Galaxy A52 5G Review // FOUR Months Later! By Sam Beckman

This is the galaxy a52 5g and for those not in the know, this phone is the sort of upper tier of Samsung's budget, a lineup of phones, so right at the bottom, you've got the a22 then above that is the a32. Then the a42, which was released last year, then you've got the regular a52. Then this phone, which is the 5g variant and then sitting slightly above this one, is the galaxy a72 of that is a convoluted mess, but that aside, this phone packs in a heap of fascinating specs for a pretty affordable price tag, and so it begs the question: is this phone the new mid-range king? Well, let's find out so starting with the design and as with all of Samsung's, cheaper phones, the a52 5g has that same matte polycarbonate back, and then it also has these plastic shiny rails along the side and top and bottom of the phone. The back plastic then sort of scoops up into the camera unit for a very nice and consistent design. The buttons are also very click and tactile, which inspires a lot of confidence and like most mid-range and budget phones. The headphone jack is also included with this phone, which is pretty nice aside from that.

If we take a look at the front of the phone in all honesty, it looks pretty much identical to the front of the galaxy s20 Fe, with those slightly larger than usual, but still fairly, slim bezels and a tiny little hole punch in the center there for the selfie, camera, and so I'd say, Samsung has done a pretty solid job of emulating a higher end design with the a525g and for someone upgrading from a phone that's a few years old. My guess is that they'll be very pleased with the look and feel of this phone. Just really one downside with the design, and that is that the plastic on the back does feel a little cheaper than the plastics used on other phones like the pixel a series. My guess, though, is that most people purchasing this phone will be using it in a case and if you're in the market for a new phone case, then I can highly recommend picking one up from the sponsor of this video rhino shield. I myself have actually been using the a52 in one of rhino shields custom cases.

It's this sleek and minimal black design with custom gold lettering down the bottom, and I just reckon it's the bee's knees. This is one of their premium, stamping custom cases, but they also have a range of other customizations that you can make on their website as well to make your phone feel a little more you on top of that rhino shield's entire lineup of cases is highly protective and if you buy one of their impact screen protectors to go with, I mean you're setting yourself up for all the success when it comes to keeping your phone in pristine condition. Their cases come in a huge variety of finishes and styles, and on top of their amazing in-house designs, they've actually also done a bunch of big name collaborations as well, including PewDiePie, NASA, the NBA plus a bunch more all of which are available for the galaxy a52. They make cases for a huge collection of phones, and they come with a lifetime warranty as well, and rhino shield also offers free worldwide shipping for qualified orders. Now, because they're sponsoring this video rhino shield are actually offering 20 off their cases for the next week.

If you use the code sam52 at checkout or if you're watching this video after that time period, then you can still get a handy 10 off so make sure you check out all of their amazing cases and consider picking one up for your own phone using the first link down in the description below okay. So from there we turn to what I think is, without a doubt, the standout feature of this phone, and that is the display. It's a 1080p super AMOLED panel, but unlike the regular a52 and the a72, both of which have 90 hertz displays, the a525g has an incredible 120 hertz panel and for a phone of this price I mean damn now it certainly doesn't get as bright as Samsung's flagship devices, but that didn't really bother me throughout my experience of using this phone. I think I was just always so impressed that the display was 120 hertz at all, particularly at this price point. On top of that, I was really impressed to read that Samsung is offering three years of major OS updates with this phone and four years of security patches.

Just like its flagship brothers, a lot of companies tend to offer less support for their cheaper phones, but the fact that Samsung isn't doing that with this one at least, is very encouraging, and so I kind of wish. I could finish the review here and call this phone without a doubt, a truly incredible phone for the price, but unfortunately there are a few downsides that have presented themselves after a prolonged period of using this phone that need to be addressed. Firstly, the cameras. Now I've taken a lot of pictures with this phone over the course of using it, and whilst you can capture some fairly impressive shots with the main sensor that do stack up to more expensive devices, the conditions have to be really ideal and as soon as you step into trickier scenarios with a little less light or lots of shadows, that's when you might find the results a little underwhelming. There was a period of using this phone where I went and did some little hikes with my family to some really beautiful locations, and I've got to be honest.

I was a bit let down that the phone I had to capture the experience was the a525g. Now don't get me wrong. A lot of the photos did turn out pretty great and, like I said, the phone can capture a good photo in the right conditions. It's just one of those things where I'm lucky enough to have the luxury of having phones like the pixels or even Samsung's higher end phones sitting in my office, but I just happened to be reviewing the a52. While I was at these beautiful locations, which means the images weren't as nice as what I know they could have been with.

That said, we do have an ultrawide camera on this phone, which is nice, it's not flagship quality, but it's not awful either and then Samsung has also included a macro and depth sensor as well, so that they can market this phone as a phone with four cameras. But in reality these other two sensors might as well. Not be there in terms of video, you can shoot at a 4k resolution at 30 frames, a second with all the cameras on this phone, including the ultra-wide and selfie cameras. So that's nice, but there is no 4k60, even with the main sensor, which is a little of a bummer, but moving on from the cameras and in terms of the fingerprint sensor, I've got to say the one on this phone isn't great. I would almost go as far as to say that it pretty much never scans my finger correctly on the first try and there have been multiple occasions where no matter how much I maneuver my finger, it just can't get an accurate scan.

You can also only register three fingerprints in the security settings, which is seriously not enough, particularly if you like, registering your main finger twice, and so this in-display sensor has kind of given me flashbacks of a few years ago, when pretty much all in-display sensors were no good and unfortunately the haptics are also awful on this phone. I know not. Everyone cares about haptics. So if you don't, then no problem, but if you're like me- and you do well just know that the haptics feel very budget, so you'll really need to disable them all together. If you're going to enjoy using this phone, and so then we come to the area that I think drags this phone down the most software optimization and performance.

Now, funnily enough, when I first started using this phone, I thought it was a pretty solid experience with just a few hiccups here and there that were evidence of the slightly downgraded chipset being used early on. I even took a note in my phone saying that you can definitely feel that things are a bit slower like opening apps and even the messages' app was proving to be a little wonky, and sometimes it would refuse to load a conversation thread, or it wouldn't. Let me preview images altogether, but aside from those issues, it wasn't the worst experience, I'd had used a phone and that 120hz panel certainly helped to smooth things out a bit. But then, after a couple of weeks, things got even worse. So now a few times a day.

It feels like there will be an instance where the phone will just go into glitch mode. Apps will take a good two to three seconds to open after I've touched an icon and then exiting an app can sometimes be a bit delayed as well and there'll also be several stutter animations in just the general use of the phone, and, whilst I definitely wouldn't say it makes the phone unusable like I said it's not like this 24 7, but it does happen enough to bring the overall experience of using this phone down quite a bit. Now back in my review of the galaxy s20 Fe at the start of this year, I hypothesized that Samsung was cutting costs on their lower end phones by not really optimizing the software like what they did with their higher end phones and in all honesty, the experience I've had using this phone kind of proves it and aside from performance issues, there is actually other evidence for this. I tweeted about this a little while ago, but let's take a look here at the always on display of the s21 ultra compared to the a525g notice. How, on the ultra, the clock animates really nicely in and out of the always on display when I tap on it, but then take a look at the a52, see how it just snaps back and forth like.

Why? Would they not enable this feature on their cheaper phones? I know it might seem like a small thing on the surface and that kind of is, but it all goes into this theory that I have that Samsung uses a more generic software, build on their cheaper phones that really hasn't been optimized on a device per device basis. I understand they've got to cut costs somewhere, but for me, software optimization is not the place to do so. Look at apple's, cheaper iPhones. They all cut costs in one way or another, but at the end of the day they all run like straight butter, because they've been optimized like no other phone and even OnePlus seems to get this right with all of their phones regardless of price. Now look with all of that being said, the a525g still has just enough going for it at this price point to make it a phone worth purchasing, but I would say that recommendation is for a very specific audience, one who isn't as concerned by a phone with slightly lackluster performance for that sector of people.

The cameras are good enough. The design is really solid, and the display is phenomenal, making it a pretty worthy purchase. I'd just be wary of the fact that this phone may not last quite as long as some other phones would particularly give that it's already experiencing slowdowns, but that's it for my review of the galaxy a525g. It gets pretty close, but it's not quite what I'd call the mid-range key. Let me know your thoughts on this software.

Optimization theory. I have on Samsung's budget lineup of phones in the comments and don't forget to check out rhino shield's incredible cases using the first link down in the description below and use the code sam52 at checkout to get 20 off your order for the next week or 10 after that. Aside from that, hopefully you enjoyed the video. Thank you all very much for watching, and I will catch you later. You.

Source : Sam Beckman