The Samsung Galaxy A52 5G makes more right decisions than erroneous ones. It has a reliable build, an attractive display, great battery life, and a good main camera. The Galaxy A52 5G is among the best if you’re looking for a $500 phone with 5G. It’s not the fastest mid-ranger available, and the secondary cameras aren’t all that impressive.
The Samsung Galaxy A52 5G: What You Need to Know
The Galaxy A52 5G is the predecessor to the incredibly well-liked Galaxy A51 and Galaxy A51 5G from 2020. As a result, Samsung should sell a ton of these. It falls right in the middle of the company’s lineup in terms of price, features, and design. While the A72 and Galaxy S20 FE are at the top of the midrange market, the new Galaxy A42 and A32 are more in line with entry-level offerings. This offers the A52 5G (and its less expensive brother, the A52) a lot of room to eat into sales from both the top and bottom of the market.
Moreover, Apple and Google are competitors of the A52 5G. The Google Pixel 4a 5G and the iPhone SE are two alternatives that some people might think about. If you have a trade-in, Samsung will take up to $150 off the phone. That greatly facilitates the value equation.
The phone is available in four colors—Awesome Black, Amazing Blue, Awesome Violet, and Awesome White—and two distinct memory/storage configurations from Samsung. Now, it seems that Samsung’s US store only has the black variant available. The availability of the other colors and storage configurations is unknown.
Family-friendly design
The exterior and inner phones of the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G tell a story. Samsung completely overhauled the A52 5G’s exterior compared to the outgoing A51, yet it kept a lot of the A51’s specifications. This makes us question if the upgrade is worthwhile or not.
The Galaxy A52 5G is not a subtle device. To complete the family portrait, the design language used by the Samsung Galaxy S21 and Note 20 series has been fully incorporated. As a result, it sports a simple design with a huge camera module on the back. Comparing the members of the family to one another reveals the similarities between its flagship siblings. Moreover, the phone is larger overall than its predecessor. It is bulkier, heavier, and taller. Not significantly, but just enough to be noticed.
Message: Quick for the price
This last year, Samsung has been obsessed on speed, and many of its phones have quicker screens. The Galaxy A52 has a 90Hz display, however the 120Hz display of the Galaxy A52 5G is the best available. Given that the Galaxy A51 and Galaxy A52 5G were constrained to 60Hz refresh rates, this combined with increased brightness results in a noticeable improvement year over year.
Other than that, the Galaxy A52 5G’s screen is an impressively bright and accurate AMOLED panel given the pricing. The display is vibrant and pixel-dense in addition to having a maximum brightness of 800 nits. Websites, pictures, and YouTube videos all appeared clear and vibrant when I viewed them on the Galaxy A52 5G.
The phone’s default setting is 120Hz. You’ll need to turn it on manually if you want the battery-saving 60Hz experience. When using YouTube and other apps that need a lot screen scrolling, the 120Hz experience is pretty pleasant. However, the choice is either/or. There is no adaptive technology included; the screen is either running at 120Hz or 60Hz.
Midrange muscle: how does it perform?
The outdated 730G was replaced by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G. It definitely outperforms the Exynos chip found in the Galaxy A51 from the previous generation, but it still falls short of the industry’s top models. It’s true that Samsung had to keep costs low somewhere, and choosing a middle-of-the-road Snapdragon 700 series chip is the best way to do that.
The Snapdragon 750G’s limitations were made clear by running benchmarks. On a variety of test programs, including 3DMark and Geekbench, it produced average results. Although it narrowly defeats the Snapdragon 765G chip featured in the Pixel 4a 5G, the Galaxy A52 5G lags well behind the A13 Bionic used in the iPhone SE. With a time of two minutes and 38 seconds, the phone performed admirably in our own Speed Test G assessment. The test can be completed by the fastest phones in just over one minute, while mid-range phones typically complete it in under two and a half minutes. In terms of benchmarking, that places the Galaxy A52 5G just above mid-range current devices, but not above.
Long-lasting battery
During my tests, I was impressed with the Galaxy A52 5G’s battery life. I was quite happy with how effortlessly the phone’s power source extended into a second day. After spending a lot of time using the phone’s camera, Twitter, and email while on a day trip to New York City, I still returned home with more than 50% of the battery still intact. The average daily time spent in front of a screen was 6.5-7 hours, which is competitive with the best of them. The phone was set to 120Hz at the time. If you use the battery-saving features and reduce the refresh rate to 60Hz, you can get even longer battery life. In other words, the phone is functional.
Camera: One out of three ain’t terrible.
The samples from the primary sensor were of a good quality. They are reduced by a factor of four to 16MP binning. The color, detail, white balance, exposure, and sharpness were all to my liking. More importantly, most of the images accurately depicted the current scene. What you see on this page is what I actually witnessed in the real world. It’s fortunate that it performs well because this is the lens that most people will use. Given that the photo was taken in low light, the detail in the subway artwork is excellent.
With the primary camera, portrait photography works great. As you can see in the statue sample below, the main subject is properly cut out, and the background is subtly blurred. The selfie camera is far more assertive. I am aware that I am in Times Square in the selfie below, but a passing onlooker might not be able to tell because it might be any metropolis. The subject detection is working since I’m completely present and don’t have any missing ears or patches of hair. The typical selfie is much more detailed, and Time Square is clearly the scene in the background. All three of these pictures had good exposure, which I thought was true to life. Moreover, the selfie camera reduces images from 16MP to 8MP by a factor of 4.
Software: A single UI to rule them all
Samsung has improved its software. The phone comes pre-installed with Android 11 and Samsung’s One UI 3.1. The software on this Samsung gadget is the most recent one that is currently on the market. There was a period when Samsung shipped older software versions with its mid-range phones. That is no longer true. More significantly, Samsung has promised to extend its phone support curves. Three years’ worth of updates are now available. This implies that the phone will keep up with technology and be well-protected for longer, keeping up with Google’s Pixel line.
Conclusion
With a few expected drawbacks, the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G is a respectable mid-ranger. It could be successful for Samsung and competes well in an oversaturated market with alternatives.
With the phone, Samsung used their signature design aesthetic, which people either love or detest. Huge 6.5-inch 120Hz panel with excellent visuals is included in the Galaxy A52 5G. The 64MP main camera performs admirably for this price range, and the 4,500mAh power source provides all-day battery life.
