Samsung Galaxy A12 | Unboxing, Tour, Gaming & Camera Test By Tech Spurt

So tech spots here on YouTube are positively creaming themselves, silly all over Samsung's fresh new galaxy s21 ultra, which is a mighty fine piece of phone, but it's also mega bloody expensive and for those of us who don't have the spare funds to dine on avocado and caviar smoothies every day. Well, maybe check out Samsung's fresh new galaxy a12 instead, which sits happily at the other end of the price spectrum. Here in the UK, you can grab yourself a Samsung Galaxy a12 for just 169 quid, that's more or less the same as the motor g9 power and the likes the Nokia 5.4, which I only just reviewed and in fact I just grabbed this from the Samsung website and actually got a free pair of Samsung Galaxy buds chucked in as well with a typical retail price of over 100 quid. So it's quite a decent little deal, or at least it will be if the phone itself doesn't suck. So what I'm going to do now is fully unbox the galaxy a12, get it all set up and take you on a full-on tour of the hardware and the software to see if it really is good value for money and from all the latest greatest tech. Please do put subscribe and ding that notifications bell cheers all right, let's pop the sweet, chappy open, so what you get in the box is, of course one smartphone.

Your quick start guides good bit of type c USB action and look. You still actually get a charger with this Samsung phone as well, just not the flagship one that costs five times as much, and you do get a porky pin device to actually get your sim in there as well, quite handy, so you want to scrabble around for an earring or something and that's sadly, no bundled condom case. So if you want a bit of extra protection, you'll have to grab yourself your very own cover. So that's the box. Now, let's actually check out the phone itself, and this is the galaxy a12, the blue edition.

You can also grab it here in the UK. In black or white, if you want something a bit more boring, I guess it's not a particularly stunning or exuberant design here on the galaxy a12 admit that you can tell it's a budget smartphone just for the quick glance. You've got your typical plastic finish, which stretches from the back around the edges of the device as well, and as you can see there, it's actually a two textured finish as well. It's quite smooth down below. Then you get this nice textured finish here in the middle, just to add a bit of grip, thankfully, that camera chassis doesn't jut too far out of the off end of the galaxy a12.

It's almost level so that'll be quite handy. If you've got the thing lying flat on a desk trying to use it and the galaxy 12 stuff, they got quite a heft to it as well, at over 200 grams 205 to be precise, and it kind of reminds me of the Nokia 5.4. Quite a chunky, build uh. It is only a 6.5 inches. Only it's a fairly average screen size in 2021, but you've got big thick bezels, which will become more evident when I actually turn the screen on, but I'm just going to chuck my sim card into the galaxy a12, and it looks like it's a dual sim setup that you got right here, plus a separate slot for micro SD memory cards all right, so my sim is inside.

Let's fire, this beast up all right, Mr galaxy here, 12 all set up and ready for action and first off I've got to express a little of disappointment and there. Unfortunately, it is old, android 10 here on the year 12, not the freshest new android 11. Plus. That also means you get Samsung's old, one UI version 2.5 on board as well. So not the latest software compared with the likes of the s21 flagships.

I had a good scout about as well and couldn't find any information on when the galaxy a12 would be getting updated to android 11. Hopefully it will be happening soon, uh, but yeah still. Well. You are missing out on some fresh new android updates. The overall software experience seems fine here on the year.12 you've got plenty of features to play around with uh and, of course, if you dive on into the settings, Samsung has added butt loads of bonus, bits and yeah, because this is a budget friendly smartphone, you don't get some standard. One UI features like an always-on display, because this is an IPS panel.

Not all that. But if you dive on into advanced features, for instance, go to motion ingestion you've got all the usual gesture support options in there. You've also got that incredibly handy uh, one-handed mode as well. Definitely no pun intended, which is very useful if you're trying to, for instance, keep control of a struggling five-year-old in the middle of a high street while desperately messaging your wife, something like that just makes everything much easier to handle. But in my short play time with the year 12, I've noticed quite a few emissions uh from uh this handset as well.

So first there's no updated support. If you swipe this way, you can usually get you know some basic news headlines and things like that. That's not really a massive! Miss no Bixby routines or anything either. If you dive on into the settings, that's all gone, and even the number of pre-installed Samsung apps on the year.12 is quite meager compared to usual as well, although you still get all the usual guff like Facebook, uh and good old tick, took, of course, YouTube music. Apparently, that's still desperately trying to be a thing and those Samsung Knox.

Security features have been scaled back compared with what you get more premium devices too, but the likes of NFC and other features that you'd expect to see on budget smartphones in 2021 are present and correct. As for the storage, you get 64 gigs of internal space here on the Samsung Galaxy a12, pretty standard again for a budget blower, and you've got that micro SD memory card support as well as you can slap in a memory card of up to 512 gigs to expand that space when needed. Now you've got an age-mounted fingerprint sensor on the galaxy a12 for unlocking this phone, and I got to see it. I've found it very hit-and-miss so far for one. You can't just basically rest your finger against the sensor and have it automatically scan your print and unlock like with a lot of other uh smartphones.

You have to actually push the power button in first and then scan your print, and I found that. Certainly when I've tried doing it with my finger, it doesn't seem to work more often than not. I've scanned this thing multiple times, and it just does not seem to like it at all. But if I draw it with my thumb, I find that that works more often than not just push it in and oh, I spoke too soon. Hang on.

Okay, there we go eventually. You do also have a bit of face recognition as well, which, as you can see, that actually works better than the old fingerprint sensor, uh generally as long as you're, not in dodgy lighting, then that will do the job very nicely indeed. Now Samsung is, of course known for slapping, gorgeous or led panels on its smartphones. But of course, at this sort of budget price point you'd be a little optimistic for expecting the same from the galaxy a12 that 6.5-inch TFT panel is definitely very basic. Putting out the kind of visuals you'd expect from slightly cheaper rivals like the mortal g10, you've got a basic 720p resolution.

Unfortunately, so that means that finer details are lost when you're streaming from the likes of Disney plus or YouTube. And of course you do have that cheeky wee nipple notch poking its way into proceedings when you go full screen, but it's only slightly intrusive. It's not too bad and bad news for Netflix fans as well, because the galaxy a12 at the moment is certified wide vine l3, which basically means you can't even stream HD content on this thing. It's SD at best, but yeah shows and movies, and everything are still perfectly watchable on Netflix. Just don't expect those fine HD detail levels and hopefully, that wide vine l1 support will be coming soon, so you will actually be able to stream in high definition.

If you dive into the display settings, the customization options are rather limited again pretty standard for a budget blur. You certainly don't get any of those poppy colors that you would expect from an OLED panel on a Samsung device, but overall it's fine, if not great, and at least on the top brightness levels, the galaxy a12 seems capable of dealing with strong glare and everything. So it should be all right when we actually see a bit of sunshine, and you've got the usual blue light filters and all that good stuff. As for the audio, well, you got a single bottom mounted mono speaker here on the galaxy a12. It seems absolutely fine for just kicking back with a bit of YouTube or something so, let's boost up the volume, but the Nokia 5.4 is far from compact. It's still a proper wide boy, thanks to those chunky bezels, so even on the top volume should still easily be able to hear.

What's going on. Even with you know, lots of background rumble kids acting for things like that, and the clarity is absolutely fine as well. But of course, if you want to enjoy some tunes or something you're going to want to plug in a good pair of headphones using that headphone jack, otherwise, you've also got Bluetooth.5 support here on the Samsung Galaxy a12 2. Now the chipset of choice for the Samsung Galaxy a12 is the MediaTek hello p35. Now you won't find the CD or p35 and many other smartphones at all here in the UK, the likes of the motor g8 power light and the Oppo ear31 quite old handsets now, and that's backed by four gigs of ram here on the galaxy a12, and I've certainly noticed plenty of little stumbles here and there when I've been flicking uh through menus when I've been just trying to browse the internet.

Things like that so definitely basic performance at best and that's something. That's further highlighted by the very uh, simple, very low scores here in geek bench 5 as well as you can see just 164 for the single core score and 1018 for the multi-core. So if you are looking for stronger performance at this sort of price point, I definitely recommend going for something like the mortar g30 or the Nokia 5.4, which bought a snapdragon 662 chipsets instead and gamers will be better served elsewhere as well again by a snapdragon 662 smartphones. Instead, the galaxy year 12 could just about handle the likes of PUBG and Call of Duty on those lower detail settings. But it was quite a judder experience here on Call of Duty mobile playing online.

I did actually manage to win a game which is probably more down to luck than anything else. Uh, but yeah. The screen, responsiveness and everything is fine, but you will see plenty of little jitters and stumbles as you're playing along which obviously ain't ideal in a frantic life or death online situation. The good news, though, is that you still get that great game booster tool that Samsung throws on all of its more premium smartphones, and it's here with the full notifications blocking and all of that good stuff on the galaxy a12s. That's a nice little addition and certainly no worries.

If you fancy gaming all day as well, because you get my 5 000 William battery packed inside the galaxy a12 and that should keep you going all day, even with fairly hardcore use, uh and, as you can see, so it's down to 94. I've had it for about an hour now screen on time with gaming, a good bit of YouTube streaming. All of that good stuff and yeah. It's barely dropped at all, and the galaxy a12 supports 15 watts fast charging as Samsung terms it not particularly nippy, of course, but for a budget blower. It's absolutely fine.

Let's finish off this unboxing and full tour of the galaxy 12 of the squinter that quad lens rear camera. Yes, there are four lenses on there despite the budget asking price, but don't get too excited because a lot of these things, it is a case of quantity over quality. Now what you have here is a 48 megapixel primary sensor, but it's a quad pixel uh technology that Samsung uses. So what that basically means is you'll get a 12 megapixel photo every time you hit that shutter button. Shutter speed doesn't seem too lethargic for a budget smartphone, as you can see there a bit of a bit of a gap in between actually pressing it and getting your photo, but nothing too bad you've got a usual set of toggles, including flash a timer all that good stuff up top, and if you dive on into the camera settings, you've got the likes of the HDR mode and stuff in there as well.

Now, as well as that 48 megapixel primary sensor, you can also jump to the five megapixel ultra-wide angle lens with a quick tap like, so that gives you a very pulled back view of the world, as you can see there, and it's generally quite good for you know, obviously, if you're trying to shoot a landscape or if you're, trying to shoot your kid in action, you get some quite dramatic results, although at five megapixels you can already see just on the screen there. The detail levels aren't going to be great yep, definitely looking very uh sort of grainy and fuzzy uh right there and the color reproduction, not exactly stunning, but not too unnatural. Either. You've also got a two megapixel depth sensor, slapped on the back of the galaxy a12 for your live focus, shots uh, basically Samsung's slightly wacky term for a portrait snap, and this can just add a nice both style a bit of background blur as well as you can see. You've got full control over that as well, so you can minimize the blur or boost it all the way up and once you've actually taken your snap as well.

If you're not too happy with the background effect, you can actually alter it in edit afterwards, which is a nice little feature. You get the same feature on the likes of the more rollers as well. So, as you can see, you can dial it down or boost it. Up and Samsung smartphones usually offer up enough bonus, camera modes to chalk a beluga whale, but in the case of the galaxy a12, it's quite restrained, as you can see there, no doubt due to the performance, uh limitations. Now you do get a pro mode, though, so you can dive on into there, and you can play around with the ISO level the white balance and the brightness levels.

You've got a food mode as well uh, which is quite handy. If you want to share a picture of your beans on toast or whatever you might, you know, once we start going to restaurants, I guess you can probably get some more exciting stuff on the go, and you got a macro mode as well, of course, because that's basically obligatory and budget smartphones and that uses the final lens slaps on the back of the galaxy a12, a simple two megapixel macro lens just to basically capture a grainy, not very good, looking snap of whatever you're getting up close and personal with. As for your home movies. Well, the galaxy a12 can shoot video at up to full HD resolution uh. As you can see there, you can change it if you want down to standard HD at 30, fps, there's no full HD at 60 fps option and there certainly ain't, no four key option and then last up.

If we go back to foot on mode and then flip her onto that front facing a nipple notch, selfie camera, it's an eight megapixel effect. It's going to be basic at best. I can tell you right now, so, if you're into your Instagram or anything like that again, you might want to up your budget or something. But you know it'll be absolutely fine for just simple shareable shots. You know what that one, definitely in getting shared apart from obviously with your fine fork on YouTube that has just been deleted right.

The hell off this smartphone so right, there's a bunch of words on the Samsung Galaxy a12, a budget-friendly smartphone, which you can grab right now in the UK for under 200 quid. As I say, if you grab it direct from Samsung at the time I shot this video, you can get some free Galaxy Buds with it as well, which ain't too shabby at all. Of course, in my short time, with the galaxy year, 12 I've noticed a few little issues, primarily the performance. I would definitely say if you're tempted by this one, maybe shop around likes, the motor g30, for instance, offers a step-up in performance. The Oppo a53, which I absolutely loved as well.

Definitely a good one at this price, but of course, as always, would be great to hear from you guys as well. Are you still tempted by the galaxy year 12 or have you actually already spanked up some cash for one how's? Your experience been so far. Please do leave your own mini review down below, and please do also poke subscribe and ding that notifications bell on all other YouTube jazz as well. Very much appreciated indeed, and have yourselves a lovely rest of the week, cheers everyone loves you. You.

Source : Tech Spurt