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Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G Review: Everything You Need

At this point it feels like we’ve said this a dozen times – it’s never been a better time for mid-range phones in South Africa. Each month a few new devices are released, each serving up great specifications and performance for an affordable price tag.

Some even come close to being on par with flagship phones, making them superb value for money. One of the company’s leading this charge has been Samsung and while foldable phones grab the headlines, it is the Galaxy A range that has proved most impressive for us over the past two years.

This brings us to their latest device – the Galaxy A52s 5G.

At R8 999 (RRP), the A52s 5G is on the premium side of the mid-range spectrum and is designed to be one of the devices that can rival a flagship phone.

So can it? We spent the past two weeks with the Galaxy A52s 5G to find out.

Here’s how it performed.

A premium touch

Starting with the design and the A52s 5G looks a lot more like the Galaxy S series than the Galaxy A options, hinting that it features a something a bit different under the hood. That said, the closer you inspect the device, a few things begin to stand out.

The rear cover for example, is not the matte metallic finished aluminium of the Galaxy S and rather utilises a hard plastic and aluminium frame.

It is still a fairly premium in-hand feel, but in terms of areas where the A52s 5G diverges from its Galaxy S brethren, the type of materials used is one.

Flipping things over and that’s where the A52s 5G starts to truly shine. The 6.5″ Super Amoled option onboard delivers some rich visuals (2400×1080) and when the brightness is cranked al the way up, can look quite sumptuous indeed.

There’s also a punch hole housing the large 32MP front facing camera and thin bezels to make content look a few degrees more immersive than we’ve seen on other Galaxy A models.

It makes the decision to not include a cover of any kind in the box all the more odd. It is a worrying trend we have seen with Samsung of late, choosing to ditch the charger and cover on its more expensive and foldable products, but the Galaxy A series never use to suffer from those problems.

As such, if you’re looking at buying a A52s 5G, set aside some budget to buy a Samsung-made cover too.

Great visuals

Shifting back to the great visuals that this smartphone serves up and we have to make specific mention of the camera system onboard.

Samsung has done some great work in this department in recent, particularly when it comes to the Galaxy A series and the A52s 5G was one of the most enjoyable experiences we have shooting on a smartphone in some time.

There are a quartet of lenses at work on the rear and while that may be seen as overkill, Samsung puts each one of them to great use here.

There is the 64MP main lens which offers up the nuance and detail needed to create great shots and this is paired with a 12MP ultra-wide angle, 5MP depth sensing and 5MP macro lens option.

We found the depth sensing one particular useful for portrait photography, framing up subjects well and yielding the ever coveted bokeh effect that many crave.

The front facing 32MP option is also quite good and its relatively generous field of view means you can capture quite a bit more than yourself while snapping selfies.

The entire mix is great at all-around photography and comparable to some of the experiences we have had on Leica-certified Huawei phones in recent years, which is high praise in our books.

For the visuals alone, the Galaxy A52s 5G gives more expensive flagship devices a run for their money.

Proper performer

Now we need to talk about what’s under the hood and how that translates to the experience in-hand.

The A52s 5G is rapid and never showed any signs of sluggishness while we tried to put it through its paces, utilising processor intensive apps and doing as much as possible during the setup process to see if any heat resonated through the back cover.

We can report that this phone performed ably throughout, but to see how it fared when compared to other devices, the usual battery of benchmark tests were needed.

On that front, we found the multi-score test on GeekBench outdid any mid-range phone we have tested to date with a score of 2 798. For reference, the only other Samsung phones to post better scores are the Galaxy S21 5G and Galaxy Z Fold3.

Serving up this performance is an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G, with this 6nm chip supported by 6GB RAM and 128GB onboard storage. The mix is a good one, and the addition of 5G connectivity will ensure you aren’t left behind once 5G is more easily accessible (likely when the next Olympics happen at this rate).

The 4 500mAh battery onboard also ensured things keep ticking over for a full day and then some during our use.

Final verdict

At R8 999 (RRP) the Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G is not on the cheaper side of mid-range phones. It only takes a couple of hours with the device though to see that is a cut above most of the mid-range options out there at the moment.

Added to this is the fact that it has expert build quality, deliver great visuals from its display and captures superb images with its camera system, all while sipping battery throughout the day.

The only issue was a lack of cover in the box and the fact that you’re limited to the Black colour option at this stage. Other than that, if you are savvy, the Galaxy A52s 5G should be your first option to consider if you want flagship performance at a more affordable price.

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