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Review of Samsung Galaxy A52s phone, price and specifications
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
Samsung Galaxy A54 review. Check the price, technical specifications, camera, hardware, software, battery, charging speed and other features of the Samsung Galaxy A54 phone.
Samsung Galaxy A54 review, specifications
Introduction
People love Samsung Galaxy A5x series mid-range phones. In fact, each of its members has been the best-selling model for the Korean company for several years in a row. And of course, the newest of this family is the Galaxy A54. So it’s no surprise that this phone seems to be attracting a lot of fans as well. Based on our statistics, we can confirm that this is the mid-range phone that you are most interested in and have been since it was launched.
So what makes the Galaxy A54 so enticing? Definitely, the brand of this phone makes the buyer attracted to this phone. Maybe you can have a Samsung phone by buying this phone without spending your money on the Samsung S series phone. In 2023, the company has harmonized its designs more than ever before for its range of slab-style smartphones, so this phone is considered a Samsung phone for everyone.
But that can’t be the whole story, there’s certainly magic here, a rare set of features that most people would be willing to buy at the price of this phone. Well, that’s what we explore using the Galaxy A54 as our one and only smartphone for a long time. This long-term review describes our next impressions.
Does it have what it takes to become the mid-range smartphone of the year? Is it above the competition in all respects? Is it so good that you just have to pick one up without even thinking about it? Well, join us over the next few pages as we explain and tell you what you’re actually getting in terms of user experience if you choose this phone.
Read more: Poco C65/Redmi 13C phone review, price and specifications
Designing
The Galaxy A54 is definitely a Samsung 2023. This phone is unmistakably Samsung in terms of design, and that can be seen as a good feature as well as a bad feature. For clarity, we are referring to the back of the phone here. You’d definitely mistake this phone for something like the S23+ from a distance, unless you’re well-versed in the positioning of the LED flash across Samsung’s lineup.
Obviously, this is a deliberate choice on the part of the Korean company. While Apple and Google keep a third camera sensor for their more expensive devices, creating a strong artificial distinction, Samsung puts three camera circles on the A54, three on the S23+, three on almost every device regardless of price. presents. They are almost in similar situations.
That said, we prefer separate camera circles to some of the monstrosities of an island that pop out of China from time to time. You, of course, may disagree, and that’s fine – you don’t look at the back of your phone much, do you?
On the front of the phone, things are different and the concert is a high pose. The bottom frame is so much bigger than the others that it shows the mid-range of this phone well. In a cheap, mid-range way. This feature certainly doesn’t trick anyone into thinking it’s more expensive than it is, and before you say that’s inevitable at these prices – it’s not. Ask nothing, ask Poco – frames that look symmetrical (even if they technically aren’t) are definitely achievable even in the middle of the price range.
So, again, not having them is a choice on Samsung’s part, which leaves us a little confused. This phone could be more expensive from the back, but it actually looks cheaper from the front. This is high level bipolar.
However, this phone is slippery. The glass back on our white model doesn’t seem to show fingerprints at all, which is great – but as you might know, that’s always at the cost of being more slippery than before. The plastic frame doesn’t help either. While it’s not as slippery as a matte metal case (it’s a few things, it’s still among the most slippery plastic cases we’ve used recently).
Handling is good for people with large hands, only good for those with medium hands, and terrible for those with small hands. The width of this phone is large. If you have large hands, you can experience good handling, but it definitely feels bigger than most of the regular devices on the market. We can say that they have an average hand with a good hand league.
The weight of the phone, like its width, can be a concern. It’s actually not a lot, but we suppose the extra 5 grams might have made the phone’s handling a bit worrisome (like an extra 2mm).
The box is almost empty – not exactly Sony-like, but unsurprisingly Samsung-like (hello, Apple). Inside the box, you get the phone and the cable. This is it. No frame, no charger, nothing else. Can you buy them separately? Of course. Do you have to? That’s a different conversation we don’t want to get into again. But we will point out that the Chinese competitors of this phone generally pack both a charger and a case in the box. Somehow it can be done in China, but not in Korea.
Turning to the design, the feeling is very very, general and generally safe Samsung. We’re willing to bet that you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who has complained about this phone in any way. So, it works, but it also has the real potential to feel incredibly boring to a lot of people. It will be a match made in Seoul (though to be honest more likely Vietnam or India). But if you want to be amazed every time you pick up your phone – simply put, look elsewhere.
It’s one of those things that “get out of your way and let you live your life”. You won’t notice it, you won’t admire it, you won’t even be able to describe it if you have to (now that’s us), you won’t remember it, it won’t make any impression – but you won’t regret it either. And this is also important.
Speakers
The Galaxy A54’s speakers are dual which is great and they work. They’re definitely nowhere near the highest quality speakerphones we’ve tested, in fact they’re pretty average (or, as the guys say, mediocre ). But they’re there and they get the job done – just not in noisy places. There you have to hold the phone close to your ear to hear sounds even at maximum volume.
The fact that the top speaker only has one through-the-phone opening doesn’t help either. Xiaomi and its sub-brands have recently done this trick, where there is a separate second opening for that speaker at the top of the case, and so the sound simply sounds fuller, richer and most importantly louder. So, the Poco F5’s speakers are actually louder than these, but not by much. Just a little, though, unless you have these side by side for comparison, the A54 is unlikely to disappoint you. They won’t wow you in any way, in any way (and that seems to be the trend with this phone, at least so far).
Vibration motor
Galaxy A54 has a vibration motor and it is good. It doesn’t wow you regularly (or ever, really), but it’s there and it gets the job done. For what it’s worth, it’s a lot better than the Poco F5 model we recently reviewed in the long run, but that’s too little to clear.
They’re similar in the sense you get of being 2D (the best ones are more like “3D”, for lack of a better explanation), but the Galaxy A54 feels more spacious. Not a lot of it, just a little more. If you’ve never used a phone with an awesome vibration engine, you’re probably wondering what we’re talking about here. But if you have, don’t expect this one to be anywhere near the same league.
However, we like how customizable the vibrations are – you get separate vibration intensity sliders for calls, notifications, system items, and media, which is more than most skins offer. Unfortunately, given how weak this engine is, we had to max them all out, but with better hardware, the customization feature would be very useful. And the same goes for the fact that you can enable or disable vibrations for touch interactions, dialing, charging, gesture navigation and camera feedback. We still wish there were more vibrations in One UI, but it’s definitely not the skin that lacks them the most.
Vibration intensity settings
The “vibrate sound for incoming calls” setting seems like Samsung admitting how weak the engine itself is, and giving you a band for a problem it’s caused itself – it’s really funny. So the engine is weak enough that you probably won’t feel it much – hey, here’s a setup that plays a vibrating sound through the speakers to help you out.
Colors
The Galaxy A54’s screen is probably the best thing about it, and by quite a bit. Battery life is the next best thing , but we’ll get to that in due course. For now, let’s applaud Samsung for not skimping on display quality here. The panel you get on the Galaxy A54 may not be top notch, but it’s excellent and incredibly detailed.
Display mode settings
Samsung also has the best color settings on the market in our opinion. You get Natural, which is perfectly tuned to the sRGB color space, and Vivid, which is nicely tuned to DCI-P3, but it gets even better if you go for the warmest tone. You can also play with separate red, green and blue levels if you want. These are all the settings you need, and therefore all the settings you get. No complicated mess here (hear that Xiaomi?).
Lighting
Now, when it comes to brightness, the Galaxy A54 plays at the high end in that mid-range “around 1000 nits” field. It’s not a record breaker by any means, even for the price, but it’s at least for most people to consider a panel that’s visible in all lighting conditions, even on a bright sunny day. It won’t be as easy to read in such conditions as the ones that go higher, but it will be , and at this price point, it’s important to note that. It’s also 150 nits brighter than its predecessor, which is noticeable and will definitely be noticeable side-by-side.
At the low end of the brightness scale, the Galaxy A54, like most smartphones these days, doesn’t really dim enough to make reading a book comfortable, especially if you’re viewing a lot of things with a white background in dark, dark environments. Fortunately, though, that doesn’t matter because unlike other companies, Samsung has implemented an Extra dim feature that does exactly what the name suggests. It has its own slider and makes the screen less than its lowest brightness setting.
We don’t know why Google had to come up with this solution for the obvious fact that the screen has been dimming lately, but we’re glad it did. We still think Extra dim should be integrated with the brightness slider and not as a completely separate feature, but it’s nice to have.
Display settings
The auto-brightness algorithm on the Galaxy A54 is excellent. It’s not the best we’ve tested recently, but it’s definitely well above average. Manual adjustment was still required for the first two weeks of our use, but after that we barely touched the brightness slider, and we think that’s how it should be. The algorithm is better than many we’ve seen on much more expensive phones, so while we’re always striving for perfection, given the market’s current state of affairs, we were very pleased with it.
refresh rate
The Galaxy A54 has a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz and you should definitely use the Adaptive setting in Motion smoothness, which is what gets it there. That being said, don’t expect this 120Hz to feel like other 120Hz refresh rate modes on other phones. There’s so much clutter and lag throughout the UI, and the chipset seems to struggle with even basic scrolling in some apps, that it’s not going to be a smooth experience.
Motion smoothness settings
Still, it’s smoother than if you chose standard mode, so there’s that. We’ll talk more about the smoothness (or lack thereof) in the dedicated section of this review, don’t worry. As always, we just used the high refresh rate setting because the battery life was great anyway and there’s no other reason to go lower.
The screen is always on
One UI’s always-on display is highly customizable in terms of how it appears – with a tap, always, on a schedule, or just for new notifications. In fact, it may be the most customizable in the field. Less is more when it comes to what’s displayed on it – you get music playback information, notification icons and a few clock styles to choose from, as well as the option to use stickers, AR emoticons, Bitmoji or an image. Gallery, but that’s it.
Always on display settings
There are more comprehensive options in other skins, but if you haven’t used one of them, we don’t think you’re missing out. The fact that AOD can use an auto-brightness algorithm to adapt itself to ambient light levels is great, although we’re not entirely sure why anyone would turn this off (it’s on by default, as it should be). After all, if you want, you can – “If you want, you can” could very well be the motto of One UI.
Eye protection settings
The blue light filter is called the Eye comfort shield, and it can automatically adjust the display’s colors based on the time of day – with slight adjustments during the day and much warmer colors at night. It’s a simple trick, but otherwise very simple, with a color temperature slider and the ability to program it to turn on at dusk and off at sunrise or at a custom interval. It definitely gets the job done, but maybe it could be a little more customizable, as customization is a big thing in One UI.
biometric
The Galaxy A54 has an in-display fingerprint scanner. Most of its competitors have peripheral sensors, and Samsung’s S-series devices have recently had the best under-display sensors built. So this one must be amazing too?
It is not like the flagship ultrasonic line. It’s the optics that aren’t a problem per se – we’ve managed some pretty good optical scanners over the past few years. They are not quite at the ultrasonic level, but they can come very close.
This is not one of them. It’s not just great, or outstanding, or amazing. It works, but it’s slower than most sensors we’ve used in the last year or so, and the accuracy, while not bad, is nowhere near top notch. We hit the first try about 90-92% of the time, which sounds like a lot but it’s not. 95% would be great, 97-99% is great in our book, especially for in-display sensors, and while there are ultrasonic sensors on the S series, this one isn’t.
Biometric settings
There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s pretty clear that this is a cheaper part that wasn’t given much priority when building the bill of materials for this phone. It’s clear that Samsung thought the Galaxy A54 should have an in-display sensor so that it might feel more superior to its competitors with peripheral sensors, but then the company didn’t go out and make a great sensor and spend what it could. commented No more than a few dollars per unit.
Look, you can’t max out all the parts on any mid-range device, because then what you end up with isn’t mid-range anymore. But the fingerprint scanner is something you interact with dozens, if not hundreds, of times every day, and regardless, it doesn’t make the entire user experience feel like you’re getting more value than you paid for. In some ways, it cheapens it to a lower point. Of course, if you use fingerprint authentication.
If not, you’ll be more interested to know that there is also face unlock, and it works, and it’s not too fast either. It’s a lot faster than using a fingerprint sensor, but we’re not sure the 15-20% increase in unlock time is worth the security trade-off since it’s a camera-only factory-type thing. There’s a setting to not unlock if your eyes are closed, which is great and we’ve tested and it works as intended. That being said, don’t forget that such a basic face unlock is shown to be easily tricked by pictures or videos of the owner of the phone.
Function
The Galaxy A54 is the laziest and slowest phone we’ve reviewed in a long time. It actually reminds us of a non-professional Redmi Note from a few years ago. Its chipset doesn’t seem to have been chosen for reasons related to performance, smoothness or the ability to handle a lot of things on a day-to-day basis.
Instead, Samsung seems to know that it’s cheaper to buy these off its own shelves than from Qualcomm or MediaTek, which is fine in principle, but the chip is a lot better than phones that cost half the price of the Galaxy A54. At such a price, we praise it. Given the A54’s price, this is its biggest weakness, and by a very narrow margin.
It’s not unusable, but it’s so much slower and shakier than the Poco F5, which we recently reviewed at length, that it’s hard to use two similarly priced devices. It works very differently in this context. Microscooters appear at the most random times, and if you try to multitask intensively, you’ll definitely notice how hard it is for the Exynos 1380.
Again, this chip is commendable in a device half the price of the Galaxy A54. But in this range, it’s not good enough, especially in late 2023, and especially considering that this is Samsung’s best-selling model.
That said, keep in mind that with the insane number of mid-range and entry-level phones out there, we only get to review a handful of them for any length of time each year, so we’re definitely not saying this one is the least flawed. Of all those on the market. Just from everything we tried in the long run.
With that very important caveat in mind, perhaps a comparison with the Poco F5 is in order, as the two are quite close in price. And in terms of performance and smoothness, no competition, the Poco wins by a mile. That being said, performance and smoothness aren’t everything, so in concluding this review, we’re going to compare things a little deeper.
Battery life, charging
Battery life on the Galaxy A54 has been fantastic. That’s the best battery life we’ve gotten from any phone we’ve reviewed recently, and while it’s not much better than many of the phones we’ve rated “excellent,” the difference It is still quite evident day by day. life so maybe this is one of the features of this chipset.
Based on our usage described below, we never needed a mid-day charge during our time with the A54. not once And when we finished our 12- to 16-hour day off the charger, we were generally left with a generous battery capacity still in the tank. Based on this, we can say that the maximum time we can theoretically achieve with the screen will be at least 8 hours, and 9 hours seems very achievable.
Snapshots of battery life
Now, the fact that the battery lasts so long mitigates the lack of fast charging to some extent. Sure, Samsung calls itself “fast,” but in this day and age, given what the A54’s competitors are capable of, that’s more laughable than accurate. The A54 isn’t terribly slow, mind you, just over an hour from zero to full, but it’s definitely not winning any awards. You’ll also need to get your own charger, as Samsung doesn’t provide one in the box.
Our usage mainly consisted of a Wi-Fi 6 connection, about an hour or so of 5G, Bluetooth and always-on location, about an hour or two of listening to music or podcasts through the TWS headphones, about an hour of phone calls also through the headphones. It is TWS. And about 30 minutes of GPS navigation through Waze. The usual caveats apply: if your usage is much heavier than ours, spending more time on mobile data, and especially in hotspot areas, then your screen time numbers will definitely be lower than ours.
One UI 5.1, update
At the time of writing, the Galaxy A54 is about to receive the Android 14-based One UI 6 update, but it’s not quite there yet. Depending on where you are in the world, this may have changed in the meantime, and if you buy an A54 now, you may have an update waiting for you when you take the phone out of the box. And even if it doesn’t happen right away, it will undoubtedly happen very soon – Samsung has been pretty good lately at delivering big Android updates to many of its devices in a very short period of time, once it’s been great. Speak up – and the ball is definitely already in motion.
One UI 6 isn’t that different from One UI 5.x, which itself wasn’t that different from its predecessor. At this point, One UI is pretty much a known quantity in the mobile world, and that’s probably a good thing for most casual users who might not enjoy big UI changes from year to year. On the other hand, if you’re more of an enthusiast and have had Samsung devices in the recent past, you might find it a little boring.
One thing that has definitely changed in the last year or two is the quality control for updates. During our long time with the Galaxy A54, we encountered absolutely no glitches. zero none And it’s something that many of Samsung’s competitors could definitely learn from (we’re thinking primarily of Xiaomi and Poco and Redmi, but in truth, even Google sometimes spoils things with an update or two does – the difference is that with Google everything is usually done with the next monthly update, while in Xiaomiland it’s sometimes several months and it’s very clear, unfortunately there are still glaring bugs).
We honestly can’t remember the last time a Samsung update introduced any bugs, and that’s commendable, especially since the A54 isn’t a top-of-the-line device, and for many companies it seems logical – the higher up. Due to the price, more care is taken with such things, while mid-range and especially low-end phones are usually left alone.
This isn’t a good strategy in our book, as many people will buy a cheaper model first and then, if they’re satisfied, eventually move on to something more expensive from the same brand – many of our friends have done this with Samsung phones.
But if the phone is cheap, they’ll just switch to another manufacturer — or in some cases, decide to buy an iPhone based on an “all Android phone” experience. Samsung seems to understand this well, at least when it comes to updates and bugs – it’s less concerned with the overall performance and smoothness of its mid-rangers, but we’ve already talked about that in the previous part of this review.
As for updates, Samsung actually releases monthly security patches on a monthly basis, which is still not something that happens across the entire mobile industry. Not only that, but they’re usually quite timely, and may even arrive at different points before Google sends the same update to its Pixels. That’s to be commended, as is generally the case with the speedy rollout of a major Android update, especially considering how many more devices Samsung updates compared to Google.
At the time of writing, our Galaxy A54 was on the October security patch level, which is perfectly acceptable given that we received a security update every month while using it – and in the right month, no less (so, Here’s the September update.End of October “Insults”. If One UI 6 hadn’t arrived, we’re sure we’d have received the November security patch in the first half of November as well.
Current software at time of writing
One UI still has its quirks, but after so long in the market, we imagine most people are used to having two separate app stores, for example – not that it makes sense from a user experience point of view. View, of course, but Samsung wants to play the ecosystem game, and this is one way to do it, although it may be annoying for end users. It can’t get rid of the Play Store since then, but it can’t use Google apps, but it also wants its own duplicate built-in apps that are the default, so you’re not tied to its ecosystem.
We really wonder how well this has worked – how many people actually use Samsung’s default apps rather than Google’s existing apps. The first option means you have a significant incentive to switch to another Samsung phone, while the second option gives you the freedom to switch to any other Android device without a problem.
Of course, Samsung really wants you to buy their device, and that’s understandable, but do people actually do it? We can’t tell you for sure, our guess is that the more tech-savvy will use Google’s offerings precisely for the freedom of change it entails (and let’s not forget that these apps are often actually better), in Whereas normal people might just go with the defaults and never think about it.
After that, Samsung has been working more with Google in recent times – the Messages app is an odd mix of Google Messages and the Samsung app of the same name, and thankfully the two no longer come pre-installed. You also get RCS support, which is sure to be appreciated by up to a dozen people around the world – and the rest are probably fine using WhatsApp or Telegram or Signal or Facebook Messenger or whatever.
However, in the US, you’re kind of stuck with the Messages app because iPhone owners can’t shake their addiction to the iMessage bubble, so it’s nice that RCS gives them a decent set of features on top of SMS for chatting. They’re meeting people with other Android phones (and next year Apple will support RCS too, so while the green bubbles won’t go away, there will certainly be better feature interoperability).
As always, Samsung’s native apps are all updated through their own app store, and sometimes other non-native apps are updated a bit faster this way, but most are updated through the Play Store. Obviously, it’s not an ideal situation, but most of you are probably used to it by now, so we won’t whine about it any further.
The settings menu is as extensive as ever, with hundreds of things to tinker with, so if you enjoy doing that, you can spend hours going through each option and customizing it to your heart’s content. Customization has always been a huge issue with One UI, and that hasn’t changed at all. Of course, you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to, and just stick to all the defaults.
Settings
However, you’ll notice that the phone doesn’t display any notification content on the lock screen by default, something we’ve been encouraged by for years with One UI, and yet still has to allow settings and more. of the icon to show you a program. To visualize this, imagine One UI treating the lock screen like most other always-on display skins – you get an icon and that’s it. It’s not necessarily a better or worse way of doing things (it does increase privacy, after all), it’s just different for being different.
Lock screen notification settings
Speaking of which, by default long-pressing the power button still launches Bixby instead of presenting the power menu. This can also be easily fixed by going into the settings.
Side key settings
For us these were the only two defaults that definitely needed changing, but for you things may be different, so after you first boot your phone, spend at least half an hour fiddling with things like this (or definitely mostly if tinkering is your hobby).
Launcher, dark mode
The One UI launcher has been pretty much unchanged for years, which is great if you’re coming from an older Samsung. However, that means it has the same quirks about it – like the horizontally scrolling app drawer, and perhaps most importantly, the fact that said app drawer is, by default, sorted alphabetically. has not been Point one: folders in the app drawer. Why? We can’t tell you, we think all these “features” make it harder to find apps in the drawer, but maybe it makes sense to you.
Anyway, if that’s not the case, you can at least switch to alphabetical sorting, although there’s nothing you can do about navigation and folders (you can try removing all apps from each one, but that might also fix it. Time consuming and annoying – if so, we don’t judge you).
Interestingly, Samsung’s version of Google’s Discover feed is gone. Last time we saw it, it was called Samsung Free, and in our opinion it was a lesser alternative to the Google Discover feed, but it was the default. Now, it is simply gone, and we can only say: Done! This leaves the aforementioned Google Discover feed as the only option for your “-1” page – the one on the far left of the homepage. You can also, in the spirit of customization, turn it off if you don’t like it.
Google Discover feed and launcher settings
The recent apps screen scrolls horizontally, as most do these days, and this one has a neat feature we like to use – you get four “suggested apps” at the bottom. The software tries to predict exactly where you want to go, and it does so with incredible accuracy, at least for us. 85% of the time, the app we wanted to switch to was one of the four apps we thought were commendable.
There is a dark mode and it is completely empty. There aren’t any fancy customization options here, oddly enough, as there are plenty of them for many other features. You can turn it on and off, schedule it from dusk to dawn or with custom clocks, and if you go to the wallpaper and style section of the settings, you can also turn on “dim wallpaper when dark mode is on”. This is it.
Dark mode settings
Of course it works as intended, but as we said before – some additional customization options would definitely be appreciated.
Gestures
Gesture navigation is of course present on the Galaxy A54, and generally works well, with one exception that we’ll detail below. We like the fact that you can hide the white tablet bar at the bottom, a “motion gesture” as it’s called, and still swipe up on the bottom of the screen to quickly switch apps. In some other recent skins, you can no longer do this, which is a shame.
You can also customize motion sensitivity, which we think is a welcome feature. You can choose a higher setting if you’re using a case and find the back movement difficult, or a lower setting if the movement is random.
While we didn’t encounter any bugs per se during our time with the A54, there is a certain amount of “performance” that baffles us. We’d preface it by saying that this behavior was common across all Samsung devices a few years ago, but now none of the flagships (be it the S series or the foldable) have it anymore, which makes us think it’s somehow the case. It has to do with how well the chipset can perform. And since the A54 SoC is anything but a great performer, this issue unfortunately reared its ugly head here.
We’re talking about how, when you swipe up from the bottom, a lot of times, the phone first interprets the gesture as scrolling, but then, about a second later, it realizes that you’re you really are It wanted to go home so what happens within a second is it scrolls through the app you’re currently in, then it goes home. Needless to say, when you return to said app, you won’t be “on top of the page” thanks to the navigation we just described.
This may not bother you at all, but it shouldn’t happen. Our unconfirmed theory, based on how other flagship devices don’t have this feature, is that it takes a lot of processing power just to interpret the gesture on Samsung’s phones, which aren’t very talented in the performance category, and it happens. It’s unfortunate, and if true, it means that One UI processes gestures differently than any other skin, because we’ve never, ever had this problem on any non-Samsung smartphone. Hopefully the company fixes this issue soon, because it’s not a great user experience to say the least.
Camera
The Galaxy A54 has three rear cameras, one of which is a macro camera, which as usual we’ll ignore for our long-term review. That said, if you want examples of that, our regular review will happily provide them for you. Suffice it to say, you won’t be surprised at all.
The other two are actually useful cameras, so let’s dive into what they can achieve. The main sensor here is a new 50-megapixel sensor, bringing the pixel to 12.5 megapixels, while the ultra-wide is 12 megapixels. Before we even see the samples, can we just say how happy we are to see a 12-megapixel camera at this price, rather than an ultra-wide 8-megapixel one?
The main camera takes good photos during the day with excellent detail, high contrast, wide dynamic range and accurate white balance. Of course, the colors are Samsung, but fortunately not so much that they look like cartoons. And the same theme of containment continues with sharpening – yes, there is, but not much, at least in our opinion. The images have a Samsung look that a lot of people seem to like, so it’s all good for now.
Daily samples from the main camera
Moving on to ultra-wide, color matching isn’t great with the original sensor, but it’s better than what most of the A54’s competitors can do. Overall image quality is definitely better than what you’d get from that ubiquitous 8MP ultra-wide, but still a step down from what the main camera produces. If you compare these shots to the 1x shots, and especially to the 2x shots, there’s an overall softness – which we’ll get to later. They are also always darker or lower than 1x or 2x images.
Today’s examples of ultrawide
Although there is no dedicated zoom camera, there is a 2x option in the viewfinder and of course we tried it. This gives you a center crop of the full-resolution 50MP images captured by the main camera. So the quality is a step down from the 12.5MP stock photos you get at 1x auto, but it’s still quite usable, although there are sometimes slight color differences that are a bit odd since we’re talking about the same sensor. Also, many times 2x images will be sharper than 1x, to the point where some of you might even call them too sharp.
Zoom samples per day
Interestingly, the Galaxy A54, like most phones these days, has no manual setting for automatic night mode. There’s an automatic night mode, it’s on by default and you can’t turn it off permanently – just when the crescent icon appears in the viewfinder. It’s interesting that the Auto Night mode appears much less often than on many other devices – the ambient light threshold seems to be set lower here.
The auto mode photos you can see here were all as ‘auto’ as possible – we didn’t disable auto night mode when the crescent icon appeared. The resulting photos are good, with wide dynamic range and excellent detail levels. White balance is usually on point but sometimes misses, otherwise these are very serviceable, while admittedly nowhere near the quality that the top devices are producing these days.
Night samples from the main camera
In manual night mode, the differences are usually minor, especially if you compare automatic shooting with automatic night mode engaged with the same shot in manual night mode. In such a scenario, you will most likely struggle to see any changes. And yet, there are still some – usually the highlights are better. Also, the resolution seems to be increased quite a bit. When automatic night mode was not engaged, the differences were a bit more, but still not night and day (pardon the pun).
Examples of night mode from the main camera
We usually like to suggest which mode is best for night photography for most people, but in this case it’s hard. In the end, the auto mode seems to be good enough for most settings, we just wish that the auto night mode would activate at a higher ambient light threshold than it currently does. As it is, when it’s not, there are still scenes where the manual night mode improves things, even if only slightly.
Faraway fights at night. Less than most 8MP ultra-wides in the mid-range space, but still not comparable for a main camera. Colors are washed out, dynamic range is reduced, and detail levels are anything but great. There is also no automatic night mode processing for this.
Night samples from ultrawide
So using manual night mode is almost a must in low-light conditions, even if it costs a few seconds shot-by-shot. Night mode brightens up shadows and the overall look, but the quality still isn’t amazing. If you have to, you can use some of these.
Examples of night mode from ultrawide
2x night shots are very good, with decent detail levels. They’re a little worse overall and definitely a little sharper than what you get on the 1x, but still mostly usable.
Examples of night zoom
Night mode makes things even sharper, which you might prefer over Auto Night mode, which otherwise improves photos somewhat but not by much. It also sometimes leans towards watercolor painting territory depending on the scene and the exact level of ambient light.
Examples of night mode zoom
As usual, Samsung selfies come in two versions. You can take 12MP photos from the wider mode, or 8MP if you choose crop mode for a closer look. Wider shots are excellent, with good detail levels, accurate colors and very good dynamic range. Interestingly, though, colors are a bit less than we’d expect from a Samsung – the trademark ‘pop’ you get with the rear cameras isn’t quite as intense.
The crop option always results in slightly lower quality images, so keep that in mind. Portrait mode selfies look good, but they’re really nothing to write home about. From a distance, subject isolation looks decent enough, but when you look a little closer, you’ll see that it’s constantly missing stray hairs and the like. Also, the whole look of these is too artificial, for lack of a better description – that bokeh isn’t very natural, is it?
Selfies of the day
At night, you’ll need plenty of ambient light around to take some usable selfies, and of course use the screen flash function. If so, 9 times out of 10 you will have a usable photo. The lower the ambient light, the more the sensor will struggle, so keep that in mind.
Night selfies
Overall, the A54 has a very capable main camera that produces excellent results during the day and good results at night. Ultra-wide is a touch above the overused 8MP sensors we can still find in some competitors even at this price point. It manages good images during the day, but struggles at night, as do most ultra-wide images, except on really high-end phones. 2x zoom photos are surprisingly good during the day and generally usable at night, while selfies are pretty good during the day and decent in low light if not too low.
Summary
For the price, the Galaxy A54 has a great display and great cameras. Battery life is, in our book, fantastic at any price . And the same goes for software support: monthly updates are delivered every month as they should be, and major Android updates are released very quickly as soon as Samsung gets their hands on them, which is usually more than two months after release. The new Google won’t last.
These are the high points. Given that this is a mid-ranger, there are a lot of things that, understandably, are just average: we’re talking about handling for those who don’t have big hands (and if you have small hands, you probably want Stay away), fingerprint sensor, speakers and vibration motor.
A UI itself is a known value at this point, which can be positive or negative depending on your personal perspective. On the one hand, it is incredibly easy to start using this phone when it comes from another Samsung. On the other hand, every new version of One UI is incremental and it hasn’t been a big change for a while.
There’s nothing wrong with that, though — unless you count the weird behavior when doing the go home gesture, which almost always results in a bit of scrolling around within the app you’re in before you’re actually taken to your home screen. will be But that might be what bothers us more than you.
The skin-specific features that are already well known are still there: you get two app stores and two of the many built-in apps, one from Google, one from Samsung. The Korean company still wants to play ecosystem, and if you’re into that, then you’re in for a treat. We see a lot of pointless repetition, but for what it’s worth, it’s pretty easy to just ignore Samsung’s apps and rely solely on Google’s.
The main weakness of A54 is related to performance and especially its softness. It’s fairly lacking on the front end, which we can probably get past because it’s not trying to be a flagship, but the amount of minor stutters and lags during our use of it doesn’t make for a smooth phone by any means. In fact, it’s the least flawed phone we’ve reviewed long-term in two years. And yes, the A54 is cheaper than any top-shelf device, but so is the Poco F5, which runs circles around it in terms of smoothness.
As you might expect, the Poco has its downsides: the vibration motor and the cameras are worse, if not by much, but the difference is stark. Additionally, there are bugs that go unfixed for months, and the software updates that do come are fewer and farther between. The Poco has other positives too, like a much better fingerprint sensor, and the fact that it looks more expensive from the front – unfortunately, the A54 only gives off that illusion from the back. When you flip it over, it actually looks cheaper than it’s worth due to the overly thick bezels.
We’re doing these comparisons because the two phones are currently very close in price, but we can’t say which one is the best per se — if you want better software support, display, battery life, and camera. And it can live with a mediocre fingerprint sensor, a shaky engine and a general lack of smoothness, the Galaxy A54 should be your pick. Conversely, if performance and especially smoothness are your top priority, and you don’t mind small compromises in camera, battery life, and software support, you should probably go for the Poco F5.
The Galaxy A54 isn’t a bad phone , it’s a good phone that could have been much better if Samsung had paid more attention to competing with similarly priced devices from other brands. The company seems to feel it can do no wrong with the A5x line, that people will buy these no matter what, so since that’s the case why not maximize profits here and there, right?
This seems to be quite the theme for Samsung of late, as it’s safe to say that it’s headed down a similar path with its foldables. And it works until there is no clear, better alternative available internationally. But sometimes such alternatives pop up, like this year’s OnePlus Open, and then it quickly becomes clear how much Samsung is resting on its laurels.
It’s the same story at this particular point in the midrange. The A5x line seems like your best bet for most people, and it might be, but only if you look at Samsung’s lineup. The moment you compare it to phones from other brands, you get to the point where you really need to consider software support and a much better display and battery life to justify such a purchase. Of course, you can also just play the posing game, and want something that remotely resembles a high-end Samsung, and then all is well, the A54 delivers.
But it doesn’t deliver in all the areas it should, and that’s a huge missed opportunity in our book. Unlike many people, we have nothing against Exynos chipsets, but this chipset is simply not suitable for a device at this price, in 2023. And it’s no big surprise, it’s been obvious since the A54 was announced that this would be the case, but Samsung kept going.
Let’s put it this way: with a better chipset (Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, for example) and a better fingerprint sensor (even if it’s side-mounted), this could easily be a “just go and buy it, thought Don’t “think about it twice” advice at this price. As it is, we definitely suggest that you give it a lot of thought and carefully weigh the pros and cons that we’ve laid out for you in this long-term review based on your specific needs and preferences.
Source: GSMARENA.COM
Google Maps guides you from A-to-B, but has more advanced features. Here are the advanced features of Google Maps.
Introducing the advanced features of Google Maps
You can use Google Maps to check the local weather. According to Android Police, the feature is currently available for the iOS app and the web app, and it looks like Google is currently rolling it out (or at least testing it) for the Android app.
If you’re using iOS, open the Google Maps app and zoom in on a city or region. You should see a small tile below the search bar at the top of the screen that shows the current temperature and a weather icon.
As you move through the Google Maps app, the tile will update to show the local weather. If the tile doesn’t show up for you, tap any location in the current map view, then deselect it. This should return to the default view, including the weather tile.
If you’re using the Google Maps web app, you’ll need to click on a location to access weather information. This time, you will find weather details in the information panel next to the location name.
You can also click on the weather icon to get a more detailed forecast for the location you’re viewing.
Once you’ve chosen a place to visit, you’ll probably want to explore what to see and do while you’re there. Google Maps can help you navigate the hustle and bustle of new places by showing you how busy areas are and even the busiest times to visit attractions, restaurants, and other places.
As you zoom in on a city, the busiest areas are highlighted in yellow. So, if you prefer to stay outside the busiest parts of the city, you can use this information to help you choose the best place to stay. Likewise, if you want to avoid the crowds, you might want to visit the highlights early in the morning.
If you click on a landmark, cafe, or anywhere else you want to visit, Google Maps will show the busiest times, provided the location has enough traffic to provide this data. It shows you the busiest times to visit each day of the week and gives you live data, which shows whether places are less or more crowded than usual.
3. Walking routes of the live show
With Live View in Google Maps, you can use the platform’s Street View overlay to guide you on walking routes. To use this feature, your device must be compatible with ARKit (iOS) or ARCore (Android) tools for augmented reality experiences. You must also be in an area with a street view.
To access Live View when you’re away from home, follow these steps:
- Open Google Maps and select a location to navigate to.
- Drag down the location screen to reveal the Live View icon.
- Tap Live View.
- Point your phone camera at buildings and signs to pinpoint your location.
- Follow the red markers to reach your destination.
Hopefully it goes without saying, but Live View is only designed for navigation on foot, not in moving vehicles. You can also use this feature to navigate and make sure you’re on the right track. This can save your battery (and data!) if you have a long walk ahead of you.
4. Find the most optimal route before departure
If you rent a car on your travels, using fuel-efficient routes can help you cut costs and reduce your environmental impact. Google Maps will automatically recommend the most economical route if you’ve enabled the option to prefer fuel-efficient routes in the settings.
- Open Google Maps.
- Tap your account icon to the right of the search bar.
- Select Settings.
- Go to Navigation settings and tap on it.
- Scroll down to Route options.
- Activate Prefer fuel-efficient routes.
Now, to get the most fuel-efficient route for a road trip, use the Directions feature in Google Maps as usual:
- Enter your destination in the search bar.
- Click on Directions.
- Enter your starting point (or choose your location).
- Make sure the drive icon is selected below the search bars.
5. Save a route for later
You can save routes in Google Maps for later, allowing you to plan trips in advance without repeating the same steps when it’s time to hit the road. To save a route, all you have to do is tap the Pin button on the selected route tab. Once this is done, the button’s label will change to Pinned, indicating that the track has been saved for later.
You can also save routes for other modes of transportation: walking, public transit, etc. This means you can plan those routes to attractions, interesting restaurants, and anywhere else before your trip and quickly access them when you need them.
- Open the Google Maps application.
- Tap on Go in the menu at the bottom of the screen .
- Select the pinned track you want to access from the list.
When you select a route, you will receive updated travel information for estimated arrival times and any disruptions that may cause delays.
6. Download Maps For Overseas Travel
Google Maps is a great travel tool, but it doesn’t help much if you lose internet access on the road. Fortunately, you save maps for offline use before you travel, so you can still navigate without internet access.
- Open the Google Maps application.
- Search for a location (eg, San Francisco).
- Pull up the location tab in full screen mode.
- Tap the three dots icon at the top right of the screen.
- Select Download offline map.
You can still access driving directions using offline maps as long as the entire route is available on the saved map. Keep in mind that when using maps offline, you won’t get travel information or features such as alternate routes, most economical routes, etc.
7. Share your location to make solo travel safer
If you’re traveling alone, sharing your location with someone you trust is a safety travel essential. Whether you’re traveling solo abroad or hiking, sharing your location can help authorities intervene more quickly if there’s a problem.
- Open the Google Maps application.
- Tap your account icon to the right of the search bar.
- Select Share Location.
- Tap on Location sharing.
- Set the sharing time or select Until you turn this off.
- Select the contact(s) you want to share your location with.
- Tap Submit.
Traveling solo is a different experience and overcoming challenges like not knowing the language is all part of the fun. It’s possible that nothing serious will happen, but in the unlikely event that you need emergency help, location sharing can save your life.
Whether you’re planning your next trip or need help finding the best restaurants in a new city, Google Maps has you covered. With live information, you can choose the fastest or least expensive routes for road trips and see how crowded places are to avoid the crowds.
You also have the latest weather forecasts to help you choose the best days to travel and avoid getting caught in the rain. Saving routes for the future and downloading offline maps makes life easier after you’re on the move, and sharing your location can protect you and anyone you’re traveling with. With Google Maps, there’s no excuse for getting lost or running out of ideas for things to do on your trip.
The best student Chromebooks are affordable alternatives to the best Windows laptops and the best MacBooks for both students and those working in education.
The best student Chromebooks 2023, buying guide
In addition to affordability, strong battery life is another feature offered by most Chromebooks. This is useful for students, especially since a single charge can usually get you through a full day of school or college classes. Some even have touchscreens or the ability to fold the screen into a tablet, giving them more versatility.
And as mentioned above, Chromebooks are affordable. While even the most entry-level MacBooks sell for around $900, a mid-range Chromebook can cost up to $300. Plus, for high-income college students or even teachers, there are premium options in the $500-$700 range.
Below, we’ve listed some of the best student Chromebooks you can buy.
Read more: The best gaming PCs 2023, buying guide
The best student Chromebooks you can buy today
1. Samsung Chromebook 4
Technical Specifications
Reasons to buy
- Long battery life
- Thinner and lighter than competitors
- good performance
Reasons to avoid buying
- Dim the screen without touch
- Average voice
The best student Chromebook for those on a budget, the Samsung Chromebook 4 really impresses with its battery life. This laptop surfed the web for more than 10 and a half hours with a single charge. The chromebook 4’s aluminum finish makes it look like a much more expensive computer — though it has a plastic base. Performance is another highlight of this Chromebook, allowing for much faster multitasking than expected at this price point.
The Chromebook 4 is also lighter and slimmer than competing 11.6-inch Chromebooks, though we wish the display supported touch input. Its display offers acceptable performance, but don’t expect to see a lot of color or detail when watching movies or browsing YouTube. Speakers are fine, but you might want to bring your own headphones.
For students on a budget, this Chromebook offers a lot for a relatively small price. It’s ideal for learning at home, while also offering some features you can use after you’re done.
Price on Amazon: $104.88
Technical Specifications
Reasons to buy
- Long battery life
- Great screen for the price
- Affordable, plus keyboard included
Reasons to avoid buying
- The keyboard is best for small hands
- The hinge could be stronger
The second best student Chromebook option is the Lenovo Chromebook Duet. Sometimes, it’s surprising how much you can get for $300 or less. The Lenovo Chromebook Duet, for example, is a 2-in-1 Chromebook that offers something that Microsoft’s Surfaces and Apple’s iPads can’t: a built-in keyboard. Not only do you get this feature, but the Chromebook Duet’s tablet screen itself is excellent, with an amazing amount of color output and a crisp 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution. It’s great that it won the best budget laptop award at the 2021 Tom’s Guide Awards.
The Chromebook Duet’s keyboard is definitely a bit stiff, but at this price, any keyboard is amazing. Making things even better, the Chromebook Duet offers ChromeOS tablet optimizations that are long overdue to take advantage of all that screen real estate. On top of all this? In our battery test , it lasted 12 hours and 47 minutes, nearly 13 hours.
3. Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2
Technical Specifications
Reasons to buy
- beautiful design
- Beautiful QLED screen
- Battery life is improved
Reasons to avoid buying
- The keyboard could be better
- Touch screen input may be inconsistent
The third option of the best student Chromebooks is the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2. Removing the 4K display from the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook was probably the best thing Samsung could have done to popularize this Chromebook. It’s now even more affordable for students, but still has a great QLED display and longer battery life – 7 hours and 50 minutes compared to the previous generation’s 5 hours and 55 minutes. It’ll also sound great, plus its Core i3 configuration will provide plenty of speed for Chrome OS.
We weren’t happy with the vertical travel on its keyboard, which is a bit shallow. This creates a slight learning curve that you will adapt to over time. Plus, the Galaxy Chromebook 2 is a great value at $399 (Celeron) or $549 (Core i3). We love it so much that we awarded it Best Chromebook in the 2021 Tom’s Guide Awards .
Price on Amazon: $328.09
Technical Specifications
Reasons to buy
- Excellent battery life
- Bright and colorful screen
- Amazing performance
Reasons to avoid
- Average speakers
- Small keyboard
The fourth option is the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, the best student Chromebook. When shopping for a great student Chromebook, you should look for a device that is affordable, offers good performance, stylish design, and durability. The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 nails this combination.
That’s partly due to its Intel Core i5-10210U CPU, which provides plenty of speed for Chrome OS (anything more than that is overkill) and 8GB of RAM to handle all the Chrome tabs you can open. use it
In addition, its 2256 x 1504 pixel display provides bright and excellent image output. Additionally, it lasted 11 hours and 54 minutes in our web-based battery test. The only major issue you can have with the Spin 713 is that its size makes it less portable than other options. Admittedly, this is a problem for all 13-inch laptops.
Technical Specifications
Reasons to buy
- Excellent battery life
- Exceptional keyboard
- Gorilla Glass tough screen
Reasons to avoid buying
- Dim and low resolution screen
- No USB 3.0 Type-A port
The Acer Chromebook Spin 311’s excellent battery life and excellent keyboard help it stand out in a field of best student Chromebooks full of small, affordable options. It’s good enough to get a recommendation for the best budget laptop in the 2021 Tom’s Guide Awards . It’s currently only $199 on Amazon .
With a travel of 1.6mm, the Spin 311’s keys are surprisingly comfortable for long periods of typing, and the battery lasted 12 hours in our tests on hold mode, making it a great choice for students who want to type while working. he does. Move.
Just don’t expect a great screen, as the Acer Chromebook Spin 311’s 11.6-inch 768×1366 screen tends to make videos look clean and dim.
Why choose a Chromebook?
As we said above, Chromebooks make ideal laptops for students because of their versatility, ease of use, and affordability. That last point is especially important for those on a budget, as you can often find Chromebooks for less than $100.
The vast majority of Chromebooks have a similar set of features. All use Google’s Chrome OS, which is lighter and easier to use than Windows or macOS. Chromebooks aren’t as powerful as the competition, but they make up for it with their versatility. Thanks to Google Play Store integration, they can run a variety of apps and are ideal for those who are always online.
Almost everything you do on a Chromebook, outside of using non-native apps, happens in a Chrome window. So although they are not the right machines for heavy software users, they are very useful for research, writing and presentations.
Source: TOMSGUIDE.COM
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