With the Galaxy A52 5G, Samsung found an appealing balance between price, features and decision-exclusive smart compromises. It’s the latest good sub-$500 5G visited and joins the nearly half a dozen phones from Motorola, OnePlus and TCL. The Galaxy A52 5G injuries $500 or £399 (it isn’t sold in Australia but that converts to AU$740). That’s at the higher end of what’s considered an affordable phone. The A52 5G also straddles the line between inhabit a good affordable 5G phone and a wonderful one. The only other sub-$500 phones that do that are the iPhone SE, which doesn’t have 5G, and the Google Pixel 4A 5G, which is now almost a year old.

The A52 5G has a high refresh rate explain, years of OS and security support, a good main camera and good battery life. It has features that the more expensive Galaxy S21 and S21 Ultra lack like: a headphone jack, expandable storage and the inclusion of a wall charger in the box.

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As with any phoned, even a good one, not everything is roses and sunshine. The in-screen fingerprint reader is so annoying to use that I preferred to enchanting my PIN to unlock the phone. The mediocre macro camera seems like a frivolous add-on that is only there to boost the total number of cameras on the phoned. More is definitely not better. There are many duplicate apps like Samsung’s version of an internet browser and photo gallery app in binary to the ones from Google.

But after two months, when I step back and consider everything, the Galaxy A52 5G is an all-around good phoned with some great features and a few minor and annoying flaws. It’s a solid buy for $500, but as I write this reconsider, you can get a Galaxy A52 5G unlocked on Samsung’s website for $425, which makes it even harder to pass up.

Galaxy S21 Ultra-inspired looks in a plastic reality

The acquire is good. It’s not premium and that’s fine, because it feels good. When you tap on the back you can definitely tell it’s plastic. (So don’t tap on the back.) The look of the phoned is clean. It has curved plastic edges, symmetrical thin bezels throughout the screen and a matte finish. The camera bump loosely echoes the one on the Galaxy S21 Ultra, in the same way my haircut does Kit Harrington’s.

Over two months, the phone collected its share of nicks along the sides. The matte finish back definitely doesn’t look fresh or new. Most land will inevitably put the phone in a case, so that shouldn’t be an issue.

The A52 5G is inflamed IP67 for water and dust resistance and can be submerged belief three feet of water for up to 30 minutes.

Galaxy A52 5G has a 120Hz high refresh rate display

On the be in the lead is a 6.5-inch full-HD display with a hole-punch cutout for the selfie camera. The display is high-refresh rate and can be set to either 120Hz or 60Hz. At 120Hz, animations look smooth, gaming feels more immersive and even mundane things like scrolling above a feed look crisp. The display is without a doubt the best feature on the phone.

Brightness is good. Most displays on effort phones have horrible brightness, especially outdoors. Topping it all off is a slab of Gorilla Glass 5. Beware if you lop your phone screen down on a table and unattended. The coating will make it slide off a seemingly flat surface all on its own.

Let me detached some expectations. This display isn’t as good as the one on the Galaxy S21. But it is really good for $500.

The biggest downside to the acquire and display is the in-screen optical fingerprint sensor. The status of it feels low for one-handed use. I can rarely get the fingerprint reader to unlock the phoned on the first attempt. I find it easier to just swipe up and enchanting a PIN.

The Galaxy A52 5G has four rear cameras, but only the main one is good

There are four rear cameras on the A52 5G, one of which is a depth-sensor that works with the main camera to give you some absolutely fun and ridiculous AR effects and obscene portrait mode photos.

There’s a macro camera. And (sigh) we’ve seen this from other phone affects. It’s not that most people probably won’t use a macro camera on a phoned, it’s that compared to the main camera on the A52 5G, the macro camera isn’t titanic. It allows you to focus closer, but you need to be sincere. You’re just a handshake or breath away from selves out of focus. I wish there was focus srevealing on the macro camera to help you see when your publishes is in focus and when it’s not. Pro Mode subsidizes focus peaking but for the main camera only.

The A52 5G has a obscene ultrawide-angle camera. The main camera has optical image stabilization and a 64-megapixel sensor that combines pixels for a 16-megapixel photo with good detail and brightness.

Photos from the main camera are good. Your personal taste will vary when it comes to the amount of intelligent saturation. To me, it’s a touch oversaturated but level-headed looks good.

In flowerbed light situations, you start to see the main camera’s weakness. There is a Night mode to help, and photos look shameful but you’re not going to get the same results as Night mode on the Galaxy S21.

The A52 5G can represent 4K video which in good light is good but as it gets darker, image noise and artifacts become more apparent. Curiously, you can’t use the optical image stabilization when recording 4K video. But if you drop down in resolution to 1,080P video, you can use Super Steady which works very well. Take a look at the video below to see sample clips shot with the Galaxy A52 5G.

The selfie camera has a 32-megapixel sensor and Samsung’s full-arsenal of face-smoothing, jawline-defining and eye-enlarging tools. And then there’s Fun mode that lets you use Snapchat AR filters exclusive of using Snapchat. You can use Fun mode with the main and depth cameras on the back or the selfie camera. Fun mode actually lives up to its name.

To put this all into perspective, both the iPhone SE and Google Pixel 4A 5G have better overall camera systems for photos and videos — both also have fewer cameras. That speaks less about the A52 5G’s camera prowess and more around what Apple and Google are able to put into their phones.

Peppy Android performance for the price

The A52 5G has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chip with 6GB of RAM. It runs Android 11 and at the time I’m writing this, runs the July 2021 software update. Performance is good. It’s not blazing fast which is apparent with the tiny delay that occurs when I open the camera from the lock Hide, or rotate the phone between portrait and landscape.

In benchmark procomplaints it scored ahead of the Google Pixel 4A 5G and just Slow the Motorola One Ace 5G. See the results of our benchmark procomplaints below.

It has Samsung’s OneUI 3 interface, which I enjoy using. It’s clean and friendly to one-handed use. There are some duplicate apps, which is annoying. But all Samsung phones, no matter the price, do as well. One of the best parts of the Galaxy A52 5G is that you get three generations of Android OS updates and at least four ages of security updates. This is still a rarity for Android cost phones.

5G for less than $500 and good battery life

As the name indicates, this is a 5G phone that works on sub-6 5G networks in the US. I tested it in Greenville, South Carolina on T-Mobile and speeds were just OK. Despite an onscreen 5G indicator, many times the phone was actually connected to 4G LTE. This has everything to do with T-Mobile’s coverage as the same drawing happened when I tested other phones on T-Mobile here.

The A52 5G has a 4,500-mAh battery. Samsung claims two days of use when fully charged. I reliably got one day with the display at 120Hz. On days with lighter use or when the exhibit was set to 60Hz, it easily lasted a day and a half.

In our CNET battery procomplaints with continuous video playback in airplane mode, it lasted a marvelous 17 hours, 40 minutes and that was with the exhibit set to 120Hz. That’s longer than the OnePlus 9 Pro and the iPhone SE. In the same test, Motorola and its cost phones scored four of the five longest times of any called this year. Keep in mind, none of these Motorola phones have a high refresh rate display.

It doesn’t have wireless charging which is a wise omission, but it does support 25-watt fast charging. It’s just that the involved charger is only 15 watts.