The Samsung Galaxy S21 FE saga has been an unpredictable roller coaster ride so far, with a lot of confusion over its ultimate fate. While some reports said Samsung has canceled the S21 FE, recent developments seem to suggest the contrary. Earlier this week, the phone made an appearance on benchmarking platform Geekbench, toting Samsung’s Exynos 2100 processor. And earlier today, folks over at CoinBRS released a bunch of images that appear to be very authentic-looking promotional materials for the Galaxy S21 FE.
These promotional materials include images of the phone in four color variants, but do not reveal any hardware specifications. One of the images in the posters, however, caught our attention (see below). The poster shows the Galaxy S21 FE placed alongside the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 and the Galaxy Watch 4. What makes this image noteworthy is that both the wearable devices alongside the phone are already on sale and were announced on August 11, 2021, alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and the Galaxy Z Flip 3.
This confirms that Samsung intended to launch the Galaxy S21 FE in August but couldn’t do so because of the ongoing chip shortage. What this also means is that these promotional materials could be at least three months old and were intended to be used right after the second Galaxy Unpacked event, in August 2021.
While Samsung may eventually launch the phone sometime in January — as claimed by multiple media outlets — the appearance of these new posters is not a guarantee that the launch will happen. As my colleague Prakhar Khanna points out in his column, there is a real fear of the Samsung Galaxy S21 FE becoming outdated if it is launched alongside the next-generation Samsung Galaxy S22 lineup in January, meaning there is a very good chance that the S21 FE might indeed be canceled.
If Samsung does go ahead with the launch, indications are that the Galaxy S21 FE will feature a 6.4-inch FHD+ 120Hz OLED display with support for an in-display fingerprint scanner. It is also expected to feature a competent triple-camera array that will include a 64MP primary camera, an ultrawide-angle camera, a depth sensor, and a 32MP selfie camera. Samsung is also likely to make Exynos 2100 and Snapdragon 888 variants of the phone with up to 6GB RAM and 256GB storage.
