SAMSUNG GALAXY A52 (Full Review!) 2021 By Mike O'Brien

Hey guys welcome back to the channel so right here we have one of the most anticipated phones of the year from Samsung the galaxy a52, which is the sequel to last year's mid-range a51 which sold incredibly well, mainly because he was delivering a lot of big specs just below that 400 price target. So that's a very appealing phone, but here is the sequel to a52 does even more and if you're looking at this phone next to, for example, the s21 you'll see that on a lot of scales, it delivers very similar specs you're, getting the ip67 water resistance rating you're, getting a high refresh rate 90 hertz on here. Six and a half inch display 4500 William hour battery. So it's going to be lasting a long time and overall I mean on paper it's a really impressive phone. So now that I actually have it in my hands here. I've been testing this out for a little while now, and I want to talk a little more about how those specs actually translate to the actual experience because, like I said in my previous video with the a72, a lot of phones out, there sometimes promised big specs, especially in the mid-range price category.

But when you start using them, they start falling short in weird areas, and so after using this for a while, I really want to talk about that whether this is a good buy, and so I want to start off with just the feel of this phone again. I mentioned this with a 72, and this is a very similar aesthetic. On the back. I really like it. I like how slim the phone is.

It feels really nice in your hand. I know it's a plastic back which at a mid-range price category, a lot of them are plastic backs, but even in the flagship category, some people really start to like plastic bags, even more than glass backs, and so the more I'm using phones like this one, the more I realize that a plastic back in many ways is substantially better and personally, I'm starting to prefer that so this one, for example, you're not going to get any fingerprints on this. That's a huge positive compared to so many flagships with the glass back that just are fingerprint magnets. This one, you can touch anything! You want to rub the back of this phone and in any light you won't see any fingerprints. So that's a huge positive here.

You also still have that ip67 water resistance rating, the design- is more flexible, so you can have a really nice smooth curve up to the camera bump. It's a really slim camber bump as well. So another positive there, uh and really the big one. Is that I'm not worried about this cracking. I know most glass doesn't really chip or crack because it is gorilla glass, but this one with plastic is just a little more durable, and I really like it so the design of this phone.

I mean we'll, do a physical tour here, so you can see the rest of it, but I overall I'm very happy with the feel of this phone, the design of this phone and that water resistance rating. Furthermore, I know I keep saying it, but that was a big thing, that a lot of mid-range phones were missing last year that the a52 and 72 finally added. So looking at this phone, let's go around uh starting off with the back. You see, we have four different colors here. This one is, I think they called awesome.

Violet I'll show you the colors on the screen, and so they're all a little more on the pastel side of colors, but again it'd be very easy to put a case on this or get a skin for this or really do whatever you want to make this phone. However, you want we, it looks like you have four cameras on the back. The bad news is you don't have four cameras on the back? You really have two cameras on the back and then two gimmicks. I mean I used to say that there were cameras and just not good ones, but I'm just trying to tell it how it is now they're, just gimmicks trying to get you to buy this phone. You have a depth camera, which you absolutely don't need, and you know you don't need it because the flagships don't have it, and the second thing is a macro camera again, something that is completely useless.

It just looks like a camera on the back, uh and you're never going to use it, but we'll get it I'll show you we're going to do a camera test later in this video, and I'll show you what that camera is actually capable of. The good news is the other. Two cameras are actually impressive, so we have a 64 megapixel, wide angle, camera and a 12 megapixel ultra-wide angle, camera both of those are very functional to test those out later on. In the video, but we don't actually have a telephoto lens on here, not a big drawback- that's probably my least used lens anyway. So I was happy with that choice.

Um. If they're going to cut out one camera, that's the one to cut out, but I just would rather have that than a macro and a depth camera looking around this phone on the top. We really don't have much. We have a microphone there and next to that, we have our sim tray, as you can see, is either dual sim or you can put a sim and a SD card in here. So you do have expandable storage.

I believe up to one terabyte in here a massive amount of storage, and I would honestly never use that in a phone because it does come with 128 gigabytes already on board, so that expandable storage very useful. If you wanted moving over to the right side, just like every other Samsung phone, we have our volume rocker right above the side key which you can remap. It's your power button, your Bixby key. Whatever you want it to do open your camera. You can remap that within settings looking at the bottom of this phone, we have our speaker I'll get into a full speaker test in a second that is next to our USB type-c port for data transfer and whatever you want to do with that.

It's also supporting fast charging or actually 25 watt fast charging. It doesn't come with a superfast charger in the box. Furthermore, it comes with an adaptive, fast charger, so a little slower, but regardless allowing fast charging on here. So you can go out and buy your own fast charger is really nice because it doesn't support wireless charging in the back. I don't think that's a big deal.

It's a mid-range phone. You can't expect everything on there and removing wireless charging. That's fine! In my book, 25 watt fast charging is still really great to have. We have a microphone next to that and, of course we have that headphone jack right there, a big thing because, as these phones are getting more and more impressive, the a52, the a72 they're really starting to get more enticing when you're looking at the flagship phones versus these. This is a very capable phone and having that headphone jack is a big plus that we're not seeing in any of the flagship phones out there.

So I know a lot of people would definitely be interested in having that. Looking at the front of this, we have a six and a half inch display, and this display really packs a punch very, very impressive, so very bright, very colorful. It goes up to 800 nits, which, as far as a mid-range phone goes, is very bright. I'm able to film this very easily outside, as you can see here, and you can see it in broad daylight. Now, it's not quite as bright as flagships.

For example, a lot of flagships go up to maybe 1100 to 1200 nits, so slightly less bright. But again this is very competitive at that mid-range price. This also has a 90 hertz refresh rate, so you're going to have a really smooth screen. It's not 120, but to be re. To be honest, it's really hard to tell the difference between 90 and 120.

It's very easy to tell the difference between 90 and 60. This feels way smoother than a 60 hertz display. This also is super AMOLED, and it is a full HD plus display, so really a great display overall for a mid-range phone- and I mean at this price it's going to be hard to find something that competes with that on the top something you'll notice, especially when the screen is off, is the metal ring around the selfie camera. It's a 32, megapixel, selfie camera which we'll test out, but you'll, see that here. That is very distracting.

I mean when your phone's on it's not especially annoying, and I'm sure you get used to it, but when the phone's off, I just always noticed that at the bottom of the screen, the other thing again, this display really packs a lot. The bottom has an in-screen fingerprint sensor and, as I mentioned before, with the a72 it's pretty fast and responsive, I think it's a little too low on the screen. I end up reaching my thumb down pretty far, and it just works really well from my experience. It's something that, if you've never used one of these, it does take a little of time to get used to, but I've been using Samsung phones for several years now with the fingerprint sensor on the screen, and so I'm very used to it, and it's very fast and responsive it does a great job honestly on the outside. This phone has a lot of great things going for it.

One thing that is not going forward is actually the haptics. The vibration on here is really feeling pretty cheap. It's relatively strong, but at the same time anytime, you end up using this if it's vibrating for a phone call, a text message or any kind of just touch feedback on here. If you have that enabled it just feels and sounds really, really cheap. The haptic motor on here was far from impressive, and actually I just disabled it all together.

Now something I'm especially interested in with mid-range phones is actually the cameras. We know that flagships typically take great photos, but mid-range phones are really a mixed bag. It's hit or miss some of them are really great. Some of them are absolutely terrible, and this one just because it has a lot of cameras, doesn't necessarily mean it'll, take great photos, but let's get into a camera test now, as well as a speaker test to see how well the cameras and speakers perform. So I took a few specific photos to test out different aspects of the camera, and you can see I mean it's a golden hour, but you get a lot of detail a lot of color perfect sharpness in this pine tree, and then here you can see a nice natural blur when the subject's close, although it is a little noisy in the background here, we're seeing a lot of really nice sharp details in the lines on the power line, and then here is some great dynamic range.

Obviously, that's a very dark shadow in real life, so it really lifted it up. Well, we can go into 2x digital zoom. It's a little noisy a little less detailed here as you'd expect, but for the sunset photo. I thought this looked perfect. Honestly, it didn't have a ton of dynamic range there, but you're still getting you know enough detail.

It still looks decent when you get the 10x digital zoom, that's the max! It allows you to do it really becomes much less usable. The ultrawide lens honestly looked pretty good, really consistent, color and lighting everywhere. You see a little of a glow around subjects from the HDR effect on here, and you'll see a little tiny bit of warping on the edges, but overall it does a pretty good job of keeping things. Looking real the rear lens had this strange issue when I held the camera relatively close, not that close, but it missed focus a couple of times until I finally got it here live focus mode. I thought looked perfect.

It really nailed the edges on this one and then the selfie camera, I think, also did a pretty decent job. So it didn't really over soften too much. It's soft in my face a little more in live focus mode, but again it hit the edges pretty well looking at the macro lens. This is really completely useless in my opinion, because it really doesn't have any kind of autofocus, and it's only five megapixels okay. So now taking a look at the video, I'm just walking- and this is the primary rear lens.

Oh, it's doing a pretty decent job. This is golden hour right now, so you're going to have really great lighting everywhere, but good color, pretty good dynamic range. As we look around, and you'll see that there is definitely a decent amount of uh a detail and everything it's a little over sharpened in some trees. In my opinion, you can obviously see there's a ton of trash out here. It's really disgusting amount of power line right now, but we can zoom out to the ultrawide lens and here's a little drawback here when we pinch to zoom out it just all the way to 0.5x zoom to the ultrawide lens, so you're not going to seamlessly zoom between them, but you can jump between them again, it's going to look a little! It's just going up over like you can see right here, but we can zoom in from here to 2x zoom. All the way up to, I believe, 10x zoom, which is still surprisingly, sharp and steady wow.

That's actually really impressive. It's holding very steady on the subject, and then we can seamlessly go back to the wide angle. So I'm pretty impressed with the video quality on this one. But again you guys can leave a comment. Let me know how this looks and sounds to you, but let's see how it does with skin tones okay.

So this is what it looks and sounds like with a human subject in front of the camera. You guys can leave a comment and let me know how this video looks to you, how it sounds to you again. We don't have a microphone like really prominent on the back. But again, let me know what you guys think of this all right now. This is the selfie camera shooting 4k 30.

Honestly, it's doing a pretty decent job, I'm kind of impressed it's a golden hour. So again, this is definitely perfect lighting. But regardless leave a comment, let me know what you think of this, how it looks and sounds if I turn around, maybe some slightly tougher lighting for it. It's still doing a pretty good job. Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with this.

If I walk around, it seems to be stable enough, maybe not quite as stable as the rear camera, but as far as a mid-range selfie camera goes. I really can't be too disappointed in this one. So for a quick speaker test, I'm just going to play a YouTube video here, so you're, obviously not getting a ton of bass, but it sounds pretty just 10 miles. South of Yellowstone is Grand Teton national park and although the two parks are side by side talking about what's under the hood with this model right here, this is the a52 just regular. It's not the 5g model, and so that means you're, obviously not getting 5g on here, which is not a problem.

A lot of mid-range phones don't have 5g yet anyway, and to be honest, 4g is plenty fast in most situations, so I had no problem with that. It has 128 gigabytes on the base model and there are a bunch of different variations. This one right here has 6 gigabytes of ram, and this is running the snapdragon 720 g processor, which I know snapdragon, has a lot of numbers in their processor names, but this one is honestly not especially fast. I was really not that impressed with that at this price. It's definitely competitive, it's holding its holding its own, the a72 is running the same processor and that phone I feel like should have a faster processor, but with a52.

This is definitely passable. It's not going to be the fastest out there, but it definitely gets the job done. You can see it from opening apps, you might take an extra beat to get them open, but it does the job. This is also running the latest one UI and android 11. So really no complaints under the hood with this phone.

It packs the specs that you're really looking for, but it doesn't exceed my expectations in any one of them. So, overall guys, what are my thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy a52? Well, I think you can summarize it like. This Samsung did a great job on the outside of this phone. On the back. It looks really nice smooth plastic finish.

A bunch of cameras, slim camera bump and a really nice size for a phone slim feels nice in your hand and of course, the display on the front also looks really great 90, hertz, very bright, very vibrant, and again they just did a great job on the outside of this phone. The ip67 water resistance rating is a welcomed, upgrade for a mid-range phone, but other than that. There are some drawbacks. Of course, the processor's not the fastest. The cameras are good, but they didn't add the telephoto lens, and instead they have a macro lens and a depth camera which are completely useless and of course the other thing are that the haptics on here just feel really cheap.

But of course the slogan wasn't awesome, haptics, awesome, processor, it's awesome, screen, awesome, camera and long-lasting battery life, and that's the slogan of the series and the a52 right here definitely delivered on the awesome screen.90Hz, refresh rate, is exactly what I wanted to see on a mid-range phone: it's bright, it's vibrant, six and a half inches. Yes, there's the bezel around there, but I think it's an awesome screen. The camera is a little more up for debate. I wish they would. Rather, I would rather see them get rid of those two useless cameras, and I mean personally, I would rather just have one perfect camera, but having the ultrawide.

Camera is also a nice thing to add there. So you guys can leave a comment below, or you can go over to twitter and check out the photos, and let me know what you think of the cameras here. If you think they're awesome cameras or not, and then the third thing is the long-lasting battery life. Of course, 4 500 William hours is more than enough. I'm very happy with that, and that would honestly be an awesome battery on a lot of flagships out there.

So seeing that on a mid-range phone overall, the galaxy a52 at this price. I think it's a fantastic phone. I think it's a very easy buy if you're into the Samsung ecosystem, if you really want to have a phone with a larger display, a better display and overall, a better looking phone for this price. Of course, there's a lot of competition out there. If you want a really fast processor, maybe the iPhone SE is a good option.

If you really want one very good camera and even a lower price, the Pixel 4a is a great option, but if you're looking for a well-balanced flagship light, if you want to think of it as that at around 400 or even less on sales, then the galaxy a52. I think it's a pretty nice phone so guys if you enjoyed this video, consider liking and subscribing as always leave a comment, and let me know what you think of the galaxy a52, I'm mike o'brain, thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.

Source : Mike O'Brien