Samsung Galaxy A52 5G review: the new mid-range champ By Phandroid

We're slowly inching our way to the middle point of 2021, and we've already seen some incredible smartphones so far this year. But while some of those headline grabbing smartphones with those insane spec sheets may seem really impressive, this phone here may actually outsell every single one of them and not by a little say hello to the Samsung Galaxy a52, the successor to last year's immensely popular a51, which, if you haven't checked, was the second best-selling smartphone of 2020 right behind the Apple iPhone 11. Now this phone may not be fancy or have a high-powered chipset on the inside, but let's take a look at this device to see what it has to offer and if it's really enough to make it a chart topper two years in a row as a reminder, please subscribe to the channel. If you want to see more reviews like this, and also I do have camera comparisons with the galaxy a52 to see how it compares to the competition so make sure you check those out as well. I'm nick gray- and this is my review of the Samsung Galaxy a52. If you don't know by now, I'm a stickler for good design and if you've seen my galaxy, s21 and s21 ultra reviews.

You'll definitely know that I'm a big fan of the new look, but when it comes to the a52, I'm really not that impressed, I'm perfectly fine with them going with an all plastic build. Since honestly, I think plastic is a lot more durable than metal and glass, but I really wish they would have leaned into it. Just a little more. The camera bump does look a little awkward to me, though I do appreciate the metal accent rings around each of the four cameras. That being said, if you are planning to stick a case on the phone, the look of the back really shouldn't bother you that much- and one last thing to note is that the a52 offers ip67 dust and water resistance, something that most other devices within this price range typically don't include.

Next, let's talk about performance for a minute, which honestly, I think is one of the most compelling aspects of the a52. This is the US variant of the phone. So it's running a snapdragon 750 chipsets on the inside with only six gigabytes of ram, and when you add that up it may not sound that impressive. But honestly, if you're not pushing this phone to its breaking point with really only a handful of select games available for android, I think most people are going to be really satisfied with the performance that they get out of this device. Having six gigabytes of ram is still quite adequate for a decent multitasking experience and the chipset inside this phone is more than capable of delivering a great user experience, even when it comes to gaming on Call of Duty, mobile you'll be able to set the graphics and frame rates all the way to very high without the phone hitting up too much over long gaming sessions.

If you're against an impact fan, things are a little different, since this is one of those games that pushes the phone to its very limit. You'll definitely notice some choppiness. If you crank the settings all the way up, but with a little of tweaking, you can definitely pull out an enjoyable experience if you're willing to play at 30 frames per second. As far as the smoothness goes with user interface and other applications, I really can't fault the a52 at all. It's really a stellar experience, especially when you compare to other mid-range devices.

Now it's going to be a little slower than what you get out of a galaxy s21 device. But honestly, that's what you get when you buy a mid-range smartphone. The good news is Samsung kind of forgot that this is a mid-range device when it comes to its display. What you're looking at here is a 6.5 inch AMOLED panel with a 120 hertz, refresh rate and 1080p resolution, pretty much matching what we got on the galaxy s, 21 lineups, which is their flagship to your devices. As far as media consumption goes, it's pretty incredible, with some perfect viewing angles and also 800 nits of peak brightness, which make it perfect for viewing your content, while in direct sunlight as well.

It's definitely not as good as the 1200 nits that we've seen on some other devices, but 800 nits is still perfect, especially for a mid-range device. You will catch a few people complaining about the thicker bezels around the display, but I honestly couldn't care less, since I didn't have any of those mishaps that you typically get with those thinner bezel devices while typing or with just your navigation. I was also pleasantly surprised by how good the audio experience is on this device. You actually get stereo speakers here with one on the bottom edge and one front firing speaker right next to the display, its audio isn't quite as rich as Samsung's more expensive devices, but you also get a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, which, as we all know, doesn't come on the flagship s series phones from Samsung. When it comes to the software experience of this phone, the a52 gets pretty much the same experience as the flagship s21 series does, which means it's running: android 11 with one UI 3.0, but that also applies to software updates. This phone should be getting four years of security updates directly from Samsung and google, and three major android updates going forward, which is remarkable since most mid-range devices.

These days typically only get one, and maybe two major software updates before they're completely aged out. If you're coming from another Samsung phone, one UI 3.1 will feel very familiar, but personally, I'm not a huge fan of Samsung software with its design choices, the built-in ads and the amount of bloatware on this phone. Specifically, this is an ATT variant with a crap ton of bloatware, which includes nine ATT, specific applications, six different games that are pre-loaded on the phone and four music and video streaming apps that you can't really uninstall. If you don't want to use them and, of course, there's the Microsoft apps. On top of that, due to Samsung's partnership with Microsoft right out of the box, the pre-installed apps take up a full seven gigabytes of the phone storage at t and other service providers do offer some incredible deals when purchasing a phone like this.

Just keep in mind, though, that those discounts do come at a price, thankfully, even with all that bloatware on the device. At least you have 128 gigabytes of internal storage, and if that isn't enough, you still get a micro SD expansion slot which allows you to add up to two terabytes of additional storage to this device, even though those cards technically still aren't available, we'll have to wait probably another year before those hit the market. Okay. So let's talk about the cameras on this phone being a mid-range device. I really wasn't expecting much out of the quad camera system.

On the back of the a52, like most other mid-range devices, it has a macro camera which is completely useless and then a depth sensor, which does come in handy from time to time with the portrait mode, even though the results really aren't that great. But as far as the main camera goes, the 64 megapixel main sensor and then the 12 megapixel ultra-wide camera. I was pretty surprised to see how good those two cameras actually perform. The most surprising thing for me was the amount of dynamic range that you get in the shots captured by the main camera, which match up really well with what you get out of the Samsung Galaxy s21 brightening up the shadows significantly, while still keeping the highlights in check. That's definitely something you don't see that often in a phone at this price point unless of course, you're talking about Google's pixel 4 a5g, the optical image.

Stabilization of the main camera also helps out a lot in low light situations, though it was kind of surprising to see that the dedicated night mode feature doesn't really result in better or brighter images, when the lighting conditions aren't that great. And while I really love the dramatic images that I can get out of the ultra-wide camera with its 123 degree field of view, it really doesn't perform that well in low light situations and switching over to night mode for the ultra-wide camera doesn't help out at all. I'd have to say that video capture from this device is actually pretty impressive. Considering that the selfie camera on the front can capture 4k video at up to 30 frames per second matching, the 4k video capture on the rear cameras allowing which, between the front facing camera and the rear cameras, while still capturing video, something that a lot of cameras or smartphones can't actually do these days and then again switch to the ultra-wide camera as well. Of course, video capture during low light situations really isn't that great from the selfie camera or the ultra-wide camera, but the main camera seems to perform fairly well.

As for the 32 megapixel selfie camera, I was actually quite impressed with the results, even in low light conditions, though, you still can't turn off Samsung's beauty mode, all the way which lead to slightly softer images than what I would like. The 4 500 William hour battery on the inside of the galaxy a52 does a decent job of keeping the phone powered on throughout the day, with six to eight hours of screen on time, typically with my use and still having about a 25 charge when I plug the phone in at night after about 15 to 16 hours, and if you're, not somebody like me, who uses your phone constantly throughout the day, you can definitely get a day and a half or maybe even two days out of this phone without plugging it in the phone does support 25 watt fast charging, but Samsung did skimp out just a little by throwing in a 15 watt charger in the box, which will get you from zero to 50 in roughly 45 minutes or all the way to a hundred percent in 100 minutes. I have to say that I'm definitely impressed with what the galaxy a52 has to offer this year. Sure there are quite a few Chinese smartphones on the market that offer much better specs for the same exact price, but if you're buying the phone in the US and specifically from a service provider, the only real competition to the galaxy a52 is probably the Pixel 4a 5g, which, if you're into taking pictures, that's probably the better option. If you're, comparing this to the galaxy s21 lineup, just keep in mind, there's a 300 difference between the cheapest s21 and the a52, which makes this one a really, really good buy and that's going to do it.

Thank you guys so much for watching this review. If you want to see my camera comparisons with the galaxy a52 make sure you check those out on the channel and don't forget to subscribe as well. If you want to see my next video as soon as it's online thanks again, and I'll catch you in the next one.

Source : Phandroid