Samsung launched Galaxy A50s with few improvements in India, a few weeks back. With the launch of Galaxy A series smartphones, the South Korean has realigned its focus more towards churning out premium mid-range smartphones, and they are successful without a doubt.
The latest A50s that carries few improvements both in and out fits the billperfectly offering a stylish design along with capable internals. But, there are few flaws, which we assume will be fixed with future software updates. At this price point does this A50s with in-house Exynos process managed to impress us? Find it out to read.
Why you should buy A50S
Best display for the price
The Galaxy A50S sports a 6.4-inch (2340 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ Infinity-U Super AMOLED display translating into a pixel density of 403 PPI. Galaxy A50S sports one of the best displays to consume content on, in this price segment offering a screen-to-body ratio of about 85.1%.
The black levels are deep, and watching media, exceptionally high-resolution content from the likes of Netflix is a pleasure. It comes with two screen modes — Natural and Vivid, where you can also adjust the white balance accordingly. The color reproduction is good with the right amount of saturation and contrast. The viewing angles are good, have a perfectly readable display under bright sunlight too. The proximity and ambient light sensors are present below the display.
It’s worth mentioning that it supports Widevine L1, so Netflix HD. The Infinity-U display as the company calls it is least intrusive when consuming content. In addition to it, there are other options including Adaptive brightness, Bluelight filter, Night mode, customise Edge screen, and navigation bar as well. It’s worth mentioning that A50s has an always-on display option, lacks LED notification on the other hand.
Solid build quality
The first thing you notice when you pick up the device is it’s sleek and lean physique. Second is its rear panel, which has a reflective coating that scatters light through the plastic panel and makes for some beautiful hues.
It has a geometric pattern and holographic effect on the back, compared to the standard gradient back in the A50. The company likes it to call “3D prism design.” It attracts fingerprint easily, so you have to use the bundled protective case. It’s worth mentioning that Samsung provides a silicone case in-the-box.
Talking about the dimension, it measures 7.7mm in thickness and weighs around 169 grams compared to A50 (166grams). Since it’s made of a glasstic body, it lacks that premium feel, but this is way better than the plastic body on the Galaxy M Series. All said and done, the build quality of the A50s looks solid, feels light in hand and pocket.
Offers great camera output at day, but
The Samsung Galaxy A50s employs a triple camera setup stacked vertically just like its predecessor. In terms of specifications, it has a 48-megapixel camera (Sony IMX582 sensor) with f/2.0 aperture, 5-megapixel Depth sensor with f/2.2 aperture for Live Focus, and an 8-megapixel 123-degree ultra-wide-angle camera with f/2.2 aperture.
The front side of the device equips the 32-megapixel camera on the front with a Sony IMX616 sensor with f/2.0 aperture, compared to a 25-megapixel camera in the predecessor.
The A50s optics is an improvement over its predecessor! In our testing, the Galaxy A50s took an excellent picture under daylight/well-lit conditions. Unlike other Chinese smartphones at this price range, it captured the details with true to the nature colors.
The images taken in HDR mode is better with improved contrast and saturation. The portrait shots are decent with good edge-detection. In low-light it the Galaxy A50s fails just like any other mid-range, especially the A50 with noise and negligible details. The 8MP Ultra Wide lens does its job very well since it fits much more in a single frame using its 123 ̊ field-of-view. The 32MP front camera offers good selfies and has the potential to pull off Instagram worthy shots as well.
Indoor
Macro
Night mode on&off
Outdoor
Reliable battery life
The Samsung Galaxy A50s is powered by a 4000mAh battery with adaptive fast charging technology. The gigantic battery that sits inside the device is plenty for a full day’s casual usage and just perfect for heavy usage. So on the whole, in our experience, the Samsung Galaxy A50s battery backup is trustable.
In our One Charge rating, the Galaxy A50s achieved 18 hours and 9 minutes. It took just 58 minutes to charge from 0 to 50%, and it took about 2 hours to charge from 0 to 100% using the bundled 15W charger.
Improved performance
With this ‘S’ edition, Samsung has tweaked the performance for good. It is powered by the latest Exynos 7 Series 9611 10nm processor with Mali-G72MP3 GPU capable of playing PUBG in HDR Ultra graphic settings. This device delivered a mostly stress-free experience, with no other hiccups to note. Multi-window app usage was a breeze as well.
It is shipped with Android (Pie) 9.0 out of the box on top of OneUI 1.5. As we mentioned earlier, we tried playing PUBG, and it was smooth throughout. Check out the synthetic benchmark scores.
Why should you not buy it?
In-display scanner
The Samsung Galaxy A50S comes with an in-display fingerprint scanner. With this, Samsung carried forward the same mistake they did in A50. Our experience with the fingerprint scanner is purely average. At times, it takes two to three attempts to unlock the device. After some time, I stopped using the fingerprint scanner for good. Apart from this, it has bunch of sensors including accelerometer, gyro, compass and more.
Other mentions
The Samsung Galaxy A50s comes with 3.5mm audio jack, dedicated dual SIM and microSD slots, FM Radio, and Samsung Pay. Moving on, the call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops, and earpiece volume was loud as well. Loudspeaker output is average. Connectivity options including Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5, GPS + GLONASS and USB Type-C. Known for its security features, this device is secured by defense grade Knox Security as well.
The Galaxy A50s is priced at Rs. 22,999 for the 4GB RAM with 128GB storage version and the 6GB RAM with 128GB storage version costs Rs. 24,999 and is available across the offline channels, Samsung Opera House, and Samsung e-shop. It is also available on leading online portals including Amazon, and Flipkart.