Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G: How did the best-selling phone turn out?

In March of this year, the ambitious Samsung Galaxy A52 5G saw the light of day, which was replaced by a version in August Galaxy A52s 5G. This is a typical upper middle class that aims to bring premium touch to this price range. When we went through the other reviews to find out what impression the phone left on foreign colleagues, they were not afraid to use the term budget flag. According to the Heureka server, this is currently the case at all the best-selling phone in the Czech Republic and the responses to it are generally positive.

Therefore, we announce in advance that we had from this mobile phone relatively high expectations. Given that we had the opportunity to test the phenomenal OnePlus Nord 2 5G, which is the main competitor of the Galaxy A52s 5G, some time ago, we have some idea of ​​what a phone of a similar price category should look like.

Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G

Package Contents Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G

In addition to the phone itself, you will also find the Samsung Galaxy A52s in the package booklets, 15W charging adapter, charging cable and SIM card eject clip. That’s it. No base case, no headphones. This is definitely a shame, especially when the competition usually at least supplies a silicone case to their phones in a similar price range.

Quality of workmanship and appearance

The Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G is a nice phone. The South Korean manufacturer cannot be denied design simply succeeded and everything is underlined by a wide selection of color variants. The green version we tested is elegant and although we could imagine that the color will be a bit richer, we like it. However, if you are waiting for a phone that will look premium when you hold it in your palm, you can forget about it right away. In other reviews, you can read that it is construction made well, which is true, but for us it is simply not enough. We do not want to say at all that the phone is rattling or not fitting, quite the opposite.

But when you pick up OnePlus Nord 2 5G and then Samsung tested by us, you won’t believe how abysmal the difference between the two phones is. We are talking mainly about the back, which is glass for OnePlus, plastic for A52s 5G. You may argue that plastic backs are more practical and you should definitely be right. We would just like to warn potential applicants that if you think you will receive a budget flag, you could be a little disappointed with the quality of the processing.

It doesn’t help at all terrible haptic response, which we had to turn off the first time we turned on the phone. You have to forgive us for the frequent comparison with the second-generation Nord, because it is simply offered and it is appropriate. OnePlus generally has a very good haptic, you can set it in several levels and its use is, as with other tested mobile phones (for example, realme GT or Xiaomi 11T Pro) pleasant.

On the other hand, with Samsung, you can easily cause an earthquake in the side street with insensitive vibrations. If Samsung just couldn’t do it, maybe we would forgive him, but with the Galaxy S21 or the flexible Galaxy Z Fold2, haptics are on a completely different level. That these are much more expensive phones? That is true. Yet manufacturers such as OnePlus, realme or Xiaomi also offer this feature in upper-middle-class phones. Stereo speakers then play only on average and it won’t dazzle you even at the maximum volume, which is lower than we would expect. On the contrary, you will enjoy the presence audio jack, which is unfortunately just an exception today.

Display quality

Let’s move quickly to something positive. Undoubtedly, we must praise the display. Samsung knows them very well, and it also supplies them to phones from other manufacturers. It is about 6.5 ″ Super AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels, 120Hz refresh rate and a maximum brightness of 800 nits. The sampling frequency then stopped at the value 240 Hz. The display is traditional great contrast, excellent black rendering and he has no problem with the sun roasting in it, yet you can see more than enough. It is also located in it fingerprint readerwhich is relatively fast and responds in 99% of cases.

Thanks to the 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz sampling rate, the phone is also suitable for playing games. We tried competitive titles like Call of Duty: Mobile nebo Fortnite and the reactions to the touch are very good. The only thing that freezes is the fact that there is no way to set the frequency to adaptive. You can only choose from 60 and 120Hz mode.

Hardware and performance

The Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G is ticking under the hood 6nm chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G in combination with 6/8 GB RAM and 128 / 256GB storage. This is the only change from the older phone Galaxy A52 5G, kde tikal Snapdragon 750G. The new chipset has four Cortex-A78 cores and an Adreno 642L graphics chip. The phone scored in the GeekBench 5 benchmark 757 points in a single-core test, 2689 points in a multi-core test.

The comparison shows that it is a telephone about as powerful as the Galaxy Note20 series and loses a bit on the Galaxy S20 FE, where the Snapdragon 865 ticks. We have absolutely no problem with performance as such and we have to praise it. Even challenging titles like Genshin Impact you run to a higher graphic setting with stable images. It’s even worse with the user interface and its debugging.

One UI environment

The Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G is equipped with the One UI 3.1 superstructure, which runs on the Android 11 system. Anyone who has used a Samsung phone in recent years will feel at home here. From the first launch, we will find several Samsung applications on the phone, such as Game Launcher, Samsung Free (which you can fortunately replace with Google Discover) or the Galaxy Store, as well as games such as Candy Crush Saga, Solitaire or Woodoku.

Unfortunately, we must continue to criticize here as well. We really try to be as objective as possible, but the A52s 5G is simply not what we thought it was before we first opened the box with the phone. Torn animations, application search lag, weird finger unlock animation, or slow multitasking, which sometimes takes a few seconds before you can start using the application.

In short, we think you are the South Korean company did not win much with the tuning and that is a huge pity. We would be willing to forgive the phone for all the above negatives if it worked smoothly, without jams and torn animations. But unfortunately he doesn’t succeed.

Arguments that it is not a flagship phone and that it is not a lightning-fast phone is normal are completely out of place. The GT Master Edition realme we tested is a phone that is several thousand crowns cheaper, has the same chipset and he simply does not have similar problems. At Samsung, perhaps only the fact that you get plays into the cards at least three major Android updates, for which we praise the South Korean company.

Battery life

In addition to the display, we must praise the Galaxy A52s 5G exemplary battery life. A few competitors could learn here. The phone has 4500mAh batteries, while when we used the phone as our main, we had the refresh rate set to 120 Hz, automatic brightness and we did not limit ourselves in any special way.

We used the mobile phone for common tasks such as working in Google applications (Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Photos ..), browsing Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and using the WhatsApp and Messenger chat applications. We played Call of Duty Mobile here and there and the phone held up without the slightest problem all day, with about 35% of battery left in the evening. The phone will therefore last you a day and a half in normal use.

If you play with the system a bit, you will reduce the refresh rate and use the phone less, you also get a two-day endurance. If you want to charge it, know that even though the phone supports 25W charging, you will only get access to the phone 15W adapter, with which it takes more than an hour and a half to fully charge. This is another decision that won’t give Samsung too many points. Especially at a time when competitors like the real GT Master Edition or OnePlus Nord 2 5G supply 65W chargers for their phones.

Cameras

The Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G boasts four sensors on the back. Namely, it is about 64Mpx main camera with f / 1.8 aperture and optical stabilization, 12MPx ultra-wide sensor with f / 2.2 aperture and two 5Mpx sensors, one macro and the other depth sensor, both with f / 2.4 aperture. Of course, there is no lack of LED flash. The main sensor can record videos in up to 4K resolution and 30 frames per second, unfortunately you can enjoy optical stabilization only when using Full HD resolution.

The main sensor takes 16Mpx photos by default, which are at a fairly decent level. They have typically “Samsungovský” by which we mean more aggressive HDR and richer colors overall. We can’t complain about the amount of detail or the overall quality of the images. Some competitors, such as the OnePlus Nord 2 5G mentioned about 50 times, take photos a bit better, but the phone is rich enough for basic photography.