Samsung Galaxy A52 Review: Too Good to be True? By Paul Bradford

This is the Samsung Galaxy a52. It looks kind of similar to the galaxy s21 that I just reviewed, but it's about half the cost. Despite that lower price point, it still has almost everything you could ask for in a flagship phone like a high refresh rate display a quad camera setup and great battery life. So the question is: what corners did this phone have to cut to get down to that lower price point? I paid about 370 dollars for this 4g model, while the 5g model will cost about 540. There are some important distinctions between the 4g and the 5g models beyond just 5g capability which I'll get into later in this video. The design of this phone is pretty similar to the s21.

It has the same glossy metal sides, the same hole, punch, selfie, camera cutout and the same matte plastic back, and this is a pretty large phone, even larger than the s21, but not quite as big as the s21 plus it's right in the middle of those two personally, I prefer smaller phones that are easier to use with one hand and more pocketable. But if you like a bigger phone, then the a52 might be the perfect size for you. I have the white model here, but it also comes in blue violet and black two things. The a52 has that you won't find on the s21 and most other modern flagships, for that matter are the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and the micro SD card slot, which is combined within the sim card tray for up to one terabyte, expandable storage, an amazing addition. If you're always running out of storage on your phone, there's an USB port on the bottom of the phone right.

Next to the bottom speaker, the other speaker is just along the top edge of the phone providing stereo sound. That sounds pretty good. Nothing too amazing, but not bad at all. The a52 is ip67 dust and water resistant, which means the occasional splash of water on the phone won't be an issue. The display on the a52 is a 6.5 inch, 1080p AMOLED display, and it's great it checks all the boxes of a nice display it's pretty much edge to edge, although the bezels are slightly thicker than something like the s21 or the iPhone 12. Colors are nice and vibrant, as you would expect from an AMOLED display, pretty good peak brightness with up to 800 nits.

But the really impressive thing here is the refresh rate it's 90 hertz on the 4g model. I have here and 120 hertz on the 5g model. So in my experience there is a noticeable difference in smoothness between 120 hertz and 90 hertz, so the 4g model might not be quite as smooth as the s21 or the 5g model, but it's also noticeably smoother than other traditional 60hz phones like the iPhone 12 that I'm coming from you'll notice, the additional frames most when scrolling through menus opening or closing applications or playing select games that support 120hz gaming. Having a 90hz display in a sub 400 smartphones is pretty impressive and just like the s21, the a52 can use both fingerprint unlock and face unlock both work very well. The face unlock is a little slower than it was on my s21, but for the most part they're pretty quick.

So the a52 has a total of four cameras here on the back module. So it's got your standard lens, an ultra-wide, a macro and a depth sensor for helping with portrait photos. So you can't actually take photos with the depth sensor. Also keep in mind. There's no dedicated telephoto lens here.

The main camera can take photos up to 64 megapixels, although by default it shoots, bend 16, megapixel stills, I found the photos taken in the 16. Megapixel mode consistently had slightly better colors and dynamic range. Although the 64 megapixel photos were noticeably sharper and in general the photos looked pretty good. They exhibit kind of standard Samsung like qualities with slightly exaggerated saturation and slightly cooler color tones, and I found that when I put it head to head against my iPhone 12, I typically preferred the iPhone's photos, which isn't surprising, considering the iPhone is about double the price. The 12 megapixel ultra-wide on the a52 looks surprisingly good as well.

Photos from the 5 megapixel macro lens didn't turn out too great. I found them to be pretty soft and personally, I don't think I would ever get any use out of this lens. So for me this falls into the category of a more gimmicky feature, but portrait photos look perfect. Samsung phones tend to do a great job of nailing that artificial background blur and the a52 is no exception and low light. Shooting is better than I expected.

It does a good job of shadow recovery while still maintaining sharpness, but it's not quite to the level of the s21 or the iPhone 12. Moving on to video, the a52 can shoot 4k at 30 frames per second through the wide lens, the ultra-wide lens and the front-facing camera. The video footage looks good as well, its sharp colors are nice, and the autofocus is really fast. The dynamic range is okay. I think it could be better, especially with the front-facing camera okay.

So this is the test of the front-facing camera on the Samsung Galaxy a52, and you also get to hear how the microphones sound so recording in 4k right now you get a little test of the dynamic range in the background, but the one thing I did notice is that the electronic image stabilization isn't the best. It sometimes gives that wonky sort of warp effect to the footage. But besides that, I think video taken on the a52 is more than usable. The 4g model comes with 6 gigabytes of ram and an outscore snapdragon 720 g chip with arena 618 graphics. Now, if you decide to go with the 5g version, you will get the 750g processor with arena 619 graphics, so that one benchmarks about 10 to 20 higher than the 4g model spec wise.

This is pretty good for a phone at this price point. If you are looking for better performance, then the 5g model might be worth it, but don't expect either of these phones to go head-to-head against flagships, because these chips are still considerably weaker than something like the snapdragon 888 found on the s21, but in everyday use. I've had very few issues with performance. The one place I noticed a bit of slowdown was in asphalt, 9, one of the more graphically intensive mobile racing games, and I did notice a few dropped frames here and there, but in more everyday tasks like multitasking between 10, plus apps or browsing online, I've had no issues whatsoever. Battery life is also perfect.

Samsung claims, 2-day battery life, and I'd, say that's pretty accurate. Depending on how you use your phone, it has a 4 500 William hour battery, and I've been able to get about five to six hours of screen on time pretty easily. There's no way this phone will die in a day for me, unless maybe I have a long travel day or something like that, Samsung actually includes not only an USB to USB a cable but also a 15 watt power adapter in the box, which is nice to see, we don't get those included too often anymore, and for fast charging. The phone can work with 25 watt adapters, which will supply 50 battery in about 30 minutes of charging. Surprisingly, one of the few compromises of the a52 is that it does not support wireless charging a bit of a disappointment for me as that's how I normally charge my phone okay.

So if you haven't guessed it by now, I'm a big fan of the a52. The a52 is not a no compromise phone, but the compromises it makes are mostly worthy sacrifices. In my opinion, sure it doesn't have the wireless charging or 8k video recording or the snapdragon 888 chips, but for around four to five hundred dollars. It does the basics really well, it has amazing battery life, a really well-rounded camera and the 90 or 120 hertz display is just the icing on the cake thanks for watching, and I'll catch. You guys in the next one.

Source : Paul Bradford