A report surfaced yesterday claiming that the Galaxy Note FE (aka Fan Edition) will go on sale today, July 7, and that’s exactly what happened. This handset is now available for purchase in South Korea, Samsung’s homeland, only 5 days after it got officially announced by the company. The Galaxy Note FE is priced at 699,600 won ($606) in South Korea, which makes this handset approximately 300,000 won cheaper than the Galaxy Note 7, well, compared to the Galaxy Note 7’s initial price last year, as the phone is no longer available, of course.
The Galaxy Note FE is essentially a refurbished variant of the Galaxy Note 7, and there’s only one difference between the two phones, the Galaxy Note FE comes with a smaller, 3,200mAh battery on the inside, while the Galaxy Note 7 featured a 3,500mAh unit. The Galaxy Note 7 was quite popular once it first launched, but soon after its launch, battery problems started occurring. The company had to halt Galaxy Note 7 sales on two occasions once the phones started exploding, and after the company did it the second time, they’ve decided to stop selling the device altogether. The Galaxy Note FE still comes with an S Pen stylus, and it looks identical to the Galaxy Note 7. The device is made out of metal and glass, and its display is slightly curved on the sides. The company’s physical home key is present below the display, and it also serves as the phone’s fingerprint scanner.
The Galaxy Note FE sports a 5.7-inch QHD (2560 x 1440) Super AMOLED display, along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable internal storage. The device is fueled by the Exynos 8890 64-bit octa-core processor, and it comes with a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera. A 5-megapixel snapper is placed on the front side of this smartphone, and Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow comes pre-installed on the device, along with the company’s custom UI which is placed on top of Google’s offering. As already mentioned, the phone’s battery pack is the only differentiating factor here, so if you’re not interested in the Galaxy Note 8, you happen to like the Galaxy Note FE’s design and what it has to offer, and on top of it, you live in Korea, well… the Galaxy Note FE is here for you, but do keep in mind that the company will sell only 400,000 of these handsets.