When Samsung announced the Galaxy S20 FE last year it gave people a choice – a Snapdragon 865 chipset with the S20 FE 5G model, even in countries that normally get Exynos in their S-series, or an Exynos 990 with the 4G model (which was cheaper). Now it looks like things are about to become a bit blurred.
The NBTC certified an SM-G780G / DS,
labeled as Galaxy S20 FE, and certified only for 4G operation. There’s even a
support page for it on Samsung.com (multiple support pages, in fact). That
exact model number can be seen in Geekbench with the motherboard listed as
“kona”. This is the code name of the Snapdragon 865 chipset. Judging by the
information collected by the benchmark, the phone has 6 GB of RAM. Which is to
be expected of an S20 FE, the original two models came with 6 GB as standard
and had an 8 GB option.
Still, this will be a budget version of
the device as Samsung will be able to skip pricey 5G components like the
antennas. The S865 also uses an external modem, X55 in 5G phones, which may be
swapped out for a 4G-only modem. The timing of this is interesting – the Galaxy
S20 FE 5G arrived in India earlier today, but the country is yet to launch its
first commercial 5G network. This 4G-only model with the Snapdragon 865 may
have been a more alluring proposition. As it stands, the 5G model costs INR
56,000 (with an early bird deal at INR 48,000).
Besides cutting down the price, this new
4G model would extend the software support a bit. Samsung has committed to
three major OS updates for its higher end devices and this new model will
launch Android 11, unlike the original S20 FE duo, which arrived with Android
10.
Looking back at the support pages for a
second, there are appear in multiple countries: Austria, the UK, Ireland, the
Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark,
Norway, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Russia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and so on and so on.
This gives us hope that this more
affordable model will be available just about anywhere.
