone companies, by the way, not just Samsung.
06:55So the cheaper iPhones outsell the thousand dollar iPhones regularly.
07:00The OnePlus Nord put them back on a map in a way that none of their flagships ever really
07:04could have for the regular person.
07:07And Xiaomi and Huawei's dominance comes mainly from their lower and middle tier price phones
07:13more than their thousand dollar ones.
07:15So it's a well-known trend.
07:16So anyway, yeah, that's just the thought I wanted to get out there.
07:20I've mentioned it for sure on the Waveform podcast, but never really articulated it in
07:24video form.
07:25So there it is.
07:26But hey, in case you're wondering, this S20 Fan Edition is a surprisingly good phone.
07:31I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
07:32You know, there's plenty of other good phones at this price, but hey, after just a few days
07:36of using it, I really do like this balance, especially of a big flat 120 Hertz OLED display
07:44and plenty of high-end parts to pair with it.
07:46If you think about it, a lot of Samsung's other 120 Hertz OLEDs are either curved over
07:50the edges or folding in half.
07:53So I have enjoyed this display for everything from everyday use to gaming, to watching videos.
07:59And of course, with the high refresh rate, it kept feeling fast along with the Qualcomm
08:03chip that actually ships with the 5G version in every region.
08:07So no matter where you are, if you get the 749 5G version of this S20 Fan Edition, you
08:13actually get a Snapdragon 865, no Exynos anywhere.
08:17So that's pretty sweet.
08:18Now the triple camera system is cut back a bit from the rest of the S20 series, but I
08:22honestly don't find it lacking that much for most everyday use.
08:26Even on low light, it hasn't suffered as much as some thought it might.
08:30And even though it doesn't have space zoom past 30X, it also doesn't have the autofocus
08:34issues of the huge sensor in the Ultra.
08:37But there are some video limitations as well.
08:39The plastic back here might get the most negative attention just because, yes, plastic
08:44does have a bad reputation with $1,000 flagship phones.
08:48But for this $699 phone, I think it actually works pretty well here.
08:51Again, it's less likely to shatter when it's dropped.
08:54My biggest complaint with this plastic is the finish on it.
08:58It just doesn't feel as high quality and it shows fingerprints a bit more than usual.
09:02I've seen some others that hide them way better.
09:05But hey, most people put a case on their phone anyway, as I keep getting reminded.
09:09So yeah, plastic to get the price down, turns out to be a good call here.
09:14This phone is a good buy for a lot of people, really.
09:17It's got that great screen.
09:18It's got great battery life on this phone for sure.
09:22Performance fine, cameras fine.
09:24And then it's got the three years of promised software updates or three generations of promised
09:29software updates.
09:31Also that Samsung saying we're going to get.
09:33So many have sort of pegged this as the iPhone 11 competitor because naturally it's launching
09:37at the same price that the iPhone 11 launched at and still sells at to this day.
09:43But of course we all know the new iPhones are like a month away.
09:45So we should probably stick to comparing it to those when they come out.
09:49But also I think it's interesting because Pixel 5's rumored launch price also happens
09:54to be exactly $699, which would be really interesting to see.
09:59That's also yet to be seen sometime in October.
10:02But generally there's a lot of action now at this price.
10:05So that's all for now.
10:06Now you know a little more about this phone and where it comes from.
10:09And I'm actually curious, I want to know from you, people who watch these videos, people
10:14who actually leave comments on these types of videos, what type of phone do you use right
10:19now?
10:20Is it a flagship or a non-flagship?
10:23Did you pay flagship money or not for your phone?
10:27I'm curious.
10:28Let me know.
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11:38Thanks for watching.
11:39Catch you guys in the next one.
11:41Peace.