Galaxy A52: In Depth Review of An Awesome Smartphone from Samsung

There are many aspects that consumers look at when they want to purchase a smartphone. Price, design, looks, connectivity, battery, and many others are considered crucial elements in buying a new smartphone. Upon entering a store or shop, the general public nowadays is served with hundreds of smartphones for them to choose from.

There is no other aspect that is more important to the consumer than the device's price and features. A smartphone packed with amazing features doesn't generally need to come with a higher price. Knowing this, Samsung announced the Galaxy A52 at the Galaxy A series event called Galaxy Awesome Unpacked on March 17th this year.

The Galaxy A52 is the successor to the Galaxy A51, the world's best-selling smartphone in the first quarter of last year, and we are expecting that A52 will also soon be a best-selling smartphone for this year. Apart from performance, of course, many other things can be felt by users. Through the awesome screen, awesome battery life, an awesome camera, you can guess this smartphone's ability for Galaxy A-Series lovers. A super clear screen, a reliable camera that is able to record interesting moments around in an aesthetic way, and a long battery life make the Galaxy A52 a comfortable companion to create your awesome moment.

BODY
Galaxy A52 comes in 4 colors: Awesome White, Awesome Violet, Awesome Black, and Awesome Blue. Galaxy A52 features a camera lined up in the left row at the back of its body, which is quite familiar with the recent Galaxy S21 series. In dimensions, the Galaxy A52 is made slightly larger than its predecessor. Although this increase is not so significant. The device's sizes are pretty standard, 159.9 x 75.1 x 8.4 mm, and weigh 189 grams. The device's weight does surprise us because we expect the device to be a bit heavier looking at the feature it comes with.

From what we have tested, the Galaxy A52 with a 6.5-inch screen fits well in hand. So, operating a smartphone with one hand is still comfortable. The visible changes to the eye can be seen in the punch hole's size, where the size is smaller than before. Samsung also changed its camera housing, making it more prominent and made to blend with the color of the back.

The glass front is protected with Gorilla Glass 5 and what makes us think it will be a plus point for this device is IP67 dust/ water resistant ability. This means that this smartphone is able to soak in water with a depth of 1 meter in approximately 30 minutes. At the bottom, you can see the USB Type C port for charging and data transfer. USB Type C is accompanied by speaker holes, a microphone, and a 3.5 mm audio port. So, you can still listen to multimedia files through earphones or headphones with the 3.5mm audio jack connector.

On the top side, apart from having a microphone hole, there is also a SIM Card slot. As for the SIM, you may choose either using a single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM).

On the right side of the device, there are physical buttons for volume and power. Like other Samsung smartphones, this power button can also be changed into a Bixby button or camera. This can be adjusted in the Settings menu. While on the other hand, not a single button is attached to the side body, which is quite convenient.

DISPLAY
Galaxy A52 is packed with an FHD+ Super AMOLED display and 6.5 inches Infinity-O Display with a 90Hz compatible display reaching up to 800 nits to let you use your phone at ease in broad daylight. Equipped with the "Eye Comfort Shield" function, it automatically adjusts the blue light based on the time of day, content you're viewing, and your bedtime to help reduce eye fatigue. Do bear in mind that this feature is 'off' by default, and you can turn it on by going into your setting. Samsung claimed that it could also make you easier to fall asleep by enabling this feature at night.

CAMERA
Galaxy A52 comes with a four-lens camera is equipped with a 64-megapixel for its main camera, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, a 5-megapixel depth camera, and a macro camera. With the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) features, you no longer worry about your photo's sharpness and clarity. In the past few years, the phase detection autofocus (PDAF) feature has only been embedded in high-end devices. However, nowadays, this camera technology is also very common in affordable devices.

Even more sophisticated than PDAF, optical image stabilization (OIS) technology is a feature that was originally only found in the premium series. Now, more people can enjoy it because the Galaxy A52 has this powerful feature. Combined with a 64-megapixel (MP) main camera with an aperture of f / 1.8, PDAF and OIS will complete reliable photography activities with the A52.

Galaxy A52 is also equipped with artificial intelligence to capture image objects in 30 different categories, including food, pets, and scenery. For night photography, the Galaxy A52 features multi-frame processing for users to produce clear images. The rear camera of the Samsung Galaxy A52 is capable of digital zooming up to 10 times when shooting images. The front camera uses a 32-megapixel camera. This important feature will attract some users as the demand for front cameras increases due to remote work and video conferencing.

NFC CONNECTIVITY
As before, Samsung continues to provide near-field communication (NFC) connectivity for the Galaxy A52. This is one of the important features that are functional in the digital era like now.

BATTERY
The battery capacity is also a sector that did not escape Samsung's attention to be an improvement. The A52 has a battery with a capacity of 4,500 milliampere-hour (mAh) or an increase of 500 mAh compared to the A51.

Charging technology is also improved, from only 15 Watt (W). This mid-sized smartphone is equipped with a 25W fast charging feature which allows the battery to be charged 50% in just half an hour. The intelligent battery calculates the usage status and automatically optimizes it according to your usage.

IN-SCREEN FINGERPRINT AUTHENTICATION
Galaxy A52 is equipped with in-screen fingerprint authentication. We all knew that face recognition alone makes it difficult to use due to COVID-19, where you have to wear a mask outside, so it is a nice point to have fingerprint recognition in your device.

SPEAKERS
Almost all smartphones on the market today have a speaker located at the bottom of the device. One of the drawbacks is that users will find it difficult to capture a clear voice when using it in landscape mode. But don't worry, because Samsung provides a two-speaker feature for a powerful stereo audio experience without you having to use earphones. This will be very helpful when you play games or watch your favorite movies.

Galaxy A52 is equipped with two stereo speakers concocted from AKAGI that will spoil its users when listening to audio or video. Especially with the Dolby Atmos feature, which makes sound details better. In addition, the A52 is also equipped with a 3.5 mm audio jack so that users can freely use wired or wireless headphones.

CHIPSET
This can be considered as one of the unusual things Samsung has done on their A5 series. Instead of using the homemade Exynos chipset, this smartphone is given a Snapdragon 720G chipset made by Qualcomm. Qualcomm has indeed prepared this processor with 8 nanometer (nm) fabrication technology to support flagship performance devices. Thanks to the Kryo 465 architecture and the clock speed of one of the eight cores, which is up to 2.3 gigahertz (GHz), using the Galaxy A52 for gaming and opening various applications will run smoothly. Samsung Galaxy A52 comes with 8GB of RAM. It is not surprising that the results of a number of benchmark tests for the Galaxy A52 are higher than the Galaxy A51, which is equipped with 6 GB of RAM.

In addition, this smartphone can also accommodate lots of files and applications without having to worry about running out of data memory because this latest cellphone from Samsung has a storage capacity of 256 GB which can still be expanded with micro-SD up to 1 TB.

On the performance side, there's no doubt the Snapdragon 720G processor's capability. The presence of the letter "G" behind it indicates that this processor is also intended for gaming needs. Therefore, combined with Adreno 618 and 8GB RAM, this processor can make the gaming experience with the Galaxy A52 smoother.

The Samsung Galaxy A52 also uses One UI 3.1 based on Android 11. This UI can provide a more flexible navigation experience in using the Galaxy A52, whether for daily work, watching entertainment, playing games, or when creating creative content. The UI design also provides a more intuitive experience and consistent interactions by increasing speed, reducing distraction and highlighting important information.

Overall, we would say that the Samsung Galaxy A52 smartphone is suitable for those who are looking for a device with an affordable price but with awesome features.