Galaxy A50 and A30 Review: Finally, Great Budget Samsung Phones! By PhoneArena

This year, Samsung has come back with a completely reimagined idea about its affordable phones: the J series are gone and replaced by a brand new A series. Hello guys, my name is Vic Christoph with PhoneArena and we have two of these new A series on hand for a review: the Galaxy A50 and the Galaxy A30. While these two differ noticeably in price, they share the same screen size, the same battery size, and the same interface, so we decided it would make more sense to review them in one place, mentioning the differences along the way. So… let’s get started. Both the Galaxy A50 and the A30 look well-made and elegant: they are thin, they feature a slightly curved back, and you have minimal bezel around the screen. The back of the phones also reflects light and transforms with it in all sorts of interesting patterns, adding further style points.

Look closer, though, and you will notice that the back of these two phones is not glass as it appears from afar, but is instead plastic. We were extremely careful handling these phones yet despite all the care, the Galaxy A50 that we used without a case quickly gathered a few scratches, so we are not sure how well these phones will age. Two features worth mentioning are the presence of the good old headphone jack, so you don’t need any clunky dongles, and the lack of any form of special water protection. Now, if we had to pick just one favorite feature in Samsung phones, this would without a doubt be the screen. And the Galaxy A50 and Galaxy A30 both come with excellent displays.

Both have the same 6.4-inch 1080 x 2340-pixel Super AMOLED display protected with Gorilla Glass 3. These screens are an absolute joy: they are sharp, they come with rich, vibrant colors, they get plenty bright, and they just look good, significantly better than the screens on other rivals. One of the major differences between the A50 and the A30 is the fingerprint scanner. The A50 has a fingerprint scanner embedded under the screen, while the A30 features a traditional fingerprint reader on the back. So… the A50 should be better, right? Well, not really! The optical in-screen fingerprint feels like a bit of a disappointment.

It often fails to get a proper read and you need to try unlocking the phone a couple of times before it finally works. On the A30, on the other hand, the traditional fingerprint scanner is fast and works reliably and accurately every time. In terms of interface, both phones are powered by Samsung’s latest One UI based on top of Android 9 Pie. This is the same software that you get on the flagship Galaxy S10 series, and it’s the best version of TouchWiz so far. It feels less cluttered, a lot of things are optimized for easier one-hand reach and you have a few useful new features like a dark mode for night use.

You also get the option to switch to the gesture-based navigation that can replace the traditional three-button Android nav, which is nice. Both the A50 and the A30 are powered by octa-core Samsung-made Exynos chips, but different ones and there is a tangible difference in the actual performance. The big takeaway here is that neither of these two phones feels very fast or smooth, but the A30 specifically often feels a bit sluggish. You commonly see dropped frames, animations are not as smooth as on many other phones and so on. For us, this is one of the major downside of affordable Samsung phones, and these ones are no exception.

There is one more big difference between these two phones and it’s in the amount of on-board storage. You have a generous 128GB of on-board storage on the A50, while the A30 has half that at 64 gigs of storage. Both phones also support microSD cards for memory expansion, should you need more storage in the future. Let’s get this out of the way: while technically you get a triple camera on the A50 and a dual camera on the A30, there is not a huge difference in terms of actual camera performance between these phones, and that extra camera on the A50 is a depth sensor that is only used for portrait mode shots. During the day photos have pleasing colors on both phones and the difference between the A50 and A30 boils down mostly to the amount of detail where the A50 has the upper hand.

The ultra-wide angle camera on both phones is a useful addition during the day, as it allows you to capture some interesting perspectives. In low light, neither one is great, but the A50 captures sharper photos, while the A30 photos look mediocre. As to the ultra-wide camera at night: you’d be better off not using it at all on both phones, the photo quality really is not good enough. On the video side, video recordings max out at 1080p at 30 frames per second, but the bigger limitation is that you cannot switch between the two cameras, so once you start recording with the main camera, for instance, you cannot switch to the ultra wide one midway. The lack of 4K video is also a bit strange, especially on the pricier A50 model.

On both the A50 and the A30 you get a single bottom-firing loudspeaker. The A50 is the slightly louder one of the two, but the sound on both lacks any form of depth and is very, very tinny, piercing the ears as you listen. Again, we don’t have sky-high expectations, but sound quality via the loudspeaker was still a disappointment. On a more positive note, we did not have much of an issue with the in-call speaker on these phones. The earpiece is located right above the front camera and you get a sufficient amount of volume and a decent amount of clarity during calls.

The best thing about the A50 and the A30, however, might just be their battery life. Both come with equally sized 4,000mAh batteries, and they both last a long time. The two scored great on our proprietary battery test with results close to the 11 hour mark, longer than most flagships by a good margin. In real life, this should translate to close to two days of use on average. You also have support for quick charging on board.

The chargers that come in the box with both phones output a maximum of 15 watts and it takes around an hour and 40 minutes to recharge the phones with them. Just as you’d expect in 2019, both new A series come with a USB-C port, but there is no wireless charging support. So… let’s sum things up. The new A50 and A30 are basically the same phone with the same screen, same battery life and same reliable Samsung experience, but with slight differences in cameras and performance power. The Galaxy A50 costs around $300 and the Galaxy A30 is sold for $230, and both phones are available unlocked at retailers like B&H.

Is it worth paying the extra money for the A50 considering that the differences from the A30 are not that huge? Yes, if you care about gaming and performance, but for everyone else, we are not convinced you should spend the extra cash for the very slight upgrades that you get. And this rounds up our review of the new Galaxy A50 and A30. Thank you so much for watching this, thumbs up if you liked it, subscribe for more, my name is Vic Christoph and I will talk to you next time, right here, on PhoneArena.

Source : PhoneArena