this is the Samsung Galaxy a51 the company's answer to the mid-range
smartphone market in 2020 now if you recall last year right about the same
time I got the chance to check out the Galaxy a50 which was this fellas
predecessor it had a beautiful display the battery life was also really good
and most importantly it was priced at 350 dollars in some cases you were able
to pick it up for $300 which was a steal in my opinion in fact the a50 was one of
the top-selling smartphones around the world competing against
Apple's iPhones that conveys a strong message most people just don't care
about having the fastest flagship smartphone because you know they just
want something basic they don't want a million features that brands use as
marketing points to sell their $1000 phones the launch price of the a51 is
399 dollars so it's a $50 premium compared to the Galaxy a50 when it was
launched but these phones can be picked up for less depending on sales events
and all that kind of stuff so watch out for that
that being said compromises had to be made by these brands to hit that price
point and that certainly affects the overall user experience some of the
issues I had with the a50 was the lackluster performance the cameras
wearing the greatest especially when compared to the pixel 3a which was right
up its alley in that price range so has Samson addressed or happy at least tried
to improve some of those issues from the a50 with the a51 let's find out after
this of course their dark core RGB Pro is a mouse for every type of gamer with
50 million braided armor on switches lighting blink 2 side grips for better
comfort a type-c connector with 50 hour battery life and a three-way operation
mode with course there's a slipstream hyper fast wireless technology check it
out below alright so from a physical aspect they haven't made any major
changes you're still getting a plastic back with metal side railings just like
the a50 so it's not a scratch proof as glass backs but it's less
here to crack like glass which is a benefit if I were you I just Rock a case
just to be safe the display has received a bit of an upgrade I mean it's not
substantial but they made it look like a modern flagship smartphone so they've
expanded the screen by 0.1 inches eliminated the notch on the a50 and
when with an infinity o design or in other words you get a punch hole camera
they're also using the same AMOLED display on the a50 rocking the same
resolution I'll be you get extra pixels vertically because of that screen
expansion and that's it does it have a high refresh rate no does it have
support for HDR 10 Plus video no does it even look good yes absolutely guys it's
still a beautiful screen with great color vibrancy and deeper blacks it
looks just as good as a flash your smartphone and I appreciate the fact
that it's still a flat screen without any curves look the display is the most
important factor of any smartphone and I'm glad Samsung hasn't cut any corners
here unfortunately Samsung has still kept the single mono speaker at the
bottom which can easily be blocked with your finger when you're holding it in
landscape mode it sounds okay it certainly doesn't get any louder I would
have preferred a dual speaker setup on the a51 that would've been a nice
upgrade over the a50 but we're not getting that with this phone but on the
positive side we still get a headphone jack yeah remember that guy the 3.5
millimeter thingy I'm glad that they've still camped it the in display
fingerprint sensor is still here unfortunately just like the a50 I
haven't had the best luck when it comes to unlocking the device successfully it
refuses for like four times and then the fifth time it works odd just fine in
some cases it locks me out and it asked me to try in 30 seconds so I have to
force myself to use the swipe pattern which is the second way of unlocking the
device I mean it's I have had better luck with the pixel 3a and of course the
s20 which is much more expensive smartphone but I really want to know
your thoughts about this would you rather prefer having a display or an in
display fingerprint sensor on a cheap smartphone instead of a dedicated one at
the back that's actually easily accessible and something that actually
works most of the time because I feel like this is certainly one of the areas
that is like a hit or miss on a lot of mid-range smart
but I'm curious to know about your thoughts in the comments ask for the
rest of features well there isn't anything new compared to the a50
they've still kept a microSD card slot for storage expansion which I'm sure a
lot of you would appreciate there's no support for wireless charging nor does
it even have an official IP rating which all makes sense because those
certifications and tech costs money the specs are also pretty similar for the
most part compared to the a50 so it has an X notes 96 11 versus the X notes 96
10 but these SOC s are essentially the same except for the fact that you can
record high resolution video they also have the same amount of RAM do note that
in some regions Samsung is offering six to eight gigabytes of RAM which should
significantly help with performance storage also remains the same battery
size hasn't changed either perhaps my biggest frustration with this phone is
the performance now I need to be completely transparent with you guys as
a content creator I am fortunate to get my hands on the recent latest flagship
smartphones featuring the fastest specs and all the bells and whistles that come
with the package I'm also to an extent spoiled by the displays that come with
high refresh rate more RAM fast s who sees etc and so the switch to the a51
almost felt like I had to trade a Lamborghini for eight Toyota Yaris that
makes sense basic things like launching Gmail
Spotify YouTube Instagram takes at least two to three seconds to load that might
not sound like a lot but I mean coming from a flash smartphone it is a lot to
me personally the animations are jittery scrolling through Twitter and my
Instagram feed was really not that smooth as the page took a few seconds to
catch up if you use Google Maps extensively you have to be really
patient with the content to load up multitasking performance is also not the
greatest and there is a good reason for that my sample comes with 4 gigabytes of
RAM and my average usage is around 3 gigabytes which really pushes the limits
on this phone now there are a few workarounds to this you could enable
developer options through the settings and then reduce the animation speeds or
completely turn it off which should help the absolute instantly and it should
take away the jitteriness that you'll experience with this phone when you set
it up out of the box let's keep in mind that content still
takes time to load up and it also doesn't help with memory management
either now as much as I'd love to say that specs don't matter on phones these
days it kind of does on the a51 because this phone is running Android 10 with
Samsung's one UI and it's the exact same software experience as what you'll get
with the S 20s twenty plus and the s 20 ultra Samsung hasn't made any software
enhancements to make sure that the operating system runs efficiently on
this little speck hardware think of it as a gamer if you're looking to play the
most demanding titles and the best highest possible frame rates to get a
smooth experience you would invest in an expensive GPU that's 500 perhaps even
$1000 but if you play those most demanding titles on 100 to $150 GPU the
I mean you get the point I really think that software is the bottleneck on the
a51 perhaps a lighter version of Android that's less resource hungry would yield
a better experience I would actually recommend picking up the six key byte or
a key buy variant if you can find one because that should significantly help
with a performance or multitasking performance on this phone and the
positive side battery life has been phenomenal on the a51 I had a great
experience with the a50 same story continues with this smart phone you
shouldn't worry about battery life whatsoever you can easily push this to
maybe 2 days worth of use and that's me is a win-win the last thing that I want
to cover here is the camera performance the a fifty one comes with a quad camera
set however the only two cameras you'd actually care about is the 12 megapixel
ultra wide-angle and the 48 megapixel standard wide-angle you don't get a
telephoto lens but there is a 5 megapixel depth sensor for portrait mode
and a 5 megapixel and macro camera let's start with the ultra wide something that
you need to be aware of they said there's absolutely no focus control when
you use this lens which is disappointing thankfully you can still adjust exposure
and the images coming out of the sensor look pretty good
mostly images lack detail and Samson applies that smoothing filter in post
keep in mind I have seen optimizer turned off and everything you're seeing
here is shot in auto mode with HDR turned on I also noticed that the
shutter lag was way too long so trying to take a photo you have to stay
stable for at least three seconds for to process it can get really annoying
sometimes HDR is a hit or miss in some cases it works out really well but I
need to point out that the colorscience is completely out of whack the tone
shifts a lot towards magenta and the lower performance is well let's just say
for a phone a telephone don't expect too much the main 48 megapixel light sensor
is noticeably better on the one found on the a50 there is good detail dynamic
range and contrast but like I said earlier the colors are just not true to
life for the most part in some cases it tends to overexpose shots but if you're
patient enough with trial and error you can end up with some pretty good results
I've also noticed that Samsung has toned down the saturation on the recent phones
and I appreciate that here's an example of the weird colors it captures so this
is the charging cable for oneplus devices if you own a oneplus device you
know for a fact that it's a vibrant red cable but this phone for some reason
things that it's pink I shot the same subject on my pixel for for comparison
to show you what it actually looks like hope you were able to take away
something from that portrait mode or live focus is okay
I mean don't expect to be blown away because once again this sensor just
can't process colors accurately the 5 megapixel macro camera was surprisingly
really good you can be really creative with this lens if you give it more light
it's way better than the 2 megapixel sensor we're seeing on other phones
these days this is the front-facing camera test on the galaxy a50 now one of
the cool things about the Exynos 96 11 CPU is that it can allow the camera to
shoot at a high resolution and process that so as you can see this is what it
looks like dynamic range is pretty terrible it's obviously not close to
what you'll get with the s20 phones but it is passable alright so I switched
over to the rear camera on the a51 and it can shoot 4k which is nice and you
can also use the wide-angle lens to shoot video there's obviously no image
stabilization footage is definitely going to be a little bit jerky the
dynamic range is pretty good I'm impressed for what this phone can offer
especially for the price point I'm also surprised by the microphone quality as
well it's it's surprisingly better than some of the flagships out there but let
me know what you guys think about the video quality in the comments
so here's the take away with the galaxy a51 I think the only improvement I see
over the a50 is the slightly improved camera performance but you still have to
be very patient with that because if you like having the flexibility to switch
between ultra wide and wide angle and if you absolutely don't care about colors
detail contrast low-light performance then this phone meets that criteria and
let's not forget if you value display the most on a smart phone the a51 should
be on the top of your list because it is a gorgeous display for the price I'm so
blown away by that this is a basic phone that gets some of the essentials right
and for most people that's a selling feature unfortunately when you look at
the rest of picture things do tend to fall apart because the cameras are not
that great and the performance is one my biggest issues with the smartphone
especially when you compared to the pixel 3a which is about the same price
it's a year old and it still has phenomenal camera software support and a
really good display there's also the iPhone SC which is the same price as the
a51 and it has a great camera the performance is rock-solid and most
importantly you get software updates for at least five years lastly I should
mention that the pixel forays right around the corner and it is rumored to
be priced around $350 if you're in the market for a mid-range smartphone you
should probably take out a piece of paper and write down these five major
factors that make a smart phone display camera performance software and battery
life and then narrow them down to your preference because there are great
options out there folks on that note thank you so much for watching I hope
you were able to take away something from this video
stay safe it's been responsibly my friends and I'll talk to you guys in the
next one