Samsung makes is high-end flagships and mid-rangers, but they also make phones like the
Galaxy A13 designed for people on a tighter budget At this kind of price can it still deliver a
solid experience, or is it more of an exercise in frustration?
I’m Will for GSMArena and let’s find out in our Galaxy A13 review.
The entry level Galaxy A13 is not the cheapest new Samsung you can get right now, but it’s close.
Here we have the 4G version- there’s also a 5G one which has a different chipset.
The phone has a glossy plastic unibody which isn't flimsy but feels far from premium.
I wish it was a bit grippier too. The Galaxy A 13's fingerprint reader
is integrated with the power button on the side It’s fast and responsive
There’s a timeout between unlocks but that’s not an issue for regular use.
The screen of the A13 is a 6.6 inch PLS LCD, with gorilla glass 5 protection, a 1080p resolution,
and a standard 60Hz refresh rate.
Because it doesn't have a high refresh rate movement on this display is less smooth
than on more premium phones but even beyond that the pixel response is pretty sluggish
and this results in ghosting and smearing when you're swiping around
Still, this display is ok for the budget. You don’t get HDR support,
and the colors aren’t very accurate, nor are they adjustable.
But resolution is higher than many competitors which have 720p screens.
And brightness is decent for the class- we measured 500 nits maximum with the manual slider.
Auto brightness is a different story. The A13 doesn’t have an ambient light sensor
and tries to make adjustments by leveraging the selfie camera. This doesn’t work well.
The readings don’t come too often, so it only changes…once in a while.
A lot of the time it’s simply unresponsive. The chipset of the Galaxy A13 is nothing
impressive- in fact it’s probably the most disappointing aspect of this device.
It’s an Exynos 850, built upon an 8nm process, and performance wise,
it sits at the bottom of the charts, even in this budget class.
The phone struggles in CPU tests, but is particularly underpowered in the GPU department.
Even if you don’t care about gaming, the Galaxy A13 often
lags and stutters when performing basic tasks, and even when navigating the homescreen.
It seems that the Exynos 850’s GPU can’t really handle the high res 1080p display,
and the whole experience suffers for it.
That’s too bad because one of the main reasons to go for a Galaxy phone at this price
is its Samsung software package. The A13 runs One ui 4.1 core,
which provides most of the features you’d get on the higher end Samsung devices.
You are missing a few things, such as smart widgets, edge panels, samsung pay and Bixby.
But the heart of the Samsung experience is here… just a little on the slow side.
Also, Samsung hasn't said anything specific about software support down the line
so we’ll have to see how long the A13 receives regular updates.
For audio, the Galaxy A13 has a headphone jack, and a single bottom firing loudspeaker. It scored
just Average on our loudness test. The quality of the sound is decent overall, but there’s no bass.
And the Galaxy A13 can come with either 32, 64 or 128 GB of storage,
which is easily expandable through microsd cards.
Battery life is quite good on the Galaxy A13. With a 5000 mAh battery
it was able to score a 114 hour endurance rating in our proprietary test.
Charging is nothing impressive though. There’s support for up to 15 watt charging,
but you don’t get an adapter in the box.
Using a 25 watt Samsung charger we were able to only take the A13 from 0 to 27% in half an hour.
Now on to the cameras. The Galaxy A13 has a 50MP main cam,
a 5MP ultrawide shooter, a 2MP macro cam, and a depth sensor.
The main cam’s photos come out at 12.5MP, and they’re solid,
especially for a budget phone. There’s plenty of resolved detail
and good sharpness, true to life colors, and wide enough dynamic range.
Portrait shots come from the main camera with the help of the depth sensor,
but for some reason have an 8MP resolution.
These are good, and subject separation is decent, with just the occasional mistake.
5MP photos from the ultrawide cam are only okay. You get the desired wide field of view,
but these photos are soft and lacking in detail, with limited dynamic range.
2MP closeups from the macro cam have about the detail level you’d expect at this resolution,
and the fixed focus means that shooting takes a lot of trial and error.
In low light shots from the main camera are decent.
There’s a good amount of detail, sharpening isn’t too aggressive, and noise is minimal.
The biggest issue is the limited dynamic range- light sources are often blown out
and shadows are underdeveloped. And there’s no night mode available to help things out.
The ultrawide camera struggles a lot in low light. Shots look quite soft and noisy.
Selfies from the 8MP front facing cam are good.
There’s plenty of detail, and nicely rendered colors.
Videos can be captured in up to 1080p resolution at 30fps. Footage from the main camera looks good,
with plenty of detail and sharpness, true to life colors, and decent dynamic range.
Video from the ultrawide camera is surprisingly usable, with a reasonable level of detail.
Unfortunately there is no video stabilization on the Galaxy A13 at all,
and footage can come out quite shaky as a result.
So that’s the Samsung Galaxy A13. You get solid battery life,
and the cameras do a pretty good job too. But the problem is, this phone is just too slow.
You have the sluggish pixel response of the display, and then the stutters and hiccups which
come up even when performing basic tasks. And on top of it all, the A13 isn’t even
THAT cheap. There are quite a few alternatives available,
and we’d recommend looking into those instead. Thanks for watching and see you on the next one.