Samsung launched the Galaxy F54 5G smartphone last month in the F series, which actually looks like a successor to the Galaxy M53. This gets a Exynos 1380 5nm SoC, the same SoC used in the A54, and packs a huge 6000mAh battery. Is this worth the price? Let us dive into the review to find out.
| Box Contents |
| Camera |
| Battery Life |
| Conclusion |
Box Contents
- Samsung Galaxy F54 5G 8GB RAM + 256GB in Stardust Silver colour
- USB Type-C to C Cable
- SIM ejector tool
- Quick Start Guide
Display, Hardware and Design
The phone comes with a 6.7-inch Full HD+ Infinity-O Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080×2400 pixels at about 392 PPI. The display looks bright, thanks to 800 nits brightness, a majior improvement compared to 420 nits in the M53, so the sunlight legibility is good as well. It also has good colour reproduction Since it has an AMOLED panel, it offers true blacks. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5.
It has a 120Hz refresh rate screen that offers a fluid user experience with smoother animations, scrolling and gaming. Similar to the other Samsung phones, there is an Eye comfort shield that limit blue light emitted by the screen. There is also dark mode. You can choose from Vivid or Natural screen modes based on your preference, or set the white balance manually.
The phone doesn’t have DC dimming or low brightness anti-flicker mode that is present in some AMOLED screen phones in the price range. I didn’t notice any screen flicker issues in low brightness on the phone. It doesn’t have a notification LED, but there is Always on display option.
On the top, there is an 32-megapixel camera in the tiny punch-hole, and the earpiece is present on the top edge. The punch-hole is small and it is not intrusive. There is a small chin below the screen.
Coming to the button placements and ports, the power button with a fingerprint scanner and the volume rockers are present on the right side. The hybrid SIM slot is present on the left. The primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are on the bottom. The secondary microphone is on the top. The phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm audio jack. Even though it looks like metal, the sides have a plastic frame.
On the back, there is a triple camera module arranged in a straight line without any camera housing. There is a single LED flash. Even though the phone has a 6.7-inch screen, it is compact to hold. It is 8.4 mm thick, making it thicker than than the 7.4mm M54 and the weight has increased from 176 grams to 199 grams since this has a large 6000mAh battery. It also comes in Stardust Silver colour.
The phone has a plastic back with a glossy finish, so it attracts fingerprints and smudges easily. It is also prone to scratches with day-to-day use, so you need to use a case, which is not provided in the box.
Camera
- 108MP rear camera with f/1.8 aperture, OIS
- 8MP ultra-wide angle camera with f/2.2 aperture
- 2MP macro camera with f/2.4 aperture
- 32MP front camera with f/2.2 aperture
The camera UI is similar to other phones running OneUI 5. You can choose 108MP option from the aspect ratio settings on the top, and the default output is 12.5MP after pixel binning. It also has Pro video, single take, night mode, slow motion, hyperlapse and more modes. There is Live Focus mode for portrait. You can also adjust the bokeh effect before or after the shot. There is a selfie portrait option for the front camera that uses software to blur the background. There is also a wide-angle option for the front camera, similar to other Samsung phones.
Coming to the image quality, daylight shots from the 50MP sensor are better than the A53, and the camera captures a good amount of detail, creates well exposed photos with good dynamic range and detailing, and dynamic range can further be improved enabling HDR mode from the settings, which automatically turns on HDR when needed. Ultra-wide shots from the 12MP camera are good in daylight.
2X macro shots from the main camera is good. There dedicated macro camera doesn’t have much details, so it is better to stick to main camera for macro shots. Live focus is good at detecting the edges. Low-light performance is decent, but it could have been better. Night mode offers more details, but you need to keep your hand steady, since it takes two to three seconds to process. 108-megapixel shots have good amount of details. Images with flash is good and is not overpowering.
The 32-megapixel front camera is good in most cases. Wide-angle mode takes images in 12-megapixel resolution after pixel binning, while the normal mode takes images in 8-megapixel. Software blur in the live focus mode has good edge detection.
Check out some camera samples.
It can record videos at maximum 4K resolution at 30 fps from both front, rear and ultra-wide cameras. The rear camera can also shoot 1080p 60fps videos, but the stabilization works only in 30fps when it’s enabled in the settings.
Software, UI and Apps
Coming to the software, the phone runs on Android 13 and got May 2023 security patch rcently. On the top of Android 13, it has the latest Samsung One UI 5.1, which brings several new features such AI-based Photo Remaster that lets you remove shadows and reflections, improvements to dynamic weather widget, Smart suggestions widget and more. On par with the flagships, Samsung has confirmed 4 OS updates and 5 years of security updates for the F54 5G.
The Device maintenance option lets you manage your device’s battery life, storage, RAM usage, and security all in one place. Out of 256GB (UFS) in our unit, 224GB is free. Out of 8GB LPDDR4x RAM, about 7.43GB is usable and 3.5GB is free when default apps are running in the background.
There is also a RAM Plus feature, which uses the internal memory of the phone to expand the RAM by an extra 8GB, in addition to the existing 8GB of RAM. This is enabled automatically. We got sequential read speeds of, 528MB/s which is less than UFS 2.2, so it looks like the phone still uses UFS 2.1.
Apart from the usual set of utility apps and Google Apps, the smartphone comes with Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, Byju’s, Snapchat, Truecaller and Microsoft apps such as Micrsoft 354 (Office), Outlook, OneDrive and LinkedIn. You get the option to install apps when you are setting up the phone, which you can choose not to. It also has Samsung Wallet via NFC. The phone doesn’t have ads, but shows notifications of new Samsung products occasionally.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
The phone has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor that immediately unlocks the phone even when the phone is locked, even though it comes with an AMOLED screen. You can add up to 3 fingerprints, and adding fingerprint is easy. It has support for Face recognition, but we don’t recommend it. Both these are protected by Knox security.
Music Player and Multimedia
YouTube Music is the default music player. It has equalizer, Dolby Atmos, UHQ upscaler, and Adapt that can be enabled from the settings. All these improve the audio when listening through earphones, and Dolby Atmos also works with speakers. It doesn’t have FM Radio support. That said, audio through earphones is good. Loudspeaker output from the mono speakers is decent, but most phones in the price range offers stereo speakers.
The phone comes with Widevine L1 support out-of-the-box so that you can enjoy HD content on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar and other streaming apps. There is also HDR playback support for YouTube and Netflix.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
The Galaxy F54 5G has support for N1/N3/N5/N7/N8/N28/N40/ N41/ N77/N78 Network Bands in India. There is dual SIM 5G, and Airtel and Jio 5G works out of the box. There is also 4G Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and support for LTE-A or Carrier Aggregation.
Other connectivity options include, Wi-Fi 802.11 6 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Wi-Fi-Calling or Vo-Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.2 and GPS with GLONASS. It has support for USB OTG and NFC that works with supported payment apps.
The Galaxy F54 5G’s head SAR is 1.254 W/Kg which is higher than the A54 5G, but it is under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) for India.
Performance and Benchmarks
The Galaxy F54 5G is one of the few Samsung phones to be powered by Exynos 1380 5nm SoC. This has 4 x 2.4GHz Cortex-A78 Performance CPUs and 4 x 2GHz Cortex-A55 Efficiency CPUs. I didn’t face any performance issues, but the Mali-G68 MP5 GPU in the F54 5G faces the same issue that the Exynos 1280 SoC faced.
This is also not optimized for gaming. In BGMI, you can only play games in High graphics option in Smooth, Balanced and HD, and there is no smooth or extreme fps option. It also doesn’t have HDR graphics option. In COD Mobile, you only get Medium graphics and very high frame rate. In low graphics, you get max frame rate, but with Genshin Impact, the frame rate was very low.
When you play graphic-intensive games, it gets too hot quickly. Samsung manages to keep the temperature down by throttling, but the new game performance booster mode in the game launcher prevents the phone from throttling issues, but Samsung says it heats up the phone. It reached maximum 42º in our testing indoors in Wi-Fi, but this might vary outdoors in 5G. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
As you can see from the benchmark scores, the Exynos 1380 is clearly better than the Exynos 1280. In the multicore CPU benchmark score is good, but in AnTuTu, Dimensity 7050 other SoCs are still better.
Battery life
The F54 5G has a huge 6000mAh battery. I got over 6 hours of screen on time with my daily use mostly on Wi-Fi and occasionally on 5G with 1 and half days of use in 120Hz refresh rate. Adaptive battery saving and other options will let you increase the battery life, but the performance might be affected.
Samsung doesn’t offer a charger in the box, but the phone supports 25W charging. With the official 25W fast charger, it takes about 1 half and 50 minutes for 0 to 100%, and 0 to 50% took about 50 minutes. It is still less compared to the competitors.
Conclusion
At a price of Rs. 29,999, the Galaxy F54 5G is a decent mid-range 5G smartphone from Samsung in the F series that has an AMOLED display and a good battery life. Even though there are upgrades such as a brighter 120Hz Infinity-O AMOLED display, improved 108MP camera with OIS, the Exynos 1380 chip is not that powerful when it comes to gaming and there is throttling issue.
Alternatives
The iQOO Neo 7 and POCO F5 are direct competitors that have a more powerful SoCs. Even last year’s Samsung Galaxy S21 FE goes on sale for the same price during sales, but you have to compromise on the battery life.
Pricing and availability
The Samsung Galaxy F54 is priced at Rs. 29,999 for the 8GB + 256GB model. It is available from Flipkart, Samsung.com and at select retail stores.
Pros
- 120Hz AMOLED display is good
- Good camera in daylight, OIS
- Smooth performance
- Promise of 4 OS updates and 5 years of security updates
- Brilliant battery life
Cons
- Phone gets heated quickly when gaming for long
- No stereo speakers
- Average low-light camera performance