The S21 FE Was Supposed to Be the Budget Option. It Ended Up Being the Only One Worth Buying.
I bought my S21 FE 5G 128GB in late 2022 for $629 at launch. The regular S21 was two years old, the S22 series had already come out, and Samsung was dumping inventory. What most people missed at the time was that Samsung essentially gave the FE the same processor as the flagship tier — the Exynos 2100 or Snapdragon 888 depending on your region — while cutting corners on materials and battery size. That's not a bad trade if you know what you're looking at. The phone uses a 6.4-inch OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate. It's not the best display Samsung has ever made — the S22 series got brighter panels with better peak luminance — but for daily use it's perfectly fine. Colors are accurate out of the box, and the 2340x1080 resolution is sweet enough on a screen this size. I've had mine for nearly three years now and the panel still hasn't degraded. No burn-in, no dead pixels, nothing unusual.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Fe 5G 128gb Review The Balanced Beast That Outlived Its Premium Siblings
Here's the thing nobody tells you about this phone: it actually handles longer than the S21 and S22 did. The S21 had the same Exynos 2100 chip, but Samsung throttled it harder in software to manage thermals. The FE got a slightly larger vapor chamber and more generous thermal management, so sustained performance stays higher for longer. I ran a benchmark stress test on my unit — fifty consecutive Geekbench 5 runs — and the S21 FE maintained an average score that was about 8% higher than my old S21 after the first twenty iterations. The gap widened over time. The 128GB storage variant is adequate if you manage your files properly. I'm running a custom ROM at this point because the stock One UI updates have become bloated, but even on original software the phone feels snappy. The 8GB of RAM combined with the Exynos 2100 means app switching is smooth. I keep about twelve apps in my recent tasks and it doesn't reload them from cold very often. There are real problems with this device. The battery is 4500mAh, which sounds reasonable until you factor in how power-hungry the Exynos 2100 is under load. If you're gaming or recording 4K video, you'll be looking at a full charge by early afternoon. I switched to adaptive refresh rate and capped the brightness at 60% during the day, which pushed me to around 7 PM before I needed to plug in. Not great, but not catastrophic for a phone of this age.
The cameras are another mixed bag. The main sensor is a 12MP unit with dual pixel PDAF. It's the same sensor Samsung used in the Galaxy S20 and S21. It takes decent photos in good light. Low light performance is mediocre compared to anything with a larger sensor or computational photography from Google. The ultrawide is 12MP and actually quite good for the price point when this phone launched. The telephoto is a 8MP 3x optical zoom — serviceable but nothing special. I use the main camera for 90% of my shots because the computational processing on it is better tuned than the other lenses. I ran into a specific issue about a year ago where the phone would randomly restart when switching from WiFi to mobile data in areas with weak cellular signal. After some research I found it was a known firmware bug related to the modem driver. Samsung pushed an update that fixed it for most people, but the patch wasn't universal. My workaround was to enable airplane mode briefly when moving between networks in low-signal zones. It's a clumsy fix but it stopped the reboots entirely. You can find detailed discussion threads about this on XDA Developers if you're experiencing the same thing. One counter-intuitive fact about the S21 FE: the 128GB model is actually the better buy over the 256GB version. The 128GB unit uses UFS 3.1 storage in most regions, while Samsung mixed in slower UFS 3.0 chips in some 256GB SKUs due to supply chain issues. Storage speed directly affects app launch times and file transfer rates. Check your specific model number — SM-G990U for the US Snapdragon variant, SM-G990U1 for the unlocked version, SM-G990B for the European Exynos. The US models tend to have more consistent component quality.
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Software support has ended. Samsung provided four years of Android OS updates and five years of security patches, meaning the phone received Android 13 as its final major update. You're now on security patches only. For most users this doesn't matter — the phone still runs current apps fine. If you want to stay on a newer Android version, a custom ROM like LineageOS is available and relatively stable, though you'll lose Samsung Pay and Secure Folder functionality. The phone is no longer sold new by Samsung. You'll find it on Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H from third-party sellers, usually in the $250 to $400 range depending on condition. At that price point it's genuinely competitive against phones that cost significantly more when they launched. The build quality is solid — aluminum frame with glass back, IP68 rating still holds up after years of use. I've dropped mine twice on concrete and walked away with only cosmetic scuffs on the frame. Downsides worth noting: the phone gets warm during charging, the 25W fast charging is slow compared to modern standards, and there's no headphone jack. The lack of a 3.5mm port is annoying for anyone who uses wired earbuds regularly. I switched to Bluetooth earbuds and barely notice the difference, but it's a genuine inconvenience for some people. The speakers are okay — single bottom-firing speaker with no real depth. Fine for calls and casual media, useless for anything that requires audio fidelity.
If you're looking for a phone that will outlast the typical two-year upgrade cycle, the S21 FE is one of the better options Samsung produced in that era. It's not exciting. It's not the fastest phone anymore. But it's reliable, repairable, and the performance headroom is still there for use. I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't need cutting-edge camera tech or the absolute best display on the market.
