Samsung last year decided, enough is enough and planned to make its presence felt once again. After all, Chinese smartphone companies like Oppo, Honor, Vivo, OnePlus and especially Xiaomi had not only made their mark in online consumer base but also in the offline segment, once Samsung’s forte.
As a result of this renewed strategy you would now see Samsung unleashing new devices in the market in a short span of time. One such device is Samsung Galaxy A50 which is available at a starting price of Rs. 19,990 going all the way up to Rs. 22,990 based on different storage and memory combinations.
In a bid to woo the new age customers, Samsung has put all the most sought after features in this device. The phone comes with a U-shaped notch at the top, trust me when I say this, there are a lot of people who feel that the notch is a feature. Anyway, coming back to the device, it comes with an in-display fingerprint sensor, a gorgeous rear panel, triple camera setup at the back, USB Type-C for charging and yes, a 3.5-mm headphone jack is still there.
The Galaxy A50 comes with a gorgeous glossy polycarbonate back which creates different patterns when it reflects light but is a fingerprint magnet too. Thankfully Samsung has provided a silicon back cover in the box, so snap it, the moment you unbox the device. The phone overall has a very slim profile with curved edges which gives it a very comfortable in-hand feel.
During my extended usage, I found that the in-display fingerprint sensor is more of a miss than hit. Though it is the same optical fingerprint scanner which is used by almost all the competitors like Vivo, OPPO etc., still either there was a noticeable delay, or the phone simply couldn’t identify the fingerprints. Facial recognition also had a similar story. I often ended up unlocking the phone by typing the pin.
The phone, like any other Samsung phone, is very well built. The large 6.4-inches Super AMOLED display with minimum bezels, offers an immersive experience. Watching videos or playing games is a visual treat on this device. The phone comes with a system wide dark theme. It is disheartening to see that Samsung, like Xiaomi, has started showing advertisements and product promotions via push notifications and SMS on the phone, though you can easily turn these off in settings. However, people paying premium price for a Samsung device will definitely not like this.
If we look at the overall performance of the phone, playing graphic intensive games like PUBG, Real Racing and Modern combat: 5 wasn’t an issue, however, strangely the phone struggles during day to day tasks. There is a noticeable delay between keying in the numbers and the time when the phone actually starts dialling the number. This is very irritating and persistent. You also notice an obvious lag when there were over 8-10 tabs open at the same time and it took multiple attempts to exit the camera app. Even the system wide default search is irritatingly slow to show results. There are many such niggles that puts you off when you start using the phone regularly.
The phone runs on Android 9 Pie based OneUI, it seems these issues are because of improper optimisation of the custom UI by Samsung and can be sorted out via software updates. Talking about the optics, the Galaxy A50 has a triple rear camera setup with a primary 25-megapixel sensor, a 5-megapixel secondary sensor and an 8-megapixel ultrawide lens. With proper lighting, the images shot using the phone had enough details and colour reproduction was on point. There are a lot of modes apart from screen detection and a pro mode already present in the camera app. Capturing images using the ultra-wide sensor is fun and adds a different perspective to the image. Though the camera did struggle a bit with low light photography and the images lacked proper details. There are various modes to shoot videos including slow-motion and HyperLapse, however, it does not let you shoot in 4K, which is a bummer.
The selfie camera on Galaxy 50 is a 25-megapixel shooter which comes with a ton of filters and a beautification mode. The battery backup on Galaxy A50 is satisfactory. While you may need to hook up a charger by the late evening, the fast charger provided in the box comes to the rescue. Call reception is just fine and the ear piece is loud enough.
Summing it up:
The price of Samsung Galaxy A50 starts at Rs. 19,990 for the 4GB+64GB version while the 6GB+64GB storage variant is priced at Rs. 22,990. While the phone can be easily bought both online and offline, at this price point, it leaves you wanting for more.
A technology buff, Jitendra stays up-to-the-minute of trends in smartphones, gadgets, apps and more.
