Is Samsung A52 5G good phone?

Don't let the price tag fool you; the Samsung A52 is a lot of phone for its comparatively low cost. You get some of the best bits of the Galaxy S family, and the absent features are not the sorts of things that most people will miss

What we love

• Excellent battery life
• A great Samsung screen
• Solid photography experience

What could be improved

• Fingerprint scanner could be more accurate
• No wireless charging
• Photo processing is a bit heavy-handed

The essentials

• Performance: Solid day-to-day performance. 
• Battery: Great. Up to two days per charge on the 4G model.  
• Screen: Large and vibrant
• Camera: Good all-around experience, albeit with some heavy-handed processing 

90/100

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There’s a strange dynamic happening in the smartphone market, a pattern that has emerged over the past year or so. Phone makers clearly want to sell us increasingly expensive flagship smartphones while simultaneously offering excellent affordable alternatives.

The Samsung A52 is one of the best examples of this that you’ll come across in 2021. In the same year that Samsung launched the Galaxy S21 range, with prices ranging from $1,399 to $2,249, it has quickly followed up with its A-series handsets, of which the A52 is one of the cheaper choices with an RRP of $599 for the 4G model.

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This is clearly a huge difference in price, but it begs the question, is a phone that costs half as much only half as good? The short answer is: it’s much better than that. 

To begin with, the Galaxy A52 has an excellent display. And not just for the price, this is an excellent display in general. It has a Full HD+ resolution (1800 x 2400 pixels), an excellent Samsung Super AMOLED panel and a 90Hz refresh rate. In other words, it is sharp, bright and everything scrolls smoothly as you use it. (If you opt for the 5G Galaxy A52 model, you'll be treated to an even smoother 120Hz refresh rate.)

The Galaxy A52 has a 6.5-inch display, which is excellent value for the money, but I found it a bit big for single-handed use. I have been using the Google Pixel 5 recently and have enjoyed using the smaller handset.

The first hint that this is a cheaper model is the matte plastic cover on the back of the handset. Samsung has used glass in its flagship range for years, so you might assume that the plastic back gives the Galaxy A52 a cheap feel. I'd argue that most people won't notice the plastic here at all, and that it may save the handset from the sort of drops that usually smash glass handsets. Though I'll admit that I haven't thrown the phone around during this review.

Under the hood, Samsung opts for a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G processor (or a 750G chip in the 5G model), and while this is a step down from the processors in the S20 range, it certainly didn’t have a noticeable impact on day-to-day use of the phone. 

The extra benefit that comes with this combination of lower resolution screen and the choice of processor is exceptional battery life. Many of the flagship phones across all manufacturers manage a single day of battery life, regardless of how big the battery is inside the phone. 

The A52 has a big 4,500mAh battery, but these key power-hungry components are also less taxing. In our time reviewing the A52 4G variant, we routinely enjoyed two full days of charge. The phone also includes 25W fast charging, so you can top up quickly before running out of the house. It doesn’t support wireless charging, though.

5G battery life

It’s worth noting that while there are a number of similarities between the 4G and 5G models, the taxing nature of 5G connectivity may impact battery performance in the A52 5G. We haven’t had a chance to test this, so your mileage may vary.

On the back of the handset is an impressive camera array, consisting of a 64MP standard shooting lens, a 12MP lens for ultrawide photos, and two 5MP lenses dedicated to macro zoom shots and depth perception. 

Of course, you don’t need to be aware of this while happy-snapping photos of pets and cafe food. The camera interface is as simple as we expect in smartphones, and the camera automatically switches between the lenses as it needs to.

Samsungs post-processing of photos is a bit heavy-handed, adding a vibrant sheen to every shot you take. I found that some of my best shots were spoiled by this automatic processing and that I needed to edit the photos to turn down the vibrancy afterwards. For example, it gave my son bright orange hair (when he is clearly a strawberry blonde!) You can turn off “Scene Optimiser” in the camera’s settings, but be aware it is on by default.

Samsung Galaxy A52 - Final Thoughts

Reviewing cheaper smartphones used to be much easier as there were always shortcuts and sacrifices that made it easier to find faults as we used them. With the A52, it has been very difficult to pinpoint parts of the experience that didn’t live up to our expectations. But as I mentioned earlier, this is part of a pattern we see in phones in this price range, like the Google Pixel 4a and the recent OPPO Reno devices. 

We really should stop expecting these mid-tier phones to disappoint and embrace the fact that cheaper phones are the best phones for most people. The Samsung Galaxy A52 has a large, vibrant display, enough grunt for daily smartphone tasks and battery life for days. It is an easy phone to recommend. 

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