Samsung Galaxy A20e Mobile Phone; Sim Free Smartphone - Blue (UK Version)

Product Information

The Samsung Galaxy A20e is one of the cheapest recent Samsung smartphones you can buy, coming in below the likes of the Samsung Galaxy A71 and Samsung Galaxy A51, and oddly even the Samsung Galaxy A10. One area where the Galaxy A20e does not diverge all that much from its more expensive siblings is the software. The device runs Android 9 Pie out of the box, with all the One UI glory that most recent Galaxy devices now run. The Samsung Galaxy A20e runs Android of course, specifically Android 9 out of the box, but it can be updated to Android 10. So the software is fairly modern at the time of writing, though not quite up to the latest available version (11). Battery life, memory, and connectivity You might therefore not be expecting much from the Samsung Galaxy A20e, and in some ways you’d be right – this isn’t a phone that really excels in many areas, but that it’s competent at all at this price is something, and it’s certainly competent, while in some areas going beyond what’s necessary.

Gear Support Galaxy Watch, Gear Circle (Manager Support), Gear Fit, Gear Fit2, Gear Fit2 Pro, Gear Sport, Gear1, Gear2, Gear2 Neo, Gear S, Gear S2, Gear S3, Gear IconX, Gear IconX (2018) Today, the company released Android 10 and One UI 2.0 for the Galaxy J6, and it is also rolling out the update to the Galaxy A10 and the Galaxy A10e. You get both a 13MP f/1.9 main sensor and a 5MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one. For the most part the 13MP one will be the one to go for of course, as it performs reasonably well, especially in decent lighting – as with most cheap phones it can struggle in darker environments though. Connectivity meanwhile includes the basics – Bluetooth 5.0, 4G, and NFC, but of course there’s no 5G here. Verdict The Samsung Galaxy A20e has a 3,000mAh battery, which is on the small side, but can sometimes get the job done in lower spec devices like this. In practice its life isn’t at all special, but will see you through the important one-day period, so you can charge it overnight.Samsung has, of course, more often saved cost by including a cheaper LCD panel in its affordable devices. But in this case, the difference in screen quality between the A20e and the A40 is much bigger than the price gap between the phones suggests. This, you will notice, is a theme we will be running into more often over the course of this review. Colours therefore are more muted than on a lot of phones, and this also isn’t a super bright display, though unless you’re in direct sunlight it should hold up well enough. The rear-mounted fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate, ironically because it is of the ‘older’ capacitive type. That’s right, with higher-spec’d Galaxy devices sporting a cutting edge in-display scanner, it’s mainly at the bottom of Samsung’s portfolio where the fastest, most accurate scanners are now found. A bit ironic, don’t you think? You inevitably make some sacrifices when you’re not spending much and we’d argue that the biggest sacrifice here is the battery life, since some cheap phones - like the Moto G8 Power Lite - actually have big batteries.

The 5MP ultra-wide snapper isn’t quite as capable, but it is nice to have the option of fitting more into a shot – that’s not something that’s guaranteed at this end of the market. If you’ve seen the Galaxy A40 (read our review here), you have basically also seen the Galaxy A20e. Visually and size-wise, both phones are nearly identical. Like the A40, the Galaxy A20e is a relatively compact phone with its 5.8-inch display and narrow bezels. The body is made of plastic, but it is the solid kind that feels like it can handle everyday life. All hardware keys are on the right side, and easily reachable even for those who have average-sized hands. But the fast charging cushions the blow somewhat, and if you can live with its average life then the Samsung Galaxy A20e is a phone that – for the price – we can certainly recommend. The A20e has themes, a Night mode, Secure Folder, Samsung Pass, and the one-handed optimization for Samsung’s own apps and interface. Though Samsung has been adding more and more features over the past years, after a period of minimization, One UI still presents a clean environment with logical menus. Usable memory size is less than the total memory size due to storage of the operating system and software required to operate the phones' features. Actual usable memory size will also vary depending on the mobile phone operator and may change after software upgrades are performed.Its aspect ratio is an increasingly conventional 19.5:9, and it’s fairly light on bezel, with a teardrop notch at the top and a strip at the bottom, but little to the sides, giving it an edge-to-edge look. That leads to a screen-to-body ratio of 80.4%, which isn’t bad for a phone that’s this cheap. Design The Samsung Galaxy A20e is a basic phone in a lot of ways but one that goes above and beyond in a few. Its fast charging battery is a really pleasant surprise, while its dual-lens camera and edge-to-edge screen are also appreciated. It’s very ordinary in a lot of other ways – battery life is just barely average, the build is plain and plastic like most cheap smartphones, and it doesn’t excel for power. But it’s at least competitive in most areas, which is what counts most. Selfie duties meanwhile are handled by an 8MP f/2.2 camera, which gets the job done but doesn’t particularly excel, even in good light. Features We’ve noted above that the Samsung Galaxy A20e has decent screen-to-body ratio, and this fact ensures it looks reasonably good from the front. No one will confuse this for a flagship – even without turning the screen on, the bezel below is too large for any expensive phone, but for what it costs, it looks good.

Of course, it’s also in a crowded market, so it arguably needs to be more than simply competent to stand out. Does it manage that? Read on to see. Screen The Samsung Galaxy A20e has a 5.8-inch 720 x 1560 screen, which is a reasonable size and a reasonable resolution, especially for the price. It amounts to 296 pixels per inch, a figure which isn’t a million miles from even the iPhone 11 with its 326 pixels per inch.Now, before you ask what we expect of a device in this price range, we would once more like to point out: the Galaxy A40 is a bit more powerful. Is the performance gap as big as the price gap? Perhaps not, but add that to the comparable issue we described with the display, and you start to get a sense of where all this is going. And if you find yourself needing to juice it up partway through a day that’s less of a problem here than with some cheap phones, as the Galaxy A20e supports 15W fast charging. Now, as fast charging goes that’s quite slow (the OnePlus 8 offers double that for example and some phones have even more charging power), but fast charging at all on such a cheap handset is impressive and unusual.