Samsung's Galaxy S line like their S10 S8 phones
are very well known. They market them heavily especially
in North America we see these things everywhere. They're
A line up is not as well known and for the past couple of
years their A line which is kind of their mid tier budget
line has not been great. They have these mediocre
phones and they've let chinese brands just dominate
that market over the past little bit. But this year they brought
something that feels legitimate and competitive
in this market. These are the A20, A50
and A70 phones from Samsung so these phones have been
available in Europe and Asia for the past
month or so, maybe two months.
Ah.. but they're finally coming into north america and the fact
that they're bringing these into US and Canada
is both interesting and somewhat telling as to how confident
Samsung is about these phones in terms of how well they'll actually do how competitive they actually are in
today's market so these are priced at 250
350 and about
550, maybe 570 US dollars
I'm not able to get the exact US price on this because this one is not
available in the US, the other two are. This I'm just converting from Canadian dollars to US, the A70
Now, at this price point for these exact
prices, If I'm being honest, if you're getting
a chinese branded phones like either a Huawei or a Xiaomi
phone you're gonna get slightly faster processors for your
money with the chinese phones. With these three
Samsung phones you're getting a way better OLED panel
you're getting cleaner software, a wide angled camera system
and a brand name if that's important to you now
these are missing some relatively important features such as
things that they are missing that matter to me you don't get stereo speakers
you don't get wireless charging and you don't get any kind of
water resistance so there are phones out there that dont have
an official IP rating like they are not officially certified
for water resistance but they do have a degree of
water resistance kind of built in to the phone manufacturing process
there is seemingly none of that with these phones so
when i pop out the sim tray there isn't even
a rubber gasket on that. On devices like the Oneplus phones
and the pixel 3a, even though these aren't
officially IP certified, they're
is a rubber gasket. So in the manufacturing process
of these Samsung A series phones, they really
didnt seem to care about water resistance now in terms of things they do have
have on these phones now these are probably more important they have excellent
OLED panels these are
really nice looking screens for the price point they also have headphone jacks
they have expandable storage they have big batteries and they also
have a flat screen edge this is something I have talked about
in some of my phone videos feel like some of the
premium phone manufacturers out there put this curvature
to the front display and it just dosen't
really do anything functionally, if anything it impedes the display
it just looks really pretty and I'm glad for a device
like this they kept it flat so clearly
these phones are made for
real use. Not to look pretty in pictures of commercials
but for real functionality now another feature
all three of these share is a plastic back now I'll
be honest for the first few days I used this I actually thought this was
glass because it's got that glass shimmer it's got that
glass glossiness to it but it is actually plastic
while samsung calls it glasstic, but it's actually a plastic back
with that plastic back this device scratches more easily
and because it's got this shiny finish the scratches show
but it's the right decision if you ever drop a plastic phone
it's not gonna shatter it's not gonna spider this is the way to go
and it makes it cheaper right I'm glad that they spent less money
on the backing material and more money on the internals
of they device where it actually matters plastic on a phone at this price
is the way to go. The previous A series phones
they had glass even at the $300-$400 price point
it made no sense plastic was the right choice okay
I'm not gonna do a review on all three of these phones the one that I
like the most is the A50 it's the
$350 unit so I'm gonna focus this conversation
around this. This is $100 more
than the A20 and you get a higher res
screen, it's 1080p instead of the 720p on the A20
you get a zoom lens on the camera you get an in display fingerprint
sensor which works surprisingly well for a $350 phone
it's not super fast like you do have to get used to it's speed
and you also have to get used to the positioning of your thumb when you place it on the screen
but once you used to it, it works well and it's features like this
that make this phone stick out for me it's not like
a flagship killer, now clearly that's not what they are going for they do not wanna
cannibalize the sales of their actual flagship phones but they're bringing
features like this in display fingerprint sensor and just
a solid overall phone experience at
a $350 price point, it's awesome. But
you should be aware of I guess two big
differences between these three phones and
the more expensive flagship phones so I;ll just go over the two
the big one is performance these three phones are
not running the fastest SoCs out there the A50
and A70 are running more mid tier stuff
the A20 is running more entry level stuff it's still
offers great value for the money at
250 dollars but if you're looking for kind of like a
snappy experience and I kind of feel a lot of audience is
I wouldn't go for this one it's not so much the in app performance
or even the UI it's more about switching between
apps. With only three gigs of RAM this is a more limited experience
the A50 is a lot better with
the faster processor and 4 gigs of RAM but I still
did notice some pretty aggressive app closures and I do think
it's a matter of RAM management, Samsung's never been awesome at it
I really wish I was getting
better performance with this phone because of it's price point but
that's what we have if you're just using your phone
in a more, I guess like a more simple manner
like you're not switching between 5 or 6 apps frequently then you
probably wont even notice it but for the people that are
used to multitasking and want to multitask then
you will notice a difference in performance between this and
something with more RAM and the six
gigs of RAM in the A70 delivers a more smoother experience but
it is a lot more expensive so you kind of expect that
now the other feature that is similar between
these three phones and different from all the other
flagship phones out there is the camera system
and traditionally Samsung's mid tier phone
line up has usually been packed with poor cameras
and this years cameras are good but they're not
great. I wish I could say they were great but i can't because of the
existence of the pixel 3a and the pixel
3a XL this phone's camera is just so much
better than these three and it;s like similar in price so
it's hard to, it''s hard to call these things anything better than good
if you're taking shots in good lighting conditions or
outdoors it's fine there's some over exposure and
sometimes focusing has some issues but I'm happy with it
it's the low light photos that it has troubles with
it over exposes some of the lights and it just struggles
but to be honest I'm content with these cameras
like for the money just I'm not gonna complain right and
I'm not looking for the best camera if i was
I'd be picking up the pixel 3a, the pixel 3a XL
for this price point but you're getting a really good phone experience
overall with the A series and as I use these phones
for the past little bit it just made me realize that
like I remember Marques a few years ago saying
good phones are getting cheap, cheap phones are getting good
and this to me is like this
is clearly a really cheap phone that is
great. It's pressure from the consumer market and it's pressure from the
chinese manufacturers that have shaped these phones
to be what they are to be as good as they are for as
little as they cost if you are interested in an
inexpensive phone I highly recommend checking out these A series phones
they surprise me like I have never loved the older ones but these
phones are fantastic okay hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you
liked it subs if you loved it see you guys next time