Samsung recently revised the A-series smartphones with updated specs and sleek build quality in a promising bid to saturate the sub 20K market with a plethora of fruitful options to choose from.
With the M series and A series, Samsung intends to leave no stones unturned as they attempt to boost sales and reclaim lost ground. Samsung wants to put its best foot forward as they revitalize their budget offerings. It’s a call Samsung wouldn’t have taken in ages if it wasn’t for the Chinese rivals crushing the entire market. The Galaxy A50 is Samsung`s serious attempt to persuade buyers towards its long-held legacy of top-notch smartphones. We managed to get our hands across this phone, let’s see what it’s got under its belly.
Design & Display
Samsung Galaxy A shares a lot of ques borrowed from the Galaxy M30 like its attractive glossy sheen on the back. The body of A50 is also made of plastic polycarbonate to keep the weight redistricted to a gentle 166 grams. However, the back attracts a lot of smudges and fingerprints which necessitates a decent case to keep it free of scratches and scuffs. The design with its rounded edges and even weight distribution makes it ergonomic to use.
The chassis is made up of metal with power and volume buttons on the side and a dedicated slot that holds two nano-sim and microSD card slots. The 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the bottom beside a USB-C type port and a speaker grille.
Gone is the fingerprint sensor on the back as the Galaxy A50 employs an optical in-fingerprint scanner that does it work despite its sluggish response. We found the face unlock to be precise and functional enough, that we ended up using that as a primary screen lock option.
The phone has a massive 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display with an Infinity-U waterdrop notch that is similar to one on the M30. Bezels are minimal with a prominent chin at the bottom. The screen to body ratio is a respectable 85.2% which renders an absolutely beautiful viewing experience. With support for the Widening L1 DRM, the device can stream HD content from Netflix. An added always-on display pops up the notification on the screen to fill up the void of a notification LED. Viewing angles is decent at outdoors with sufficient visibility under harsh sunlight.
Performance
The Galaxy A50 has a new chipset named as the Exynos 9610 chipset, which is built on the 10nm fabrication platform. This is an octa-core chip with four A73 cores clocked at 2.3GHz and four A53 cores clocked at 1.6GHz with Mali G72 MP3 GPU handling the graphics department. The phone comes with optional 4GB or 6GB of RAM with 64GB of onboard storage.
The Exynos 9610 chipset ensures a flawless experience throughout the entire spectrum with smooth FPS across intensive titles and buttery smooth multitasking through several different apps. The processor is tweaked to optimise its usage to minimise the battery drain, but it hardly affects the user experience as everything seems fluid at best. The GPU handled demanding games like PUBG with ease and didn’t stutter even when settings were bummed up to Ultra mode.
The A50 comes with Android Pie right out of the box with Samsung’s own One UI user interface on top. Samsung has loaded its share of bloatware which fills up some considerable space. This bloatware included the Bixby assistant that wakes up using the power button to be at your disposal at all times. Users can choose through the apps he wishes to install on the first setup of the device which is a good gesture on Samsung`s part.
Camera
Coming to camera Samsung has paid a lot of attention to the photography this time around. Samsung`s A game includes a wide-angle lens that lets the user pan more things onto a single shot. The Galaxy A50 uses a 25MP primary camera with an 8MP wide angle lens and a 5MP depth sensor while the front-facing camera unit comes in the form of a 25MP sensor.
The device captures splendid images under adequate lighting conditions which works if you are a social media geek. Images were good with accurate colour reproduction; however, the shots were a bit overexposed. You can opt to take good wide-angle shots which captures a larger real-estate in a single shot.
Low light shots suffered from a lot of noise creeping in the image, the onboard software tries hard to mitigate this issue but it stays grainy none the less. On the flip side, images looked good on the device which was right in the ballpark of what the competition offer.
The 25MP front-facing camera follows the traits of its primary unit with images only coming out good under sufficient ambient lighting. The pictures were decent enough for social media use and occasional selfies.
Battery
The device packs a 4,000mAh battery unlike a 5,000mAh pack on the Galaxy M30. Despite our moderate gaming, scouring social media and a few calls we ended up with 20-30% charge left at the end of the day.
Samsung has bundled a 15W fast charger inside the box itself which takes about an hour to charge up the device to full 100%.
Gizmo Verdict
Overall the galaxy A50 is a solid device that ticks all the right boxes, whether it be the stunning display, fast processor or a good camera. Samsung has laid out its game plan and it’s a well thought one. The Galaxy A50 with its price tag starting at 19,000 rupees isn’t really a game changer but a solid bankable device worthy of your hard-earned money. The device is available for sale on Flipkart and Samsung’s offline chain.
