Review of Samsung Galaxy A52s phone, review of price, design, screen, software, hardware, camera, battery life and charging speed of Samsung Galaxy A52s phone.

Review of Samsung Galaxy A52s phone, price and specifications

While  we may all look longingly at the Galaxy S phones as a Samsung flagship, the truth is that the A series has always been the Korean company’s thing. And the A5x has been Samsung’s best-seller every year – not the S Ultra, not even the flagship ‘vanilla’ S or its full-size counterpart.

So, in a way, Samsung isn’t really getting more than the A5x – meaning that what most people are really getting is the Samsung experience. For many users, an A-series device is their only glimpse of what a Samsung phone is like, and that obviously has its pros and cons. The latest in the best-selling A-line is the A53, but the most interesting A5x so far is definitely the Galaxy A52s. And that’s why we decided to give it a thorough review.

Before the Galaxy A52s, the A5x model du jour was always underwhelming, even for a mid-range smartphone, given its launch price. Obviously, a lot of people put up with it – now either because it was Samsung, or because of the usually better-than-average cameras, or because of the ease of buying anywhere, or because of software support that has improved in recent years. has been found Again and again. Most of the Chinese competitors had a similar price with a better chipset.

And that all changed with the launch of the Galaxy A52s last year. For the first time, an A5x came with a premium mid-range SoC, the Snapdragon 778G, and the Chinese rivals really had no answer, as their best alternatives used the exact same chip. It seems that this was exciting for many, given the amount of interest we’ve seen for the phone since its launch.

And then it got cheaper. And cheaper. And at its current price, it competes well not only in its space in terms of specs, but also in price. That’s practically unheard of for a mid-range Samsung, and so here we have a very attractive package that we can’t help but use as our only smartphone for a long time, and we want to find out if Samsung has chosen a path. To secure its mid-range sales against very aggressive Chinese competitors.

2022  has been a strange year for mid-rangers, with most successors to 2021 devices not actually outperforming them in many ways. We’d bet the Galaxy A53 falls squarely in this camp, so perhaps it’s best to think of the A73 as the true successor to the Galaxy A52s, though even that doesn’t come with any upgrades on the chipset front.

So it looks like Samsung can play confusing naming games like other companies. We’re by no means happy about it, but we’re trying to show you if the Galaxy A52s is still a great mid-range buy at this point. 

You can also read about review of Xiaomi Poco X5 Pro phone, price and specifications

Reviewing the design and build quality of the Samsung Galaxy A52s phone

If  you’ve seen a Samsung, or any Samsung made recently, you’ll instantly recognize it as a Samsung. The Korean company has gently perfected a unique and striking design language without feeling overly aggressive and shouty. This year, even the flagship S22 Ultra has a very similar design to what you see on the Galaxy A52s, despite the price delta.

We can’t say we love or hate the design, we think it works very well and is pleasant without being overly beautiful or horrible. It’s middle of the road, but very well executed. You can tell it’s part of Samsung’s lineup, and you can also tell it’s a mid-range Samsung by looking at it or touching it.

This  brings us to the first point of contention for many, which is the plastic build of this phone. Yes, the frame and back are plastic. No, we were never upset about it. Sure, it’s warmer to the touch than glass. But on our white version, fingerprints were almost invisible on the back, which is always appreciated. And while any phone is bound to be slippery these days, we found it to be one of the least slippery we’ve handled in a while.

The only small gripe we have with the plastic is the frame of this phone, which is very shiny, although an attempt has been made to make the frame of this phone look like metal, which most people will immediately notice that it isn’t. Sure, it could be highly polished stainless steel, but in a phone this cheap? Definitely not. At best it should be aluminum, and aluminum doesn’t look like that.

On  the other hand, the choice of colors is – well, first of all, you have a choice between white, black, purple and “mint”, and we appreciate the latter two for being colorful but still in sharp contrast. to the framework we discussed above. It’s also easy to enjoy the color of your choice in the box, as Samsung doesn’t bother to ship any kind of case with its devices – it prefers that you buy one of the models it offers at extra cost.

This makes the Korean company stand out from the rest, but with the Galaxy A52s, it does well by offering an IP67 certification for water and dust resistance. This means that the phone is dust resistant and can be submerged in 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes. We wish more mid-range devices would have a similar rating, but for now, Samsung is ahead of the competition.

It’s not a small phone, even by today’s standards, but it’s not a big phone either. That said, it was pretty easy to handle, at least for this reviewer, although the usual caveat applies: if you have small hands, one-handed use might be a problem. Let’s not forget that you have less problems than the S22 Ultra. In terms of weight, it is somewhere in the middle. Not so heavy that you need a constant rest for your hand, but not so light that you feel unimportant. It is true.

It certainly  doesn’t feel as “premium” as the metal on the sides and glass on the back, but honestly, it’s pretty decent, not only for its current price, but even its launch price. It does the job and the back doesn’t break if you drop it. win win? 

Checking the speakers and headphone jack of Samsung Galaxy A52s

The Galaxy  A52s offers a 3.5mm headphone jack. So if you want it, this phone has it. We wanted to say more about it, but really – what else is there to say? It exists and it works.

The phone has dual speakers, with a bottom speaker paired with dual headphones as the second channel. It’s a traditional Samsung setup, so there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, especially since at the top end, the Korean company offers some of the loudest speakers on the market. But it’s one of those things where you’re reminded that the Galaxy A52s isn’t a high-end phone, so corners have been cut.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re happy to get dual speakers, but they’re not very good. They are tinny (and gradually so the higher the volume) and not really loud even at maximum volume. In a quiet room alone, you’ll have the volume slider up to 90% or higher to easily hear what’s going on in the video you’re watching or the podcast you’re listening to. Around you have to hold the phone close to your ear to understand what is being said.

The sound is also quite flat and lacks any kind of depth, apart from a small amount of bass. And that’s why we haven’t talked about listening to music yet – you really need to use headphones or a Bluetooth speaker for that. So there are dual speakers on this phone, which aren’t terrible for the price, but they’re definitely not amazing either.

Vibration motor

On  the other hand, the vibration motor is really bad. It reminds us of the devices that are usually installed in much cheaper devices, which is probably because it might be the same part. It’s a world apart from the engines some of Samsung’s rivals put in their mid-range, and it’s an area where the Galaxy A52s falls behind most similarly priced devices.

It just sounds very cheap (probably because it is), lacks any kind of sound, and you can hear it more than you feel it – if that makes sense. Oh, and the further you move the vibration intensity slider to the right, the worse it sounds – but if you go the other way, you might not even hear it. Given that you can hardly feel it no matter where the slider is, there are basically no good options to recommend when it comes to setting the intensity.

There are engines  that you can hear about as often as you can – Samsung used to put these in its flagships until the S22 generation. Then there are the ones that you can feel more than you hear – most people consider these to be the best, although this reviewer believes the former is better, but the point is that when you think of a great vibration motor, Come to think of it, you’ll never think of something as perfect as it is with the Galaxy A52s. Even at the phone’s current price, this is disappointing.

Biometrics

The Galaxy  A52s has an under-display fingerprint sensor that some of its competitors lack. Since all flagship phones these days have an under-display sensor, you’d think this is where the Galaxy A52s punches above its weight. And if we’re just talking about precision, it’s really good. Not quite flagship level, but very, very close.

Subjectively, we think the accuracy is at least 95%, but probably more like 97-98%. I say again, very good, especially at this price. That all changes if your fingers are wet or sweaty, where accuracy drops significantly, but the same goes for any optical sensor like this, regardless of the price of the phone it’s mounted on. has been This is just a limitation of the technology used.

So the accuracy is high, but what’s not good at all is how slow the sensor is. Even with all associated animations disabled (isn’t it funny that Samsung has a setting for that? Almost like engineers know that animations unnecessarily slow down the unlocking process). It’s an optical sensor and not an ultrasonic sensor as seen on the S line, which certainly isn’t the reason for its slowness – we’ve used optical fingerprint scanners from many other companies, in flagships as well as mid-ranges, which is quite a lot. Is. 

So  we don’t know what’s going on, but if you’re used to other in-display fingerprint sensors (on non-Samsung mid-range devices), you’ll constantly find yourself swiping up too soon. And the phone will passive-aggressively tell you that you did. This sensor seems to be about half a second slower than other sensors on the market. If this phone was new, we’d hope it was a software issue that could be fixed via a software update, but the Galaxy A52s has been on sale for months and has received many updates, and still It is the same.

That means you’ll probably have to learn to live with it. It’s not that hard to do, but it’s frustrating, especially if you’re looking at competing devices and this kind of slowness doesn’t make sense at this price point. Then again, some come with faster sensors that are less accurate, so maybe it’s a trade-off, like most things.

If  you’re put off by the fingerprint unlock experience for this or any other reason, there’s also face unlock waiting to be used, and it’s the usual camera-based fare that’s less secure than fingerprint but still Could be a little faster.

Samsung Galaxy A52s screen review

The display is probably one of the best features of the Galaxy A52s, which is understandable given the AMOLED produced by its sister company Samsung Display. This helps the Galaxy A52s stand out among its similarly priced peers because it’s a quality panel. Of course, it won’t match a Samsung flagship in terms of resolution, brightness or quality, but it’s not far from it in any way, which is definitely commendable.

The resolution  is basically average for a mid-range smartphone, and probably good enough for flagships, unless you’re the type of person who’s really looking for pixels. We never felt the need for more, and if you did, you’d unfortunately have to pay a premium for a premium device.

The Galaxy A52s display also has a 120Hz refresh rate, which is great but expected even in today’s mid-range. Only OnePlus still thinks it can get away with 90Hz panels in the mid-range, every other company has gone to 120Hz and that’s a huge plus for the user experience. The implementation around the edges is a little rough compared to what we’ve seen on Samsung flagships with 120Hz panels. On the Galaxy A52s, there’s no dynamic change in refresh rates, you can choose between 60Hz and 120Hz and you’ll always get what you choose.

In  theory, this could hurt battery life, although in practice, as you’ll see in the proper section of this review, it’s still pretty good – we just used the phone set to 120Hz, because we don’t think there’s any have Any tips on getting a screen with a high refresh rate and not trying to use it.

There are still some apps that insist on running at 60Hz no matter what (Google Maps and Camera come to mind), but those are just the exceptions to the above rule. Overall, this display is very smooth and performs very well despite the fact that it is not LTPO and therefore cannot dynamically adjust the refresh rate.

In terms of brightness, it doesn’t reach the heights we’ve seen in flagship smartphones, which is understandable given the price. But the screen is still legible in direct sunlight, even if you occasionally have to blink a bit. Still, it’s one of the brightest panels at this price point, and that says it all.

We  also really enjoyed the automatic brightness curve and found that we rarely had to make manual adjustments. Most of the time, the algorithm got it right, and it actually outperformed the much more expensive Galaxy Z Flip3 and Z Fold3 that we recently reviewed long-term. This might actually be the best automatic brightness adjustment algorithm on any mid-range smartphone, at least the ones we got to try. You won’t have a problem at night either, as the screen can be dimmed enough to not hurt your eyes when viewing it in dark environments.

As  usual with Samsung phones, you can choose between two color profiles. Natural is set for the best sRGB accuracy, and while it doesn’t quite reach the color space, it’s pretty close. The default profile is Vivid, which aims to match the P3 color space, where it does a slightly worse job than normal for sRGB.

Vivid  is a customizable profile that allows you to adjust the color temperature with a slider. You also get a custom white point setting, so if you want a very specific look for your phone’s screen, you’re sure to find a combination that suits you.

Eye comfort shield

Like  every recent smartphone, the Galaxy A52s also features a blue light filter that Samsung calls Eye Comfort Shield. It’s not as customizable as the Xiaomi, but it gets the job done with a color temperature slider and not much else. It’s also programmable and you can even select an automatic mode where the intensity of the effect changes based on the time of day. That’s the minimum we look for in such a feature and it’s covered.

One oddity is that the filter is turned off for the always-on display and lock screen, presumably because it interferes with fingerprint unlocking — since the optical sensor basically shines light on your finger to read it. That’s fine, but the problem is that once you unlock the phone, the filter usually takes a long time to turn on again – it takes between half a second and two seconds, and the further you have that color temperature slider, the more It becomes noticeable. To the right – the more intense the effect, the clearer it is when lit.

Speaking  of the always-on display, since it’s an AMOLED panel, it’s there of course, and it’s feature-rich, unlike some mid-range rivals that don’t always really perform well. It’s also highly customizable, although it lacks some of the more advanced features found in the likes of MIUI.

That said  , it probably works pretty well for most people, and lets you choose from a variety of analog and digital clocks, images from the gallery, stickers, Bitmoji, and more. You can choose its direction and schedule it too, and control how much it stays on – it ranges from fully on to when you tap the screen or get a new notification. Overall, this feature, which has become a must-have for many people, is very nicely done.

Show related niggles

As  we mentioned earlier, while the display itself is one of the best parts of the Galaxy A52s, it also houses one of the strangest parts, which is the selfie camera embedded in a hole in the center. We don’t mean the camera itself, but the pointless silver ring around it that absorbs light in various ways and reflects it back to you.

We thought the whole point of hole-punch selfie cameras was to make them as unobtrusive as possible, but this ring negates a lot of that benefit for no apparent reason. You can easily get used to it, of course, we just can’t understand who thought it would be a good idea to add it and why. Samsung isn’t alone in this, though – we’ve seen a lot of similar implementations from some of its rivals over the past few years, and we’ve been just as confused when dealing with them.

Since we’re complaining, let’s also mention the existing or very poor anti-fingerprint coating on the screen. Our unit is a retail unit of the Galaxy A52s, so this is exactly the experience any buyer would get if they bought one, and the screen pops up easily in minutes using a fingerprint. If you don’t like the greasy look of fingerprints on your phone’s screen, you’ll want to always have a microfiber cloth ready, that’s for sure.

Of course, this problem becomes completely irrelevant if you use a screen protector, as it all depends on that screen protector’s anti-fingerprint coating to protect you from the aforementioned messes. And most good glasses actually have better coverage than the Galaxy A52s. That is, if there is even one – we cannot say. It’s just one of the things that detracts from the feel of using the phone, and we’re left wondering how much it costs Samsung to use the same kind of coating as its flagships.

Performance review of Samsung Galaxy A52s

The Galaxy A52s  is a special case where it’s hard to talk about performance and smoothness separately, regardless of how subjective the latter might be. If you’re interested in raw performance numbers from benchmarks, you should definitely take a look at our regular review, which has a lot of them. In long-term reviews, we avoid cold numbers and try to describe how they feel in real day-to-day use.

Putting smoothness aside for just a second, the Galaxy A52s performs perfectly for the price. However, this chipset gets its power a bit above its current price, and the Snapdragon 778G is miles ahead of the 765G and 750G of yesteryear. The numbers don’t paint an accurate picture, as the jump from those older SoCs to this one is much more significant. The 778G is practically an “almost flagship” chipset, if by “flagship” you mean something like the 870.

However, the Galaxy A52s feels slower than other devices powered by the same chipset. We’re assuming this is due to insufficient software optimization, but we can’t know for sure. It’s certainly not slow for a mid-ranger, but it’s as fast as a Snapdragon 720G/730G/732G-equipped Redmi, and that’s no good when you consider that on paper the 778G should be much more powerful than those.

Everything  works on this phone, but a little slower than we expected. When it comes to speed, it is very similar to the Redmi Note 10 Pro and should really be head and shoulders above it. But it is not. Recently, we’ve praised Samsung for fixing its softness issues with high-end devices like the Galaxy Z Flip3 and Fold3, which are now almost imperceptibly smoother than their top Chinese rivals, but it’s clear the Korean company hasn’t. It applied the same attention to detail when it came to software optimization for the Galaxy A52s.

And that’s a real shame because with the Snapdragon 778G chipset and a lot more tweaks, it had the potential to be one of the best buys in the entire industry without too many caveats. As it is, the main caveat with this phone is the fact that it’s slower than it should be considering the hardware, and it’s anything but smooth.

There’s a lot of lag everywhere, reminding us of the (not so) glory days of TouchWiz and Samsung Experience, before One UI was called One UI. If you open it and try to navigate through it immediately, transitions are laggy, animations are laggy, app drawer is laggy. It settles after a few seconds of opening, and then the lag goes away, but it’s not the behavior we’d expect with a near-flagship chip inside. The Google Discover feed, which you can have on the left side of your home screen, is a mess, and Samsung Free, the Korean company’s alternative, is even worse.

There’s also  a glitch in interpreting swipes, which means that sometimes, when you’re trying to scroll horizontally through your recent apps, you end up closing one because the phone interprets your swipe as vertical. Pressing the power button to show the lock screen lags about 70% of the time, and sometimes it’s even buggy in that it takes you straight to the home screen without fingerprint or face authentication. This only happened to us twice over as many weeks with the Galaxy A52s, but it seems like a security issue enough to merit attention.

The Snapdragon 778G chipset was on paper the Galaxy A52s biggest upgrade over its predecessor. However, in actual use, while there are improvements in speed and smoothness, they’re nowhere near what we’d expect based on the hardware. We have a feeling that most of the issues described here are related to the software implementation, meaning they could theoretically be fixed via an update, but the phone has been out of stock for many months now. A lot has been offered. 

Don’t get me wrong, this is probably the best performing device in the A series (probably tied with the A73), but it’s passable. Performance and affordability have always been areas where the A-series has fallen behind the competition, and while the A52s makes up some of the difference, it’s still nothing short of amazing. it could be better.

Checking battery life and charging speed of Samsung Galaxy A52s

Battery life  has been good, if not record-breaking, during our time with the Galaxy A52s. In our usage, detailed below, we never had to worry about not making it through the day on a single charge. It was a one-day smartphone for us, with some reserve at the end of the day, but not enough to even see us through the middle of the next day. While some people want a multi-day battery life from the phone, we feel a day is enough, as you can always charge overnight.

And charging at night is what you’re likely to do with the Galaxy A52s, as charging is very slow, meaning charging at midday can be a frustrating experience. So hopefully you don’t spend all day on mobile data with a weak signal only to need a lot of it. Samsung is lagging behind in the fast charging game, and by a lot. The Galaxy A52s 4,500mAh battery takes an hour and a half to fully charge, which is 50-100% longer than most of its competitors. It’s about Samsung’s 25W charger, which thankfully comes in the box this time – the Galaxy A52 was capable of 25W charging, but only came with a 15W charger.

It’s not the case that Samsung really needs to get charging together, whether it’s for flagships or mid-rangers like this. Wireless charging isn’t offered here, but it’s the same price point for this segment, so we don’t think it’s a huge omission.

Now  back to battery life, the screenshots above are snapshots of our experience over various days with 12-16 hours off the charger, with the initial Wi-Fi connection, about an hour or so on 5G, Bluetooth always on and connected to TWS will show you. Headphones for about two hours for calls and listening to music or podcasts. The location is also always on and there is about half an hour of GPS navigation with Waze or Google Maps daily. With similar usage, these screenshots show what you can expect, but keep in mind that any variation in usage will result in different numbers.

Checking the life of Samsung Galaxy A52s phone software

The Galaxy  A52s currently runs One UI 4.1, the latest version of Samsung’s skin on top of Android 12. So even though it’s a mid-ranger, it has the same software as the Korean company’s high-end devices. This is a big advantage. But while you get all the features that One UI 4.1 has to offer, you don’t get the smooth performance of the Galaxy S or Fold or Flip.

As  we detailed on the previous page in the performance section of this review, this is the part where you will definitely feel that it is far from a premium device. This is not a situation we are happy with, but it is what it is. At least you have a full One UI 4.1 interface to work with, and not the Core version that lower-end A models have to make do with.

Updates

During  our recent long-term reviews of Samsung devices, we’ve consistently praised the company for making big strides in the software update game, and we’ll reiterate that it’s come a long way in recent years. . From being one of the slowest updates, it’s now among the fastest, and that’s even for mid-range phones like the Galaxy A52s, not just flagships.

It was updated to Android 12 with One UI 4.0 in January, and a few months later, in March, it received the One UI 4.1 update – remember that One UI 4.1 only came with the S22 family in February. For any other Android device manufacturer (with the exception of Google itself), this turnaround time would be unprecedented.

For Samsung, it’s just par for the course these days, and that’s refreshing to see, as is the company’s promise of three years of major Android updates and four years of security patches for the A52s. This is more than the flagships of many competitors! The current version of One UI 4.1 on our Galaxy A52s review unit has a security patch level of June 1, 2022, and thus is by no means outdated (take note, Xiaomi!).

However  , all is not rosy – the initial Android 12 update with One UI 4.0 introduced a lot of bugs. We haven’t seen too many of them in the current build – the only ones we have to deal with are listed on the previous page in the performance section. But it goes to show once again that while mid-rangers may receive updates almost as quickly as flagships, they don’t receive the same care and quality control. At least not yet – hopefully this will change in the future.

Attributes

The skin  has evolved a lot since its inception, but it still looks and feels like a regular Samsung phone, with countless options and settings for anything you can possibly imagine (and many things we We bet you’ve never thought of that). It’s clear that the ‘more is more’ design philosophy works in Korea, and if you enjoy long trips to the settings, the Galaxy A52s and its software will fully cater to you. You can easily spend hours there and go through every nook and cranny.

The skin  has evolved a lot since its inception, but it still looks and feels like the usual Samsung fare, with countless options and settings for anything you could possibly imagine (and many things we We bet you’ve never thought of that). It’s clear that the ‘more is more’ design philosophy works in Korea, and if you enjoy long trips to the settings, the Galaxy A52s and its software will fully cater to you. You can easily spend hours there and go through every nook and cranny.

This  has been a long-standing problem of ours with One UI, and it still remains unchanged. The same goes for other Android skins, if you long press the power button, you’ll get a power menu with options to reboot or shut down your device. Not on Samsung though – you’ll get Bixby by default. Once again this can easily be changed back to what it should have been – but it’s only easy if you know it’s possible. It doesn’t help that the settings menu calls the power button the “side key” for some reason. 

Bixby’s continued  existence, despite its apparent inferiority to the existing Google Assistant, ties into another common theme with Samsung phones – repetitiveness. You have a lot of Samsung-made apps that feel like they were created just to copy Google’s existing apps (which in most, but not all, cases are far superior). And then the epitome of the whole thing is the fact that you have two app stores on the Galaxy A52s, because Samsung can’t afford not to have one. 

If you’ve used another Samsung in recent years, you’re no doubt used to these shenanigans, which don’t make the situation confusing for newcomers to the brand, nor do they make sense of the situation. The end user either way, but if you could ask Samsung, they’d probably say something about how it’s nice to have more options.

And this brings us to the “more is more” philosophy. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay — and in some ways we don’t care, because it seems like the opposite of what Apple likes to do, and having such opposites in the market is a bonus. It is for variety. A choice we are all for

dark mode

One UI 4.1  comes with all the features you’ve come to expect from an Android skin in 2022. It has a dark mode that does the job well enough without overdoing the settings. You can turn it on from dusk to sunrise or with a custom time range, and that’s it. There’s no control over how dark it goes, and no forcing a dark mode on apps that don’t have one of their own. Both of these options are available in other Android skins, but not here.

Gesture navigation is also supported on this phone, and it works well. That said, at the default gesture sensitivity settings, we found that our swipes up to go home were interpreted as scrolling most of the time, leading to a lot of frustration. A sensitivity slider to the lowest or highest position fixes this problem, although we can’t say we understand why either extreme would achieve the same effect. However, if you’re bothered by swiping up to go home being misinterpreted as vertical scrolling, play with that slider – it should fix your problems.

Launcher, wallpapers

The  launcher is fairly basic in terms of customization, and it’s strange when it comes to the app drawer, which moves horizontally, like on home screens, and not vertically, like other app drawers. Since you swipe up to reveal the app drawer, we think it makes more sense to scroll vertically, but that might just be a preference. Similarly, the fact that the drawer is, by default, seemingly random rather than alphabetically sorted.

Sure, there’s a setting you can change to get back to normal Android behavior, because of course there is. But even then, folders (yes, the app drawer has folders for a reason) don’t stick to it and are always shown first, because Samsung engineers probably think of the app drawer as a file manager on a computer. We don’t know for sure, but what else can we assume given this behavior?

Next  , if you enjoy delayed scrolling, you can add the Google Discover or Samsung Free… feed to the left side of your home screen. Samsung Free is by far the longest part of the UI, so maybe it’s good to have the experience just for that? We didn’t find any other use for it anyway.

The recent apps view  is thankfully what you’d expect from an Android skin, with a horizontally scrolling list of app icons that you can swipe through. Below these, by default, are four icons for suggested apps that the phone thinks you want to access. Their algorithm was already better in previous iterations of One UI, but we still found it decent on the Galaxy A52s. It managed to guess the app we were looking for about 75% of the time, which isn’t outstanding, but it’s not bad either. And when it does it right, it saves seconds of scrolling.

Since  this is Android 12, the UI color scheme can be pulled from your chosen wallpaper, and you can choose from a few options – Samsung couldn’t be Samsung here and offer additional color palettes, while Google just automatically creates one at a time. When you change your wallpaper so this method requires an extra click here because you also have to choose the palette you want. Although it’s more complicated than it should be, it’s still nice to have this super quick and easy way to customize UI colors and basically have a fresh new theme every time you get a new wallpaper.

Speaking of  which, the Galaxy Store has a wide selection of them, both free and paid, which is great because the ones they include aren’t much to write home about. There are also not many of them. There’s an option to have a different lock screen wallpaper (from multiple categories) every time you unlock the phone, which is great, but we still can’t understand why you can’t have a similar system for the home screen wallpaper. When you want to make a change, you still have to apply it manually.

Other features

One  UI has a few built-in “ecosystem” features, like Continue apps on other devices, that sync data across Samsung products but only work with a small subset of apps. Calling and texting on other devices is also available, which can be very useful if you have multiple Samsung phones. There’s also a link to Windows, which is useful if you have a Windows device and don’t want to pick up your phone while you’re working.

A  special lab area in Settings allows you to force multi-window functionality to all apps, as many still don’t support it. You can even hide the status bar in Split Screen view (and the navigation bar if you’re using it instead of gestures) to gain some display real estate – but if you do, you’ll have to swipe down once. Swipe to see the status bar and then swipe again to get the notification panel.

Samsung Galaxy A52s camera review

The rear camera setup of the Galaxy A52s stands out compared to some of its competitors due to the presence of optical image stabilization (OIS) on its main camera. It also has a higher resolution than usual for this ultra-wide shooter at the price, so we were very curious to test these out.

The main camera produces decent images in daytime conditions, which are decent for the price, but not really outstanding in any way. There’s a fairly wide dynamic range, and a very pervasive ‘Samsung look’ throughout, with high contrast and sharpness, as well as colors that sometimes pop a bit too much.

People seem  to love this look for sharing on social media, so we understand why, but it still feels a little too much for our eyes in some photos. While these images aren’t bad by any means for the price, we have to admit that given Samsung’s extensive experience in making phones with great cameras, we were expecting a little from the Galaxy A52s. Alas, they are still limited to higher prices.

The ultra-wide camera  also produces good images. We appreciate the extra clarity compared to what most competitors offer in their 8MP ultra-wide cameras. Softness is visible around the edges, as you’d expect from a non-flagship ultra-wide, and the color science seems quite different compared to the original camera. It’s not really noticeable unless you look for it, but you’ll see it when you do. This snapper certainly won’t win any awards, but it’s good and reliable at its job, and probably better than any 8MP ultra-wide on any competing device.

While  the Galaxy A52s lacks a proper telephoto camera (like almost all phones at this price point), it’s unsurprising that there’s a double-shift in the viewfinder. Messing with this uses the native camera’s clippings, and the results can sometimes be very soft. They are usable in small mode, but we probably wouldn’t recommend shooting in this mode too much, as the delta quality is quite noticeable compared to 1x shots. On the other hand, you still get a lot of detail and relatively low noise.

At  night, the main camera produces decent photos with good detail and relatively low noise. However, in many scenes, these can become too obvious.

Using  night mode helps restore highlights and results in even more detailed photos, but sharpening is even more aggressive than auto mode, and shadows can be crushed.

The ultra-wide camera  struggles in low light, but much less so than the 8MP sensors typically found in smartphones at this price point. The photos it produces are noticeably softer than those from the original sensor, and also have less detail, but still look barely usable most of the time – at least if there are light sources around. Dynamic range is also better than we expected, though we didn’t win any awards.

Using  Night Mode generally enhances shadows and restores highlights, at the expense of over-sharpening in some scenes, which can result in artifacts that may render the image unusable. Therefore, it is not very easy to recommend which mode for night photography, because both automatic and night mode have advantages and disadvantages.

2x shots  at night have a lot more noise than 1x shots, and are also often accompanied by sharp artifacts, otherwise not too bad. Good for quick social media sharing if needed.

Using  night mode for these usually results in a watercolor-like effect, as all the aggressive processing proves too much to do. You’ll get a (barely) usable photo though, but otherwise, if you don’t like the watercolor look, it’s best to avoid this mode when zooming.

Selfies  can be taken in two ‘field of view’ modes, narrow and wide, with the former being the default, although you can change it if you don’t like it. You probably won’t, because it’s a little too close for comfort, and if you’re trying to fit more than one person into a shot, you can forget about it. This is where wide mode comes in handy.

The pictures are good, have a lot of detail and not a lot of noise. Skin tones aren’t always accurate, but otherwise these shots are fine during the day. At night that all changes, and even with the flash filling the screen, you’ll get dark and noisy photos unless you’re around a light source. If you find one, you’ll obviously get worse quality than the day, but you might still be able to get a few usable selfies to send your friends.

Overall  , the Galaxy A52s’ camera system is good for its price point, with a better ultra-wide than most competitors, and a decent main sensor that adds peace of mind OIS for longer exposures in night mode. It’s not a bad flagship camera, but in terms of quality, it’s not always head and shoulders above the crowd at a similar price point.

We should also mention that during the several weeks of using the phone for this long-term review, we never encountered any issues with the camera app. Although it’s slow to change sensors and sometimes save your shots, it never crashes or freezes, so the shooting experience isn’t disrupted.

Summary

At its current asking price, the Galaxy  A52s is a great value proposition, perhaps the best value any A-series device has ever had. So if you want a mid-range Samsung and don’t want to feel like you’ve paid more, this is probably the option to go for even today with its supposed successor, the A53, available. As we mentioned earlier, depending on the chipset used, it might be better to consider the A73 as the true successor to the A52s, but that’s up to you. Either way, they’re both already more expensive than the Galaxy A52, while not offering much to justify the price difference.

The Galaxy A52s comes with Samsung’s extended software update promise of three years of major Android updates and four years of security updates, which is currently unmatched in the mid-range space outside of Google and Apple. So, if a long update window is important to you and you don’t want to spend flagship-level money, then again, this is the option to go for.

With  all that said, the Galaxy A52s is definitely not the complete package, even for the price, and while updates are delivered on time and reliably, some have introduced bugs in the past, so not everything is up to snuff. . And while we’re on the subject of software, One UI 4.1 on the A52s looks and feels the same as One UI 4.1 on Samsung’s flagship, but it doesn’t feel the same.

Some of that is undoubtedly due to the inferior chipset, but not all of it – the same Snapdragon 778G seems faster in some competing devices. Our obvious suspicion here is that Samsung simply isn’t optimizing the A series software as much as it is now finally doing for the S line and its foldables, and that’s an area where things will definitely need to be addressed in the future. It will improve. It’s a shame that reasonably capable hardware is paired with a relatively poor software experience.

The Galaxy A52s’ battery capacity won’t break any records, but in real-world use it reliably lasted us a full day, never worrying about running out of power on a single charge. That’s good, because slow charging doesn’t exactly make midday fast charging very useful. It’s nice to see a Samsung device still come with a charger in the box, and it actually supports 25W charging, which is the maximum the phone can do – unlike the A52, which was able to It was 25 watts, but it had a 15-watt charger. inside the box Charging speed is another area where improvements have been delayed for Samsung devices (regardless of their price).

The  screen is perhaps the best part of this phone, and that’s great because the screen is what you look at when you use it. This is a high quality panel that is among the best (if not the best) you can find at this price. The 120Hz refresh rate is welcome, and if you’re not expecting flagship brightness levels, you’ll find that it’s good enough to be discernible even on a sunny summer day. Only just, but still.

The cameras are generally good, with the ultra-wide being surprisingly well-closed, above the phone’s price, and consistently delivering better results than the competition. The main camera isn’t bad but it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a mid-ranger, the only thing that stands out is the presence of OIS, which is still rare at this price.

Performance and smoothness are a bit lower than we expected, if you’ve ever used the Redmi Note 10 Pro or any other Redmi with a Snapdragon 720G/730G/732G, things here will be incredibly familiar – but with 5G support. Added, which is much less of a differentiator today than it used to be, and yet it’s still nice to have.

At  its current price, we don’t think we’d call this Samsung’s mid-range smartphone the best mid-range smartphone ever, but with more attention and attention to the software experience, it could be the best mid-range smartphone of 2022.

As it is, there are competitors that feel faster and smoother, so ultimately it’s up to you whether you care about the A52s features that those competitors can’t match: extensive software support, screen quality, OIS . On the main camera, ultra-wide image quality, IP67 water and dust resistance, and even branding on the back, because some people don’t want to stray from the Apple-Samsung duopoly.

Source: GSMARENA.COM