Samsung Galaxy A32 Review - A HOME RUN for Budget Smartphones By Hardware Canucks

If there's one thing that we all can agree on: it's the fact that smartphones are getting expensive year by year. What's really unfortunate is that with every iteration, a smartphone offers slight improvements over its predecessor and the increased price tag might not sound justifiable for many of you to upgrade. Now recently, we've been seeing a few smartphone manufacturers cutting costs on their premium flagships, and yet they still managed to deliver a great experience. A good example of that is the galaxy s21, which is still one of my favorite android smartphones in 2021. In fact, if you want to learn more about this smartphone, you can check out my long term review video over here, but even then, spending 500 or more can be challenging for a lot of people out there. But what if I told you, there is a new kid on the block this year.

That's a couple of hundred dollars, and it manages to deliver sixty percent of what a thousand dollar phone can do. Folks meet the galaxy 832 5g, and I'm super excited to share my experience using this 200 smartphone, but first we got to pay some bills. To be quiet, shadow rock 3, it won't block your memory thanks to the offset construction. It will not sound like a hurricane thanks to the quiet shadow wings, 2 fans, it will give you a peace of mind with exceptional cooling, easy installation and the interesting bi-color design check it out below alright. Before I get into the details, I do want to point out that, throughout this video I will be comparing the galaxy 832 to the s21, simply because they're both from the same manufacturer- and it also gives us an interesting perspective as to what you're, gaining or losing within that 500 price difference spoiler alert.

There are a few gains. Also do note that I have the 832 5g model and not the 4g version, because supposedly that has a slightly higher resolution display and a slightly better camera. Besides pricing for the 832 is all over the place at the time making this video. I found this thing for around 200 on sale and the 4g version is around 40 to 50 more so yeah just keep those in mind. I want to kick things off with build quality and handling the a32.

Is sandwiched in between a plastic back and glass display with some form of plastic rails which actually does a pretty good job replicating that stainless steel finish and, to my surprise, it doesn't feel cheap. Now I would have preferred a matte finish on the back to avoid all these fingerprints kind of like what they did with the s21, but I think most people might end up throwing a case anyway. Size wise. The a32 is noticeably bigger than the galaxy s21, and it's almost the same size as the OnePlus 9 pro. So, if you have smaller hands, you might have trouble using this thing.

One-Handed comfortably. Another thing to note is that these edges are squared off compared to the curvy nature on the s21. Personally, I like that, because the curve from the plastic body to the frame makes handling so much better, but that being said, the 832 is still relatively comfortable to use. I have to say I'm really impressed by its sleek design. For this price point.

The camera bump doesn't protrude as much as something like the s21 ultra. The volume rockers feel nice and tactile with no wiggling. The same goes for the power button, which interestingly, also acts as a fingerprint reader, and it works really well. In fact, I appreciate this placement because your thumb sort of naturally sits on top of it, and it also pulls double duty to unlock the device. In fact, you don't even have to press the power button.

You can just simply place your phone on the side, and it just unlocks right away. It's really fast, and it works pretty much all the time. I have to applaud Samsung for not going with a cheap, ultrasonic fingerprint sensor underneath the display, because going with something like this on the side, it just makes using the phone just so much easier, oh and guess who makes a comeback? It's actually something that we missed so dearly. In fact, I think a lot of you guys might have missed it more than I did uh that my friends is the headphone jack yeah. I thought that they faced this on every smartphone, but I guess I was wrong, but hey I'm glad, I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate this inclusion.

What's even better is that they actually include a charging adapter in the box, which is something that the s21 lacks, and I did miss mentioning that in my review, because I relied so much on wireless charging to juice up this smartphone. So that never thought really crossed my mind until I started using the 832, because, unfortunately, this phone doesn't have support for wireless charging, so you'll need to go with the traditional way of charging the device, and it's the standard, 15 watt setup. So nothing crazy fast here, and that brings me to battery life and folks. Samsung hit a home run again. This phone packs a 5000mah battery, which is a thousand million powers more than the galaxy s21, but keep in mind that the trade-off with this phone is, of course, the smaller form factor, but with the a32 uh fitting a bigger size battery was the right choice.

In fact, I think it's brilliant, because I had a difficult time and I mean a very difficult time killing this thing in one day, because my usage consists of responding to shorter emails, killing productivity time scrolling through Instagram Reels and posts and uh. You know watching a few YouTube videos and messaging on other platforms. You know the usual drill, so you can easily push this thing to two days worth of use if you're a power user or maybe even three, if you're a light user, I mean check out that overnight drain rate, this thing literally sips through battery. So there's just no need to worry about that factor on the smartphone. Samsung has also managed to keep the micro SD card feature for storage expansion, which is very thoughtful.

I actually find it really ironic given how they used to market that expandability feature on their higher end galaxy s series a few years ago, where you can add up to a terabyte if you were up for it, but now it's just obsolete, and yet they managed to bring it into their entry level, a series which costs a lot less um. It's just funny how the market has evolved. Now at this point, you might be asking ourselves: ever there's got to be a catch, I mean for 200. You can't expect the rest of phone to surprise everyone. Well, you got me there, but it's actually pretty respectable.

Let's start with the display you're getting a 6.5-inch screen with a 720p resolution. It's not AMOLED, but instead they're using TFT to save on cost. The drawback is, of course you lose on vibrancy and contrast, and not to mention those pitch black levels that we're used to seeing on AMOLED panels. Then there is the 90hz adaptive refresh rate feature, which I was surprised to find on a 200 phone. But, to my surprise, when I was using this thing day in and day out, I felt like I was constantly using a 60 hertz display, regardless of what I did, so I don't think you should be excited about achieving a smoother experience with the a32, because it's just certainly not the case.

But that being said, this screen is fine for getting general tasks done. I wouldn't think about gaming, though, which leads me to another aspect that you will compromise on performance. You see this phone is using an outscore MediaTek, 725g soc, with four gigabytes of ram and 64 gigabytes of storage, and I'm just going to say if it's slow, but my definition of slow is based on experience using flagship phones using the fastest CPU, where apps load up quickly with no stutters. The 832, on the other hand, gets the job done but expect some animations to stutter when you're working within apps. They do take a few seconds to load.

So for someone, who's used to entry-level devices they'll be perfectly fine using this thing, because at the end of the day, it's all a matter of perception and where someone is coming from. I also think this might be one of the reasons for the display to not achieve 90 hertz, because the GPU might be too stressed performing other tasks and, to be honest, I expected this and look I'm not saying that it's a dealbreaker, because you can still get a lot of things done on this phone, not to mention it plays a significant role in battery life. I'm just saying that it's not meant for those spec enthusiasts or mobile gamers. If all you care about is making phone calls using maps to navigate around the city. Listening to music, responding to emails, this phone will get the job done.

All you need is just a little of patience. The speaker setup on the 832 is a little different compared to the galaxy s21, so the top earpiece does not act as a separate channel for audio, but instead you only get a bottom monofacing speaker, and it sounds okay. I mean it does get loud, so you don't miss any alarms, but you can easily block that with your finger. If you're watching content in landscape mode, so yeah it gets a job done. Call quality is excellent.

I had no issues hearing the other person and, of course they didn't have any issues hearing me, because the mic sounded pretty good for them. The haptic motor inside this phone is pretty strong, but in a weird way you see, instead of it being quick and instant to respond to your chest-based gestures. There is a bit of delay, and it drags on for a few seconds. You can also feel sort of a rattling sensation inside um. It's just difficult for me to convey it over video.

So what I'm going to do is actually let you guys listen to it. So it'll give you a rough idea on how it feels at least I hope, so I'll try my best. The software experience is basically a replica from the galaxy s21. It's running android 11 with Samsung's one UI 3.1, which is their latest, offering at the time of making this video it's pretty clean. For the most part, you still get the Google feed integration when you swipe right from the home screen, and I like that feature- Samsung has still pre-loaded their apps, some of which can be uninstalled.

Others you just have to live with, customizability is pretty open. You can rearrange the home screen layout and a few other settings. The theme store is still there, which honestly isn't my cup of tea. If you know me, I always throw a third party launcher or a custom icon pack to sort of fit my style, but I don't think most people would really care about that. Finally, I want to talk about camera performance.

Now. This 5g version has a triple camera setup, so you get 8 megapixels, ultra-wide angle, sensor, a 48 megapixel main camera and a 5 megapixel macro sensor for close-ups. Let's start with the ultrawide, the field of view is adequate to capture landscapes or as many subjects as you'd like on frame, but given that it is an 8 megapixel sensor, detail takes a significant hit where you'll start to lose textures, depending on what you're shooting. Even if you give it more light, it just can't keep up guys. You can see that if I zoom into the shot over here where the branches on the tree look smudged, the dynamic range is pretty good, as HDR does its thing by keeping the highlights under control, but in my opinion it does tend to shoot a little.

Overexposed lower performance is not that great. There is no detail so expect every image to come out with a Vaseline filter applied to it. Switching over to the main 48 megapixel sensor, and I was seriously impressed by the quality coming out of this 200 phone. The detail is phenomenal thanks to the larger sensor, and you also get a really nice subject: separation due to the larger f-stop, I mean look at this photo. Can you believe that it was taken on a 200 smartphone, it's just so good, and the colors look beautiful? I will say that the reds in real life tend to look like orange when you capture it on this phone, but that can easily be addressed in post.

Low light performance is also pretty impressive. I think it's much better than the ultra-wide angle sensor, because you can see that it does a remarkable job, maintaining the details while not giving too much noise. In some cases the software takes over and adds some sharpening, but I don't think that's a big deal guys now, just for fun. I compared the s21 to the a32, and I was really surprised by how similar both these images are. Both these phones performed.

So the s21 actually gives you a contrast and vibrant image compared to the a32, but that's just me being picky. But if you look at detail, both these phones are very similar and, quite frankly, I don't think a lot of people can tell the difference. So I'm really surprised at what a 200 phone can achieve compared to something that costs you know 700 to 800. The other thing I noticed is the colors on the s21 looked more true to life, whereas on the a32 it looked more shifted, but that's just me being again too picky. The selfie camera is respectable.

It struggles with dynamic range and detail if you shoot in low light honestly for sharing stuff on social media, this will get the job done. The macro camera is a cool gimmick. If you like to play around with subjects around you, I honestly haven't used this feature on any smartphone other than testing it for you guys, but hey Samsung wanted a triple camera setup, so they decided to go with the cheapest option and included a know: lower five megapixel sensor instead of a telephoto, which I would have personally preferred all right. So this is the front-facing camera test on the galaxy a32. Now, as you guys can see, the dynamic range is not necessarily the greatest, but I just want to walk you through the resolutions, so the front facing camera can shoot up to 1080p at 30 frames per second.

The rear facing camera can shoot up to 4k 30 frames per second, but the problem is you can't use both lenses, it's like, so you can't use the ultrawide and the main sensor. It actually crops into one of the main sensors to shoot 4k. But if you switch over to 1080p, you can use both sensors and, as you can see, the footage actually looks pretty good. I mean, if you play around with exposure and whatnot, you can actually end up with some interesting shots and um. As you can see by this montage, it looks really nice, I'm actually surprised by the quality uh it's like.

If you just have to be really patient, it's not going to give you the most advanced quality like what you find on the s21, or you know higher inflation smartphones, but for 200 I think it's pretty good, so the galaxy a32 5g for 200 I'm really impressed with what this brings to the table. The first thing that stands out to me, of course, is the incredible battery life. You can easily push this thing to two three or maybe even four days worth of use if you're a very light user, even if you're, on the go every day when you rely on a smartphone to get to place the battery just won't give up uh it's just that good. The build quality surprisingly doesn't feel cheap. In fact, it's noticeably better than last year's galaxy, a series when it comes to handling uh the camera performance is just amazing and if you primarily use that 48 megapixel main sensor, I think you're in for a treat.

I wouldn't rely on that ultra-wide angle, camera that much because you know details are okay and the haptics inside they are strong, but it does feel like you know, I'm trying to get a motor engine to start. If that means that makes any sense and then there's the performance, you see it's not blazing fast, like what you'd find on phones that cost 600 and upwards. You just have to be patient when you're working through apps or taking a photo, which you know does give you a few seconds of shutter delay, and I know that there are people out there who are completely okay with that because for the price the a32 delivers. Now, if you can find the 4g version for less than 300, I would probably pick that because of the high resolution display and a slightly better camera, but the retail stores here in Canada and us love selling 5g, and I'm not convinced on that fully. So on that note, thank you so much for watching.

I hope you were able to take away everything that you needed to know about this 200 phone seriously, I'm so impressed with what this thing offers. Let me know what you guys think about it in the comments and if you are looking to pick up a phone within that price range um you know is this something that you would consider. Let us know I'm eBay with hardware Canucks. Thank you so much watching, and I will talk to you guys in the next one.

Source : Hardware Canucks