 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 A51 5G, A72 5G. 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 1,000 bucks for what you get out of it. And then I also reviewed the Galaxy S20, no, the Galaxy S20 FE, the Fan Edition, which is a great value for the price. It's 699. 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 the mast breaks, so you replace the mast. Is it still the same boat? Well, then the keel breaks and you replace the 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, is it 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? That'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 of 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+. 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 A series phones, which hits like every conceivable price point on down to, I don't know, a hundred 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 Marques Brownlee had to say about the Galaxy S20 FE. And it turned out that he makes a lot of the same points in his video. So shout out to a great mind to stick it 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. We're just gonna look at base prices to keep it simple. And we're also gonna round up a penny because ending a price in 99 cents is stupid. So here we go. All right, the Z Fold 2 is 2000 bucks. Then there's the Z Flip 5G for 1450. The Note 20 Ultra is also 1450. 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 A51 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've 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've been priced at 800 bucks, but that's another story. The other thing to think about with all of these prices is that they're launch day prices. All of these phones ended 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 a 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... Yeah, wow, okay. Ha ha, 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 of 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.