Samsung Galaxy A52 5G vs Galaxy A51 Full Detailed Comparison | Should you upgrade? By Grant Likes Tech

How's it going here welcome back to the channel, and today I'll be going through the Samsung Galaxy a51 4g version from last year and comparing it to the galaxy a52 5g version from this year. This was just launched in april 2021 and the a51 was launched, I think, in december 2019. So even though the a51 5g version of this model was a significant performance upgrade from this one right here same in this 52 5g version. But maybe you didn't jump on the 5g train last year, and you stayed off of that, and you're thinking, maybe 5g is mature enough. Maybe I want to try it out, and I liked the a51 so much from last year, I'm thinking about getting the a52 5g. I hope to compare these two and show you the differences here and give you my opinion and hopefully that helps you decide if it's a worthy upgrade for you now in general, I'm going to say when your upgrades should you do it, I think in the high end- phones, maybe 800 thousand dollars plus definitely no.

So if you're always thinking about, should I upgrade those phones' year over year, the blanket statement is definitely no they're not going to really offer very much year over year to you, but the lower end segment. Let's say the 200 to maybe 500 smartphone segments has been very competitive, and you can argue that maybe upgrading year over year for the last few years has been worth it because there have been so many advancements in those phones in those price categories, but I think this year it might be starting to stagnate. A little take the Poco x3 between the NFC from last year and the new pro model this year. They don't really seem to be like much of improvements. That's probably worth the upgrade there, so it seems to be flattening out, but maybe the 500 segment is still competitive, and it may still be worth your money.

I'm going to go ahead and try to break this down, for you offer my opinion. Maybe agree, maybe you don't but either way. Hopefully this helps you out in some way. So first, let's start off with the build and design here. This is the a51 4g model, as you can see here, departure and design language and philosophy.

Here between the two models. You can see the very shiny back in this rainbow finish on the a51 versus this more flat. Matte finish on the a52 5g. Now the one does come in several colors. It comes in black and white here in the US, but unfortunately we're not getting the blue or the violet colors.

I think um you can get those unlocked, but they're not going to be on us carriers for this model here, so you're going to get black or white. You do have this more shimmery finish, so I think if you like, more flashy, you like more show you like shine, you're, going to like the a51, but personally I like the flat matte look here of this a525g, and so I'll give it to the 825g for that personally, because that's my style choice, but you may disagree. The other thing to note is that the a51 is a bit thinner, and it has some of these rounded corners. So if you can see that on the sides, you've got rounded sides here which do make it more comfortable to hold at least personally to me. So it's thinner, you got the rounded edges on the sides on the back and just kind of curves into your hand a little better and this all flat look and build of the a525g.

So there's no curve on this, it's flat back flat front, which a lot of people may appreciate you may prefer. So that's another thing to consider, but all in all, they're still each equally comfortable to hold the 52 5g. Isn't that much thicker? And so, even though this is slightly more comfortable to hold. I do like to design better on this one. So for me, I personally prefer the overall hardware and design here on the a52 5g now flipping these around and checking out the bar metrics, and we'll check out the screens and performance here.

You know it's pretty much about the same. I would say so getting into the phone pretty slow on each quite honestly, but it is kind of effective I'm trying to do two. At the same time, so it's a bit challenging here, but, as you can see here, the a51 almost seems faster more of the time, as you can see right there on the fingerprint scanner they both open up and yes, some people will say, what's the big difference between one second, but again, you know if you use some other phones and even this one it can take some time and if you're one of those people who unlock your phone and check your phone a lot over the course of the day. This could be a little annoying to you, so just something to consider but still fairly reliable on both, and it works. So no real, big complaints there, just something to point out and again, as you can see here, the 51 is maybe more consistently a little faster.

For some reason, we can check out the face unlock as well, so we can see there again faster on the a51 that time try again and sorry, I'm trying to get both of these to look at my face at the same time behind the camera. So there you go see, the 52 was a little faster, but either way these are not speed demons as far as biometric unlocking, but they both do work, and it's nice to have that option here for both face unlock, and the fingerprint scanner and then, of course, the first thing you notice when you unlock your phone, are the displays they're, both the same size, 6.5 inch super AMOLED displays. Of course the a525g has a 120 hertz, refresh rate, so smoother looking performance supposedly, and you can tell in person, but if I'm just flicking through things and scrolling through things they're, both pretty quick, the a7 is still pretty quick. I think the performance on the 851 has improved over time. I do remember first using this and while it wasn't really slow, it has the Enos 9611, I believe, versus the snapdragon 765 g here on the a525g.

The 851 wasn't slow, but it did not really lag. No phone really lags nowadays, but it was a step behind a clear step behind other phones I'm used to, and even for using this, it felt a little slow. You could see some kind of little of motion going through, wasn't it quite as snappy, where the a525g definitely is very smooth, very snappy noticeable step down from something like the galaxy s, 21 series, but still, if you're, just using these types of phones, it's very smooth with 120 hertz refresh rate, and it was always snappy out of the box. This one was a bit slower, but since the updates, this definitely feels a lot faster and a little more responsive. So it's not as big of a performance boost from day-to-day use.

Just browsing around launching some apps like you'll, see here. So if you just launched something like twitter, you'll see it's a step behind, but really I mean and of course, when you scroll through while loading media, it's a little choppy, but I mean really. I mean, if you're just going to use this day to day that extra second probably won't really ruin your day, and it really won't mean up mean very much in the grand scheme of things you can see they're pretty much the same. I'm going to step behind here on the 851, but nothing really major, and you can scroll through that and see what that experience looks like here a little choppier here on the a51. You can tell that smooth 120, hertz refresh rate here on the a52 kicking in there, but you know we go and launch YouTube just again, just a step behind, maybe a split second, a second behind nothing to really complain about.

So I think the updates to the a51 have really helped it, and we can go ahead and actually check on that as well. Let's go back into maybe something like settings here, and we can see they're both running android 11, but the a515g is running android uh Samsung, one UI 3.0 versus the 525g, has the latest 3.1 there and the a51 is still on the February security update. While the a525g just got the April security update, so you can see there at the bottom, it's a little more updated on the 852 like you'd expect, but not too far behind the a51 and really going back to displays again. If I'm just looking at this in person, I'm looking at my camera, and it doesn't look too different, but in person the a51, even though they're both super AMOLED display 6.5 inches, the a51 looks a bit dimmer a little more washed out than the a52, and we can actually go and check out the display settings which are pretty much the same here on each. Let's go here and scroll up to display, and you can see here they're both on vivid screen mode, so they both have the same controls which is nice.

You can, I usually keep it on vivid, but you can actually control the white balance. If you want a cooler. Looking temperature warming warmer looking temperature, you can do that, and they also have more granular controls here to even get fine-tuning even further to what you like to see with your own eyes. But if I'm just looking at these with this wallpaper here, it's much more vivid a little brighter on the a525g and let's go ahead and take a look at the actual settings here. So let's go to 50 on each and in the camera.

May not come through as much but in person when I'm looking at this. This definitely looks more vibrant. This definitely looks a little more washed out for some reason so screen and display quality with 120 hertz and everything else. Clearly, the a52 5g is visibly better and much more of an improvement to me, so I would go with 825g for the display there as well all right. So we've talked about the display, but let's go ahead and take a look.

You know, I think a lot of people use their phones to consume media. So let's go ahead and queue up some things to watch here and let's check out the differences on each of these all right. So I've got the same.4K 60 frames per second video queued up and they both have them on the max resolution here at 4k, 60 frames per second, and they're both only going to upscale here, because they're both 1080p displays. We can see here on each. What that looks like here.

I've got them both in max brightness, so we can kind of see what each of these look like, so I'll play them. Both here and we'll take a look, so you can see here, it'll be tough to come through and what that looks like here, but you know they both are looking perfect because they are both super AMOLED displays. But again I like the color reproduction a little more here on the a52, but they're both probably looking pretty good here on camera. So but anyway, you have your own eyes. You can decide.

Video is tough to really show through what it looks like, but just giving my opinion on what these displays here look like if I were to go with one they're, both really great being super AMOLED, but I'll go with the a52 5g personally, so let's go ahead and keep one more video, and we'll play some sound. So you can hear the speakers at the same time, all right, so I've got a video queued up, so we're going to play it and listen to it with some sound here. I've got the sound pumped all the way up, we're going to check it out on the a51 first, you can see there a51 and let's go ahead and check that out first, and we'll check out the same video on the a52 for comparison. So let's go ahead and play it. Hey, what's going YouTube mike here from TeamViewer y, and today we are looking at several cases for the Samsung Galaxy s21, courtesy of the awesome people from so that was the a51.

Let's go ahead and check out that same video here on the a52 5g. So let's make sure we got it at full resolution. We've got it at full brightness, and we'll crank up the audio all the way up here, and we'll play the same. Video here, hey, what's going YouTube mike here from TeamViewer. Why and today we are looking at several cases for the Samsung Galaxy s21, courtesy of the awesome people from speed.

So there you go. First off that is obviously, like you heard mike from team very, if you've not seen his YouTube channel he's a great creator with some perfect quality content. So go ahead and check him out if you have not already, but as you can see and hear from that, the a525g has stereo speakers. So it has that loud bottom firing, speaker with another speaker up top, while the a51 only has that bottom firing speaker so for sound quality and speakers. It's definitely going to go to the a52 5g right there.

So, hopefully that gave you a better idea of what these displays look like if you wanted to watch some YouTube or watch a movie or other content, and hopefully that helped you decide which of these two might be better for you as far as display and speaker quality. So next we can go ahead and check out the software settings like I showed you earlier they're, both running android 11 with the Samsung UI 3.0 versus 3.1 over here on the a52. Let's go into the settings and let's check out the software and what it has to offer. So, as you can see here, pretty much the same experience very much the same Samsung one UI experience here and if we go into sounds, we can see here what kind of settings you can tune into here and if we scroll through here to the bottom, sound quality and effects pretty much everything up to that point was the same. You can see here.

They both have Dolby Atmos, and so, if I go in and let's go ahead and check this out, the one thing to note here is from the quick settings menu. If I turn on Dolby Atmos here, you can see here. This effect only works with Bluetooth and headphones. So it's not going to be for the speakers, but you can access it from the quick settings and they both have that adobe Atmos experience and from there you can also go to the equalizer. So you can fine-tune that experience even further.

They have some presets, but you can also reset the equalizer to. However, you want to fine-tune your listening experience. So that's very nice Samsung carries this down to this more mid-level type of phone here, and I think that's really nice to actually have some sound tuning capability on your phone, especially when you want to plug in or use your headphones you're going to get a much better sound quality and overall sound listening experience here and further scrolling down already went through the display settings pretty much the same being able to fine tune and color calibrate your displays on each is very nice. Although again, the a52 is looking a little more vibrant, a little nicer to my eyes from wallpapers, you kind of see what they have. You both have the wallpaper services, which I do like I do like using dynamic, lock screens, because it gives you really nice wallpaper options for your lock screen.

You can download, whichever type of category you want. I like landscape. It gives you these really nice. Looking landscapes randomly on your lock screen. Every time you unlock it.

So you can see that there would be nice if they carry this through to the actual display on wallpapers and not just on the lock screen. If you could have it on your home screen as well, because these wallpapers are really nice, and you can see just unlocked there so again, just a nice little feature that you have on each dynamic lock screen. But if you don't like that, you can actually go through the different wallpapers and here are the wallpapers that come on each device. You can see here a little more options are about the same options. I guess just different wallpaper options here between the 51, obviously in the 52.

, nothing to write home about on each so obviously customizing it and getting your own wallpaper is nice and what's nice about. That, is that each of these do have access to the Samsung theme store. So you can actually go here in here and theme. Your devices they've got actually considerable amount of free themes. If you want so themes, aren't really my thing, but I do know a lot of people like to customize their phones and that's a huge advantage for android.

So you may also take advantage of it, and Samsung actually gives you their theme store built into both of these, with some pretty decent, looking free themes as well and moving on to the home screen options and how you want to lay that out pretty good options here by Samsung as well you're able to adjust the grid size. So I usually max out the grid size to give myself the most real estate on my home screen. You also have other features here like app icon, badges swipe down for notification panel, so you can swipe down your home screen to access that notification panel, rotate to landscape, etc. What you don't have is custom icon packs. So that's one thing I would like Samsung to add here to their stock launcher, but obviously it's being android, you can always just get your own launcher and load your own icon pack, if you want- or just like, I just showed you download a theme from the theme store, but it would be nice to add icon pack support to their actual stock launcher, and next you can check out the lock screen settings.

You can see. Always on display is an option here on both these phones, which is nice for those of you that, like always on display, so we can all leave it to show always here, and so, if I turn them off, you can see here what the always on display looks like, and we'll try to get back into the phone, and you've got some decent option here. So you can see the clock styles that you have, so you've got the same clock style options here on both phones and of course you can go ahead and choose a specific photo that you want from your gallery or use different themes. They've got animated gives, so a lot of options to customize you're, always on display as well. We've already gone through biometrics and security.

You have the fingerprint scanner and the face unlock that I showed you again not the fastest but nice to have those options here, and we can go into advanced features. You can see you have access to android auto on both of these phones. So if you want to run android auto in your car through these phones, you can do that connect. It to your car, you also have column text on other devices and linked to windows, which is nice. So if you want to be able to, if you've got a Windows machine- and you don't always want to be tethered to your phone, you can actually answer phone calls.

Do text messages access your phone photos all that stuff on your PC. If you want to use that link to window feature. So that's a nice addition there for you, Windows users out there and side key. This is pretty key for those folks who buy stock and by default out of the box, you're going to have waked Bixby on your button here. So if you don't always want to wake up Bixby, and you want that to be more the traditional access, your power menu.

This is where you'll change that by default again it's on Bixby here's. We can change your power button to actually act like a power button, and you can also double press the power button. If you want- and if you don't want that, because you accidentally always double press it, you can always disable it. But if you do want it, you can customize it to either launch your camera or open a specific app. I've got it for my camera, quick launch, so that's nice options there you can check out the gestures and motions.

This is nice. Samsung still has a decent amount of motion gestures, so you have lift to wig. If you want, I turn that off just to conserve some battery. I don't always want it. Waking up, but you do have double tap to turn on and off the screen.

So if I do go ahead and from my home screen menu here, I can double tap it'll turn it off. Of course, if I double tap it'll turn it on, and we'll use the fingerprint scanner to get back in here again see this. I'm talking about it's not the fastest. You kind of gotta hold them down. It's a little tricky using both phones, but still you know that's kind of what I'm talking about with the fingerprint scanners, not the best, and then you do have things like keep screen on while viewing, which is nice as you're constantly looking at your display.

It won't automatically time out and turn off again alert when picking up your phone. So if you haven't been by your phone for a while, you pick it up it'll alert you to anything that came through. You can mute with gestures, and you can do your palm swipe to capture, although I don't think palm swipe to capture a screenshot is really that effective anymore, and you know I have it on, but I don't accidentally turn it on and when I try to use it, it doesn't really always want to work very well. So I don't really think that's a great feature, but it's still there for those who love palm swipe to capture screenshots and then for those who, like automation and actually use the Bixby routines. I think from what I hear they're getting more powerful.

I personally don't use them, but you can use Bixby routines there. If you want, it has game launcher for some specific game settings for all you gamers out there's also the screenshots and screen recorders, so you can do screen recording, obviously and customize your screenshots. You can choose a screenshot format. You can choose how to mute them if you want video quality when you're recording so a little of settings there for your screenshots and screen recording, which is nice to be able to do so, a lot of kinds of features here, as you would expect from Samsung, and they carry that down into these more mid-level type devices, which is really nice all right. So, let's talk battery life on these two phones here, so the a51 has a 4 000 William hour battery capacity, while the a525g has a 4 500 William hour battery, so slightly larger on the a525g, but it will probably need it.

It's a little more power hungry has a 120, hertz display and either way, both relatively large batteries here, but in real life. My usage day-to-day. I was getting actually better battery life here on the a51, probably because of all those things I just mentioned so on the a51, I'm getting anywhere between eight and nine hours of screen on time over one and a half to two days off the charger, while the a525g I'm getting about five and a half to six and a half hours of screen on time over that same time period, so significantly better battery life here on the a51. Just because again, maybe it's less power hungry, it doesn't have the high refresh rate display all those things add up to a little better or significantly better battery life on a slightly smaller capacity battery, but on the a325g you have slightly faster charging. The a51 has a 15 watt fast charging.

If you want to call that fast, the 852 5g has 25 watt charging that it supports. Although the 25 watt charging brick does not come in the box, but if you do get a 25 watt, Samsung charger, you can charge this in 50 in about 30 minutes, and that claim is pretty much true. This will charge to 100 in just over an hour in my actual usage, so pretty good on the charging speeds there on the a52, so a little faster charging on the a52 than the a51, but significantly better battery life here on the a51 than the a52. So if you just want pure battery life, I'll go with the a51, it's actually significantly better than you're going to get here on the a52. But again the 852 is not bad.

I mean five and a half to six hours and a half hour screen on time with one and a half to two days off charge. That's still pretty good, I would say any phone that gets you through a full day is good and if you get one and a half to two days, plus that's pretty good. So I would say that the a51 is very good as far as battery and the av2 is just good, but they both will get through at least a day. Lastly, let's talk cameras here, so you both have quad camera setups on each of these phones. The a51 has a 48 megapixel main sensor, while the a525g has a 64, megapixel main sensor and the main difference they're, not just a megapixel count, but the a525g has optical image.

Stabilization built into that lens, which to me is just huge. I can notice a real difference there with the optical image stabilization here on the a525g really eliminates that handshake, much better stabilization and much better in low light performance, and so what that really translates to in real world usage is not just better low light photos and videos, but you're also going to get better first try, photography, meaning the ease of use, is a lot better. I didn't have to take as many photos and retry those takes with the a52, as I would, with the a51 so much better overall ease of use, performance and better quality as well on the a525g which you're about to see the rest of the cameras are the same. You both have 12 megapixels, ultrawide, sensors, and you've got 5 megapixel macro and depth sensors on each. So all those are untouched.

You've got the same 32, megapixel, front-facing camera as well, so again, real differences in that main sensor and the camera quality, at least to my eyes, is significantly better here on the a52, but I'll go ahead and show you some photos, uh samples here, and they're not like for, like, so they're, not a back to back camera comparison, if you're interested in seeing that, let me know, but I can tell you right now: the a52 is definitely gonna, be better and other than that back to back direct comparison photos, I'm going to show you photos from the a50 one first and then the a52, and they should give you a feel for how the cameras are performing and what they really look like here and also go ahead and shoot some video I'll, probably go back to back on the video on the front and the rear. Just here in my office, give you a sense for what that looks like in a like for light comparison. So let's go ahead and check out the photos and that video, and we'll come back and wrap this video up, hey everyone! So here are some front-facing footage from the galaxy a51 and the a525g. Both of these are recording at 4k 30 frames per second, which is pretty awesome that each of these front-facing cameras can do that. It's just not going to be stabilized, which is fine for just front-facing sit-down videos like this, but if you want to walk around and talk uh they're, both not stabilized at 4k, they're, probably better off at something like 1080p.

But it's really nice that these front-facing cameras have 4k recording. There are some actual higher-end phones that don't do 4k recording from the front-facing camera. So that's nice to see from these each of these phones here. So let me know what you think about this front-facing video and if you see any differences and if you prefer one or the other, but just want to give you a quick sample here from the a51 and the a52 5g front-facing selfie cameras, everyone. So here's some rear-facing video from the galaxy a51 and a52 5g.

This has been shot at 4k 30 frames per second on each and what's interesting, is that the galaxy a51 actually has stabilization at 4k. Whereas the a525g does not so hopefully, Samsung can update the a525g with stabilization at 4k. It can stabilize up to 1080p, but not at 4k. So that's just something to note here in which I find a little odd, but otherwise this is the 4k recording that you're going to get from each of these phones. I want to give you a quick sample to give you a feel for the differences, if you're, seeing any between these two phones and just this kind of sit-down setting here in my office.

So let me know what you think about the rear facing camera footage on each of the phones and if you see any kind of difference and let's hope, Samsung updates the a52 just like how it has the a51 to include stabilization at 4k. So there you go now you've seen all the photos and videos. What do you think? Let me know in the comments, but to me, I think the a525g, at least from my eyes, were clearly better for both photos and videos. The is and the main sensor definitely helps everything else from ultrawide should be about the same front, cameras relatively the same, but really, if you're, really into taking photos with the main camera which I'm sure most people are to me. It's a significant difference here on the a525g and probably that alone for me personally, since I'm a big camera guy is worth the upgrade there, but do let me know if you saw any other differences personally, I think the a31 still does take more than passable photos.

I think they look very good if you're not overly critical about your photos, you're not doing a lot of low light photography. I think the a51 is still gonna, be more than good enough for you for cameras. So just a quick recap as far as build, I personally prefer the a52 with the matte finish, but if you like shiny, you may like the a51, and it's also a little better feel to hold performance wise. The 8525g is definitely a lot better. This can get a little laggy at times, not really laggy, but you can really feel it slowing down.

At times. More than the a52, although the a51 is serviceable, but general overall performance with the 765g here, Enos 9611 you're, definitely going to feel the difference and performance definitely goes to the a525g software they're pretty much the same. This is running one UI 3.0, and this is one UI 3.1, both android 11 a little more updates here on the newer model, obviously from monthly security patches, but as far as software features that we ran through, as you can see pretty much the same, not too much difference. They're your typical Samsung software feature loaded experience here on both phones. For me, displaying speakers are both better here on the a525g in person.

The display is much more vibrant. The colors look better, even though they're both super AMOLED and the same size. You also have the 120 hertz refresh rate, which does make a difference in real world usage if you're, just looking at it and playing around with it, and you've got dual speakers versus a single speaker, so displaying speakers definitely go to the a52 5g, then, as far as battery life, that definitely goes to the a51. It just lasts longer, like I said, eight to nine hours of screen on time over one and a half to two days. This is gonna, get you, or at least gets me five and a half to six and a half hours over that same time period.

But again they both will last you at least a day up to two days or even longer, depending on your usage. So as far as longevity they're, both pretty good, but just if you're, really a hardcore user- and you are always using your screen for things- you're going to get better battery life out of the a51 and then lastly, cameras, like I just said the a525g as far as the main sensor is a significant improvement here and worth the upgrade alone for me and for any of you, camera buffs out there. If you just want better daytime photos, you want better low light photos, you're just going to get better results out of the a525g. So again, just to answer the question is the a525g worth that year upgrade over the a51? And I would say: definitely: yes, it's better in almost every way, except for battery life, and even though this is 500- and this is maybe about 300 or less now that the a525g is on us carriers. I'm sure you're going to be able to find this on some pretty good deals and if you can do- and if you can do so, that's great if you can afford it even better, but just hardwood hardware is definitely worth that one-year upgrade.

There's a lot to like about the a52, and they've done enough improvements to warrant that upgrade year-over-year in this instance. So again, that's just my take. Let me know what you think in the comments. If I didn't cover something that you want to know more about, let me know in the comments as well and as always thanks for watching you.

Source : Grant Likes Tech