[Music]
i'd like to talk to you about these
phones in front of me
they're all samsung phones and they're
just a portion of samsung's 2020 lineup
this is just the flagships and they're
just the ones that samsung's releasing
in the us
it is the galaxy s20 the s20 plus
the s20 ultra the s20 fan edition
the note 20 and the note 20 ultra that
is
six phones and it doesn't even count
phones like this thing right here this
is the a51 samsung's pushing this in the
us now too
there's also the a515g a75g oh yeah
there's folding phones too there's the
z-fold 2
and the z-flip 5g it's kind of
impossible to keep track
so here's a question why does samsung
make so
damn many phones
now the reason this question matters to
me is i just got finished reviewing a
couple of samsung phones i reviewed the
galaxy note 20 which is overpriced at a
thousand bucks for what you get
out of it and then i also reviewed the
galaxy s2 note the galaxy s 20
fe the fan edition which is a great
value for the price it's 6.99
it's a plastic back sure but you get 120
hertz screen you get three pretty good
samsung 12 megapixel cameras
it feels kind of like a whole package
but it also feels like a package that's
a little bit more like a
beefed up a series phone than a toned
down
s series phone and it sends me into
thinking about philosophical experiments
like
the ship of theseus it's this thought
experiment where
you've got a boat and uh the mast brakes
so you replace the mast
is it still the same boat well then the
keel breaks in your place to keel is it
still the same boat if you replace
literally every single plank and rope on
that boat at the end of it when you
replace the last part
is it still the same boat you started
with
i don't know well okay apply that to
this
s20 fe if you get rid of the s20 screen
and go with a screen that's a little bit
more like the a series it's still an s
phone
if you get rid of the fancy camera
module and go with a more basic camera
module
is it still an s phone if you replace
everything but basically the processor
with slightly less expensive parts does
it still count as an s phone
sure samsung decided to call it an s
phone what we actually should do instead
of just
noodling on bad philosophical thought
experiments is
actually try to categorize these phones
so there's a few different ways we could
do it
now one way to do this categorization
thing is just by screen
size it's no longer the case that bigger
screen means better
phone but in theory you should be able
to look at the screen size and have a
pretty good guess of which phone it is
but you just can't we're gonna play a
game i'm gonna put
two phones down and set a timer and then
see if you can guess
which samsung model it is by the time
the timer runs out
how'd you do it's not that easy right i
mean i've reviewed every single one of
these
six phones and it's not easy for me and
if we find other ways to try and
categorize them on other specs besides
screens it gets
even more complicated i mean trust me if
we tried to make a spreadsheet of
all the camera specs and differences in
storage and ram
and so on across all of these phones you
would need like a
50 inch monitor just to get a look at
the spreadsheet so
i don't think it's specs or screen size
there must be some other way to
characterize all these phones and make
sense of them and i think it's like a
high-level product category kind of
thing at the very top of samsung's
product hierarchy are the folding phones
the z-fold 2
5g and the z-flip 5g these are samsung's
high-technology
show-off phones then there are the
ultras these are like
a new tier of flagship for samsung and
it's where they put
their most expensive most experimental
features
that stuff used to go to the note but
now it goes to the ultras
then there's the regular flagships the
s20 and the s20 plus
samsung says that early buyers go for
the ultras and then later buyers go for
the regular ones
now the note 20 should fit in with those
but again
i think the note 20 is kind of
overpriced and the screen is
underpowered for what you pay for it
it honestly feels more like a fan
edition phone so it fits in this new
mid-range with the galaxy
s20 fe which is 700 bucks
then you've got the e series phones
which hits like every conceivable price
point on down to i don't know 100 bucks
or something
as a product categorization strategy
this
is kind of a mess i mean it makes sense
when i explain it to myself
but i also can't help but feel like i
just
made it up myself and in reality i think
there's a much
simpler explanation it's price
and actually this is kind of inside
baseball but i try not to watch
too many other review videos before i do
my own so
after we finished this video i went to
go check out what marquez brownlee had
to say about the galaxy s20fe
and it turned out that he makes a lot of
the same
points in his video so shout out to a
great mind sticking a like and i will
link his video down in the description
below
let's take a look at the prices that
samsung charges for its 5g phones in the
us
so we're just going to look at base
prices to keep it simple and we're also
going to round up a penny because
ending a price in 99 cents is stupid so
here we go all right the z fold two is
two thousand bucks then there's the z
flip 5g for 14.50 the note 20
ultra is also the s20 ultra
is 1400 the s20 plus is 1200
the s20 and the note 20 are each a
thousand dollars
the s20 fe is 700
the a71 5g is 650 and the 851
5g is 500. i think that that price
breakdown
really is the best explanation for why
samsung makes
so many variants of its flagship phones
it means that when you go to buy a phone
samsung has one at the price that you
want to spend
and just as importantly it has one
that's competitive with
whatever other phone you might have been
thinking of buying
iphone pixel 5 oneplus whatever
there's always a samsung phone that's
just a little bit cheaper right next to
it
or there's one that's a little bit more
expensive but with better specs
now looking at that price breakdown if
you don't count the z-fold 2 the biggest
gap
in this whole lineup is just 300 bucks
and i personally think it should
actually be smaller than that because
the note 20 should be priced at 800
bucks but
that's another story the other thing to
think about with all these prices is
that their
launch day prices all of these phones
end up getting
discounted carriers offer two for one
deals or
huge incentives to trade up or sometimes
the price just
drops and often really really quickly
after launch
one of the big trends this year is that
everybody wants to offer
new phones at all the price points
instead of just having consumers buy the
older model
apple's actually rumored to be doing
something like that with the next iphone
and it's
already done it with the apple watch se
but
really samsung has led the way with this
strategy it has been doing it for
years and the truth is that with maybe
one galaxy note 20 exception
all of these phones are really good for
their price
especially if you can find one of those
really easy to find
discounts so why does samsung make so
many phones
because it's really good at mixing and
matching parts to hit
every conceivable price point basically
samsung makes this many phones because
it can and it doesn't care if there's a
clearly differentiated line of easily
distinguished product categories
samsung just wants to sell you a phone
at any price
i no yeah wow okay
let's just take a breath
hey everybody thanks so much for
watching let me know did we figure out
the right way to categorize all these
phones
talk about that down in the comments and
a lot more phone reviews are coming
because it is
hardware season 2020 and to keep up on
all of them make sure you hit subscribe