Last year i says $ 400 from Samsung The Galaxy A51 was too expensive. Naturally, Samsung went ahead and raised the price of its successor, the Galaxy A52 5G. This year’s update costs $ 500.
Before you take out your forks, this new android phone Is have a few new features that justify the price hike somewhat, like additional 5G connectivity, a faster 120Hz screen refresh rate, and Samsung’s commitment to a longer window for software updates – three years Android operating system upgrades with four years of security updates. The latter is even longer than what Google offers for its Pixel Phones.
The A52 5G is a good phone, but it has the same flaws as its predecessor: Its performance isn’t as smooth as it should be, and cameras remain a step behind our favorite mid-range phone, the Pixel 4A 5G.
Rather fluid veil
I’m tough on the A52 because its performance could really be better. Make no mistake, this is no slouch. Inside is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chip with 6 gigabytes of RAM, a coupling powerful enough to quickly launch my apps and run graphically demanding games like Sky: Children of the Light and Genshin Impact. Of course, the game is not as smooth as on more expensive phones like the Galaxy s21, but it is far from a frustrating experience.
The benchmark tests I performed even put the A52 a step higher than similarly priced phones like the Pixel 4A 5G ($ 500) and the new one Moto G 5G Stylus ($ 400). However, unlike these two phones, I still experience regular and noticeable stuttering on a daily basis. Whether it’s switching apps, zooming in on Google Maps, or scrolling through Twitter, the A52 5G spits randomly. I suspect the software is just not as well optimized. (A ton of preinstalled bloatware reinforces that suspicion.) I can still easily get things done, so really, it depends on how much stuttering annoys you.
Those hiccups spoil one of the flagship new features somewhat – the 120Hz screen refresh rate. Such a capable screen specification is rare in a phone at this price point. Traditional phones have a refresh rate of 60Hz, which means the screen refreshes 60 times per second. By doubling that rate to 120, everything on the screen looks smoother as butter. It does! But when the aforementioned stutters appear every now and then, they take away that fluidity.
The 6.5-inch AMOLED screen takes over a bit. It’s crisp, with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels, yet wonderfully bright and colorful. With two speakers that also sound pretty good, I didn’t mind catching up Star Wars: The Bad Lot on this unit before going to bed. Best of all, the large 4,500mAh battery cell won’t give you any worries. I usually ended the day with about 40 percent left in the tank.
It is also a surprisingly stylish device. It’s tall but thin, which makes it not too bulky. And of course, it’s only available in black, but the matte plastic design means you won’t have to worry about rear cracking when you drop it. The phone looks simple but modern, and that aesthetic is facilitated by the thin edges around the screen as well as the hole-punched floating camera on the front.
The other major addition here is 5G connectivity, which is good for the longevity, but don’t buy this phone for 5G. The next-gen network is still sparse in the United States, and although it is available in your area, the A52 only supports sub-6 5G, the version which is not significantly faster than current 4G LTE speeds. Safe to say, you probably won’t notice much of a difference when you switch between 5G and 4G.
