Samsung’s not satisfied with only launching the new Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+, and S21 Ultra during the first half of the year, and has announced the new Galaxy A52, Galaxy A52 5G, and Galaxy A72 to join them. However, unlike the expensive flagship S-series, the A-series phones are much cheaper but according to the company, they’re still awesome.
You’re going to hear the word “awesome” a lot when the new A-series is being talked about, as it’s everywhere in Samsung’s promo material. So are they right? Well, there are some subtle differences in specification between them, but for the prices, they’re looking very good indeed. Before we get into that, take a look at the design, which we think looks excellent with its S21 Ultra-style camera lens layout and integrated camera module. All three phones are available in four different colors — Awesome White, Awesome Black, Awesome Violet, and Awesome Blue.
Sadly, the rest of the specifications are not quite so simple to explain, so there’s a lot to take in. The Galaxy A72 is the most expensive of the three at 450 euros or about $550, and it has a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED screen with a 90Hz refresh rate, a 64-megapixel main camera, a 12MP wide-angle camera, an 8MP telephoto camera with a 3x optical zoom, plus a 5MP camera for macro duties. It’s a 4G LTE phone with an unnamed octa-core processor (which we assume is a Samsung Exynos chip), up to 8GB of RAM, and either 128GB or 256GB of storage space. It also has a 5,000mAh battery, a MicroSD card slot, an in-display fingerprint sensor, and IP67 water resistance.
The Galaxy A52 is the cheapest at just 350 euros or around $415, and looks to be excellent value. It also has a screen with a 90Hz refresh rate but here it’s 6.5-inches, plus it has the same processor, RAM, and internal storage options as the A72. The same 64MP main and 12MP wide-angle cameras are onboard, but this time with a pair of 5MP cameras for macro and depth photography. It’s also a 4G LTE phone, and has a 4,500mAh battery inside, along with the same IP67 water resistance rating, MicroSD card slot, and in-display fingerprint sensor.
Finally, the Galaxy A52 5G costs 430 euros, or about $510, and adds 5G connectivity, obviously, plus it increases the screen refresh rate to 120Hz on the same 6.5-inch Super AMOLED panel as the regular Galaxy A52, but is otherwise identical. All three share many features. It’s great to see optical image stabilization (OIS) on all three main cameras, the OneUI 3 user interface over Android 11, Dolby Atmos support and more powerful speakers, and some clever software to deliver an emergency 30 minutes of battery life when you really need it. Samsung says to expect two days’ use out of all the phones before needing a recharge.
There are plenty of fun software features in the Galaxy A52 5G and Galaxy A72’s cameras too, including 4K Video Snap to take an 8MP still during a 4K video recording, 30 different scenes recognized by artificial intelligence, an enhanced set of emoji for video, and Fun Mode which has been developed with Snapchat to add augmented reality (AR) filters to videos and photos.
Samsung hasn’t confirmed the release dates for the three new Galaxy A-series phones, or whether the U.S. will get all three models, or how much they will cost. We’ll update here as soon as the details come through.
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