Samsung's new mid-range phone is now out it's the samsung galaxy
a53 5g the model i have here has six gigabytes of ram and 128 gigabytes of storage but you can
get the high-end one with eight gigabytes of ram and 256 gigabytes of storage so the good
things about this phone that really it does have going for it are the flat screen on this which is
a super amoled 120 hertz screen 6.5 inches and it's all powered by the exynos 1280 this chip
and it does have a 5 000 milliamp hour battery which can charge at the maximum of 25 watts the
charger of course isn't in the box anymore and you don't even get a tpu case or even a screen
protector on this phone so camera wise the main camera is 64 megapixels it has optical image
stabilization we do have a 12 megapixel ultra wide and then two 5 megapixel cameras the selfie camera
is 32 megapixels and in this hands-on unboxing video my first impressions basically i will
give you some camera samples from this and my overall experience and so far using the a535g
so our phone here 6.5 inches full hd 120 hertz super amoled screen we've got gorilla glass 5 and
i love the fact that yes it's a flat screen so no curvature to the edges where the colors tend
to shift out not happening here bezels top and bottom look a little large and the sides as well
it's not that bad but i do wish it was a little slimmer so the end screen fingerprint reader
and just demonstrate that now it's quick and it unlocks you can see in about well under a second
i have noticed if you haven't used the phone for a few hours it can sometimes be slow and
then have a little tiny bit of lag after when you unlock it now the front-facing camera here
you see it does have that silver ring around it i'm not actually a huge fan of this it just
makes it stand out a little more obviously that's something that samsung does want with their phones
so we have a plastic frame around the outside the back of it this is plastic too and i like this
blue color i've had it before with the previous model and the camera setup is five cameras so
four cameras here and then the flash and we've got a 64 megapixel main camera with optical
image stabilization 12 megapixel pixel ultra wide 5 megapixel macro and 5 megapixels for depth and
an led flash there so this material doesn't pick up fingerprints it feels okay but yes it's
all plastics and it doesn't feel as premium as their flagships and that's exactly what samsung
wants of course down the bottom we have our sim tray tool it will take two nano sims or a micro sd
card so great to have micro microsd card support but there is no 3.5 millimeter headphone jack
downwards firing loudspeaker type c port does not support video out it's usb 2 speeds and up the top
here we just simply have a microphone yes i still have the plastics on the outside of this because
i'm waiting for my case so that's why i've left it on for now so i don't scratch it up now the screen
by far is the best thing about this phone for me that is 120 hertz super animated screen amoled
being just great deep blacks contrasty punchy colors and excellent uniformed colors they don't
shift out and being a flat screen it's not going to shift out at the edges or anything like that
either too as well so just using display tester here to take a look at a couple of the colors
you see what i mean that the darks here too are just pure black and that's the great
thing about it that no phones really at least mid-range phones should actually be using ips
it's amoled all the way for me i'm pretty sure most people would agree with me on that too so
even though it's stating green colors that's all black colors there and it's all looking
good so the touch is working fine and 120 hertz of course is the main option and that is by default
and i'll just get out of this you can see then a bit of that animation lag that i was talking
about the stutter and then swiping down here too so to show you the options we do get so
adaptive brightness i've got that off at the moment is it working fine i think at times it's
a little too dim and other times a little too bright it needs a bit of tweaking there so we
have eye shield on darkness mode you can adjust the color white balance all of that stuff is in
there high motion 120 hertz but they don't give us the 90 hertz option that i do see with some
other brands which is very handy to have now does it have a pre-applied screen protector it doesn't
so they don't include a case screen protector or charger that's because samsung wants you
to buy all of those extras they make a lot more money out of that but overall it is
a fantastic screen and the best really feature of this mid-range phone is that screen
i've only had this phone now for two days this is day number two with it so it's all just first
impressions here the ui performance what is it like with the exynos 1280 i have noticed that
sometimes the notifications can be a little bit laggy okay i've seen this already on the s22 ultra
and i've talked a bit about that in some previous videos the optimization of one ui 4.1 and android
12. i don't think so great yet especially with these exynos chipsets from samsung it is in the
ui here set at 120 hertz it is fast it is smooth it's just you will get these lags now and then
i've noticed that applications like twitter can be quite choppy and laggy the scrolling when it's
loading things in and once they even load it it's a bit janky at times it really could be optimized
a bit better there and it's just what it is at the moment i do believe they're going to come through
with an update so it does run android 12 and if you look at the software here that the updates
we are on the latest firmware there has in fact been no firmware updates yet for this particular
model but i do believe that samsung will be pushing some out soon especially some just
minor bug fixes the camera is where i do see a bit of lag sometimes shutter lag is noticeable
and it just seems at times when you swap through you have something else running in the background
like even just twitter open and then you decide that you want to quickly take a photo or something
it can be a little bit choppy there with that going through the different modes here you'll
see that with video if i do jump into the settings this is 4k enabled at the moment
you'll see that video stabilization can't be enabled that's electronic
image stabilization the 64 megapixel main camera however has optical so you get
some form of stability there which is good but if you do want electronic image stabilization
you must go over then to 1080p it's the same for the front facing camera you do have their ultra
steady mode but it puts it into 1080p for that and going through this can sometimes again be
just a bit laggy and you see then the animation did a bit of a lag and for the antutu score
that this gets as you see now just over 400 000 it shouldn't really be displaying
and showing these animation there because it's something they need to sort out and my s22 ultra
has the same exact problem so the storage speeds on this i do believe it's ufs 2 spec we have
although i haven't been able to confirm that anywhere but it looks like it to me with these
speeds here so it's ufs 2.1 or 2.2 spec and the random reads and writes aren't actually bad at
all the sequentials are yes of course slower than ufs 3.1 but it's still very good now the charge
time unfortunately i don't have an exact time it's triggering out on here but it takes just
over two hours to fully charge the 5 000 milliamp hour battery at 25 watts so it doesn't support
45 watts it's only 25 and we have other phones that i commonly review especially from xiaomi
that charge a lot quicker and i've got one cup up and coming that charges actually at 120 watts
for around a similar price tag in fact cheaper than this which is good oh that was just something
i pointed out is that the audio bitrate with the video files is reasonably good so 256 kilobits
per second and most other manufacturers use 128 or even 96 so that's one good area with samsung
the microphones and audio quality have been good i'll talk a little bit more about that
soon so i did a stress test and great to see that it doesn't throttle at all only point
five percent so zero point five percent throttling down in the performance the score
quite low mid-range though it's not bad this is the extreme test here which should get it really
hot and it just gets kind of warm it's nothing at all even when gaming just gets warm so great
there with the thermal throttling it does have a pass here with safety net status which is good
and we do have a widevine level one cert with this particular model here as well and camera two api
unfortunately is limited okay we really wanna have full support here or level three for things like
open camera and then gcam ports if you were going to be using them on this phone well um you might
run into a few problems there so hopefully that later will change there loudspeakers on this model
are surprisingly good i think the volume's definitely there with these ones and of course
you don't have 3.5 millimeter which is bad okay i really wish we still had the analog audio out
would be great but it's gone i think it's just gone completely at least with their mid-range
here with samsung's gone okay other brands do have it but we don't hear so ear pieces up the top also
doubles as a loudspeaker call quality with this phone is fine it does have active noise cancelling
for the microphone so it tries to remove some of the background noise when you're placing calls
good and it gets a thumbs up for me microphone quality i've called myself and listened to it
i think it's fine it's good no problems there at all and there's a downward firing loudspeaker here
so i'm going to play a sample now track from one of my videos and 100 volume where you can hear
that there is a tiny hint of bass and the volume overall is good and i like these loudspeakers
over to gaming now with pubg so this title here you can only set just the high frame
rate unfortunately that's all it allows us even on smooth that's it which is a little
bit disappointing hopefully that can change later that these developers allow this chipset
to be able to run the higher frame rate options which i do think that can handle but let's jump
into now a little bit of gameplay and it runs just fine this game and it barely gets warm
too i've noticed because really it's capped at 30 frames per second so it's not even pushing
this exynos 1280 at all octa-core and well someone's trying to kill me already see if i
can get there no they're just running around the corner there but this performance is looking good
and yeah you can get those kills as you can see even though i really do hope that the developer of
this game can allow us to at least run 45 frames per second or even 60 would be perfect of course
which i do think the chipset can do over to our cameras now so the weather here is still terrible
it's been about three weeks of rain which is so unusual but we do have 4k 30 frames per
second with this front facing camera however with the 4k option it does not seem to have
any electronic image stabilization you see as i just move around here a little bit you get some
shakiness come through to it but if you use 1080p it seems to be then using the electronic image
stabilization and that's great now audio bitrate is 256 kilobits per second which is really good i
mean this is better than some flagship phones and having that 4k option is excellent on a
mid-range phone main camera here now with optical image stabilization and the focus on it
is pretty good i don't really seem to be having too many issues what i've noticed though is the
camera app can have a bit of lag to it sometimes when you take a photo when you touch it it will
then go to almost record like a birth shot even though i just tapped it for one second so that's
one thing that needs to be addressed is the lag that we're seeing in the camera application here
so this 4k quality i don't think it's too bad considering well the weather is really awful
here at the moment it is wet and raining as you can see and on the go to the ultra wide camera
which is really good we're able to do this the quality nowhere near as good
as that main sensor as you can see here with my preview of our camera
so far now in my time using this the battery life has been excellent i don't have exact battery
stats yet because it's only two days i've been benchmarking downloading gaming and just using it
a little bit more than i probably would with some of that use there however i can see that it should
be able to go for about eight hours of on-screen time and make it definitely through a full day
here so the charge time at 25 watts for me is over two hours and it doesn't seem to be particularly
fast we don't get a charger in the box we don't even have a screen protector already applied on
it like other brands do and there is no tpu case included in the box that's why it's so thin and
samsung of course wants you to buy all those extras so they can make even more money out of
a phone like this and that's where i get on to one of two cons for me is the price of this so i paid
i think it was off the top of my head 489 euros from samsung.com to get this six and 128 gigabyte
model here so it's a bit pricey really for the spec of the phone i believe and the performance
you're getting that's where i get onto the second con is the performance that i notice that the ui
can sometimes be a little bit laggy and there's a few stutters here and there with the animations
the camera app can be quite laggy at times too which is a bit disappointing so clearly to me
samsung's got a bit of work to do with the software to improve things and that
in general has been my experience with android 12 phones that most of them are
buggy there's always something going on there and one ui 4.1 so far has kind of been like
that a little bit disappointing but it has the potential to be a very good phone once
they iron out the bugs i think the hardware is definitely there it's all about that great screen
on here build quality is good for what it is and i actually do like this phone i think it's great
just bring that price down a little bit samsung so thanks a lot for watching this video i'll
probably have some follow-up follow-up videos with the a535g if there of course is interest