MANILA – Samsung’s Galaxy A52 is a nice midrange with plenty of power, features, and storage. However, it faces a slew of new competitors that offer comparable specifications, if not more. Will the legendary brand of Samsung be enough to bring this device ahead of its competitors in this segment?
Mid-range phones have dominated sales worldwide since at least 2019, according to industry trackers. With near-flagship features and more wallet-friendly price tags, the middle of the pack seems to be the place. ideal for sales.
The A52 is priced at 17,990P and, oddly enough, takes center stage in Samsung’s mid-range A-series, with the A22 on the lower end and the A72 on the upper end. We could therefore say that it is the midranger of the midrangers of the company.
For less than P18K you get a pretty powerful phone, with decent specs and a very interesting design. Our review unit came in the “Awesome White” colourway, with a plastic back and an aluminum frame.
To the left are the volume and power buttons, and at the bottom are the charging port, speaker grilles, and surprisingly an audio jack!
The A52 features a 6.5-inch super AMOLED display with a 1080 x 2400 pixels with a 90Hz refresh rate in a 20: 9 form factor.
Like many AMOLED phones, the A52 can be unlocked using an on-screen fingerprint scanner, although facial recognition is also available.
Under the hood, you get a fairly powerful Snapdragon 720G 2.3GHz processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage that is always expandable with a microSD card.
Our review unit, however, was designed with just 4GB of memory and 128GB of storage, but that didn’t seem to really affect performance in everyday use cases.
For snapshots and selfies, the A52 also has 4 cameras on the back and a punch shooter on the front.
The main camera has a 64 megapixel wide f1.8 lens with optical image stabilization. The other three rear cameras are a 12 MP ultra-wide, 5 MP macro, and an additional 5 MP lens for depth calculation.
For selfies and groupies, there’s a 32MP wide-angle shooter that can adjust its range to focus on you, or take a wider shot to include friends or interesting backgrounds in the shot.
All of this is powered by a decent 4,500mAh battery.
You certainly won’t confuse it with an appearance-based flagship from Samsung, but the design is actually quite interesting. While other phone vendors have jumped on the bandwagon of bright, smooth, and gradient colors, Samsung has taken a different approach and gone for solid colors, 2 of which are pastel.
Besides the white variant, the A52 is also available in Awesome Blue, Awesome Violet and Awesome Black colors. Yes, everything is great.
While the plastic back doesn’t exactly scream high end, it does push out on you a bit. I liked that it stands out when placed in a pile of similar looking shiny gradient bricks. And the matte finish on the back means it doesn’t collect fingerprints as avidly as its peers.
Samsung is known for its excellent displays, and the A52’s display doesn’t disappoint. It’s crisp and clear, and the refresh rate makes scrolling, animation, and gaming smoother than most phones at this price point.
The shooting on the A52 was also a pleasant surprise. The ultra-wide (0.5x) camera comes in really handy when shooting in tight spaces or trying to capture vast landscapes. The main camera takes very good photos and can even do a 10x digital zoom which is not as shaky as other comparable zooms. It also does a good job in portrait mode by artificially blurring the background.
The default colors don’t seem to “pop” as much as they do in Samsung flagships, but they don’t look so artificial either.
Night shots aren’t as striking as they are on Samsung’s flagship phones, but they’re good enough for most things except amateur astrophotography.
This phone can also shoot 4K videos at 30 frames per second.
As you would expect from a branded provider, this phone performs the most common tasks and even performs well enough on more demanding apps like gaming.
It should be noted, however, that other phones in this price range now come with 5G connectivity. While Samsung offers a 5G A52, the faster connectivity will cost you an additional 6,000P as it is priced at 23,990P.
However, it’s also worth pointing out that the sellers of some of these cheaper 5G phones have also cut corners to hit their price point. A friend pointed out that a P12000 5G phone she had tested had poor camera performance.
Samsung also offers a more affordable 5G A-series phone, the A22 5G, which costs 13,990P, if you really need to hit those speeds.
It is strange, however, that Samsung chose to specify the A52 with a 4,500mAh battery while the A22 5G has a more powerful 5,000mAh power supply.
But overall, he’s still a pretty good performer.
Samsung Galaxy A52, Samsung Galaxy A52, Galaxy A series, mid-range phone, mid-range, gadget review, phone review