What do I think of the A50 from Samsung? Keep on reading to see all about this review.
It’s a great device which is a step in the proper direction a mid-range device should be. The display is just stunning, this all because of the AMOLED panel.
The devices back panel can give an interactive fun experience with unique themes built into the case. We can also add that the longevity of the battery is a fun experience. Who would have thought that a midrange could get almost 2-days of battery?
The Samsung Galaxy A50 does fall short in some aspects. The camera doesn’t perform well under low light conditions whereas some of its competition is already doing much better. The general feel of the OneUI is a bit sluggish.
The under-display fingerprint scanner did not work, I kept getting a message stating that the device stopped responding frequently. It continued to occur even after a factory reset, leading me to believe that software might not be the cause of the issue.
I know that the idea behind the A50 was to provide a well-rounded experience of a premium device at the lowest cost possible. I don’t feel that Samsung is there yet. Competitors like Motorola have already cornered the market. Samsung is going to have to bite the bullet, keep cost low and provided even more. The software experience needs to be refined even more before I can safely enter the arena and say BOOM this is what you need!
The A50 price range is between $349.00 & $489.99 Canadian. You can get it with 64GB or 128GB of storage from various retailers or carriers.
The design of the device gives you a waterdrop notch with thin bezels. I’ll point out that I do enjoy bezels as it provides me with more grip when holding my smartphone. I do understand that it takes away from the overall screen real estate.
The A50 is a solidly built smartphone which can resist drops and abuse. Yup, I’m looking at you all the clumsy people. Samsung also includes the infamous 3.5mm jack on the A50. At this time, I’ve converted to Bluetooth Audio and I see less and less of relevance for the jack. I know something people are going to scream at me about this, but it is what it is.
A charming 6.4-inch super AMOLED display adorns the Samsung Galaxy A50. The experience is a Full HD+ resolution. Taking the body to screen ratio this is 91.6%. The glass panel is made of Gorilla Glass 3 to prevent it from scratching. I also tend to add an extra layer of tempered glass on the top to be safe.
Of course, the top of the screen offers the notch experience which encapsulates the selfie-camera. The camera gives you 25MP with only an f2.0 which implies that there might not be adequate light being provided for a good selfie-camera experience when in lower light situations.
The triple-cameras setup that Samsung has composed on the A50 is beautiful. The live focus which tries to do the bokeh effect can be hit or miss. It often had an issue with the depth of field and subject position. I took numerous pictures mostly during the day as it wasn’t able to take good pictures at night.
I took a spin with the ultra-wide-angle option that the Samsung Galaxy A50 offers. The pictures I snapped we’re very nice. I took some stunning pictures; The realism, the colour pallet, the vividness of them all.
The tri-camera set up on the A50 which consists of a primary 25MP camera with an f/1.7 aperture, a 5MP depth-sensing camera with f/2.2 aperture and an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens with 123-degree field of view.
Let’s get technical with what’s inside the device. The Exynos 9610 chipset features four Cortex-A73 high-powered cores clocked at 2.31GHz and four power-efficient Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.74GHz. If you play games the graphics processor the Mali-G72 GPU is what will drive those graphics.
Although Samsung has gone to great length to ensure that the OneUI experience would be sleek, smooth and just fun to use it hasn’t been without its issues. You can notice the jitters and the latency on some actions.
The A50 offers anyone who’s interested a 4000 mAh battery which can be charged from 0 to 100 in 1.5 hours. The device supports 15W charging for a fast charge. It translates to almost 2-days worth of juice. This will depend on the use case.
Of course, Samsung is always refining the interface and I’m sure that given a few more iteration of the OneUI will work flawlessly on any device. The A50 runs Android 9 (Pie) out of the box and this makes me quite happy.
I would also much prefer if Samsung tried to stop pushing their “own” apps over the more stables one from Google. I agree this is where everyone should just pick and choose what works for them.
The A50 handles the day-to-day tasks ranging from web browsing to messaging, playing games and just what overall most people would do. The YouTube, Netflix or media consumption is enjoyable and I’m pleased with this device overall.
My overall experience with the Samsung Galaxy A50 was pleasant and I enjoyed using it. The caveats noted earlier are not enough of a deterrent to stop me from using it as a daily driver. The Samsung Galaxy A50 scores a 3.5 out of 5 with me.
For the hardware specification please take a look at the chart below. I’ll also leave links and reference material for people who might be interested in checking out the Samsung Galaxy A50.
