According to numerous rumors and industry sources, the Samsung Galaxy S22 FE may never make it to the market. This may even be the end of the Fan Edition lineup as we know it, which is sad news for all those who appreciated or even bought into what this line stood for: flagship quality at a more reasonable price point.
The Fan Edition started with the Galaxy S20 FE, which was at the bottom of the rung within the series. Despite its lower-quality build and cameras, it still sheltered the same processors as those found in even the top-of-the-line S20 Ultra of that year. This gave users a reason to make the purchase, as they desired the power but had no specific need for the bells and whistles.
It was followed up by the S21 FE, which was released as the S22 was making its debut and was a knock against its value proposition. We wrote a review on it here but the gist is that while it continued to be a competent device, the space was now far too tight due to the rapidly-increasing number of capable entrants.
Despite these shortcomings, the Fan Edition still had a following of its own so it jarred quite a few people when the rumors started going around. These were fuelled mainly by the supposed model number of the Samsung Galaxy S22 FE, which is SM-S900, not existing. People began putting two and two together which led to this outburst.
So why could a discontinuation be happening? Our analysts infer that the distinction between the FE lineup and Samsung’s upper midrange segment is growing ever smaller. It might be strange for the company to be conscious of its number of products now, after years of bombarding us with countless devices – but it’s another thing when the sales of one smartphone cannibalize the other. Especially when both sides are equally important to the brand as a barely-midrange king and a pseudo-flagship. You could even call both pseudo-flagships.
Another possible reason could be the chip shortage. While this may appear to be old news, it is still very much relevant. Instead of allocating an already-limited supply of flagship chips to the S22 FE, they can bring this into other devices instead. Rumors suggest that Samsung was thinking of installing MediaTek processors into the FE to go around this issue, but we’re not sure how the public would react to that. It’s not a knock against the brand as we know MediaTek makes some pretty powerful hardware that can even rival those of Apple, Snapdragon, and Exynos, but brand perception is another thing entirely.
Once again, we’re not sure if the Samsung Galaxy S22 FE will really never see the light of day. It’s possible that a new model numbering system was assigned, or they’re planning to release it right before the S23 makes its launch. We’ll have to see what happens.
