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Review: Samsung Galaxy A52 5G

The new $500 Android handset does everything a phone needs to do, though it's plagued by the same flaws as its predecessor.
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Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
Photograph: Samsung
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Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
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Rating:

7/10

WIRED
Powerful enough to run most apps and games. Takes decent photos. More than a day of battery life. Excellent 120-Hz AMOLED display. 5G connectivity, MicroSD card slot, headphone jack. NFC for contactless payments. Plastic rear is more durable than glass. Three years of Android updates and four years of security patches. IP67 water resistance.
TIRED
Performance stutters sometimes. Camera is lackluster compared to peers. No wireless charging. 

Last year, I said Samsung's $400 Galaxy A51 was overpriced. Naturally, Samsung went ahead and jacked up the price of its successor, the Galaxy A52 5G. This year's update costs $500. 

Before you get your pitchforks out, this new Android phone does have a few new features that somewhat justify the bump in price, like added 5G connectivity, a faster screen refresh rate of 120 Hz, and a commitment from Samsung to a longer window for software updates—three years of Android OS upgrades with four years of security updates. The latter is even longer than what Google offers for its Pixel phones

The A52 5G is a good phone, but it's plagued by the same flaws as its predecessor: Its performance isn't as smooth as it should be, and the cameras remain a step behind our current favorite midpriced phone, the Pixel 4A 5G.

Mostly Smooth Sailing

I'm hard on the A52 because its performance really could be better. Don't get me wrong—it's no slouch. Inside is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chip with 6 gigabytes of RAM, a pairing powerful enough to speedily launch my apps and run graphically demanding games like Sky: Children of the Light and Genshin Impact. Sure, gaming isn't as silky smooth as it is on pricier phones like the Galaxy S21, but it's far from a frustrating experience.

Benchmark tests I ran even put the A52 a notch higher than similarly priced phones like the Pixel 4A 5G ($500) and the new Moto G Stylus 5G ($400). However, unlike these two phones, I'm still treated to regular, noticeable stutters in day-to-day use. Whether it's switching apps, zooming into Google Maps, or scrolling through Twitter, the A52 5G randomly sputters. I suspect the software just isn't as well optimized. (A ton of preinstalled bloatware furthers this suspicion.) I can still easily get stuff done, so really, it comes down to how much the stutters annoy you.

Those hiccups somewhat spoil one of the new headline features, though: the 120-Hz screen refresh rate. Such a high-performance screen spec is rare in a phone at this price. Traditional phones have a 60-Hz refresh rate, which means the display refreshes 60 times per second. By doubling this rate to 120, everything on the screen looks more buttery smooth. It does! But when the aforementioned stutters pop in now and then, they take away from that fluidity. 

The 6.5-inch AMOLED screen picks up the slack a bit. It's sharp, with a 2,400- x 1,080-pixel resolution, while also being wonderfully bright and colorful. With dual speakers that also sound pretty good, I didn't mind catching up on Star Wars: The Bad Batch on this device before bed. Better yet, the large 4,500-mAh battery cell won't give you any cause for concern. I usually ended the day with around 40 percent left in the tank.

It's also a surprisingly sleek device. It's big but slim, which makes it feel not too unwieldy. And sure, it only comes in black, but the matte plastic design means you won't have to worry about the rear cracking when you drop it. The phone looks simple but modern, and that aesthetic is aided by the slim bezels around the screen as well as the floating hole-punch camera on the front.

The other major addition here is 5G connectivity, which is nice for future-proofing, but don't buy this phone for 5G. The next-gen network is still sparse around the US, and even if it's available in your area, the A52 only supports sub-6 5G, the version that's not dramatically faster than current 4G LTE speeds. Safe to say, you probably won't notice much of a difference when you switch between 5G and 4G. 

It's nice to see NFC support here, which enables contactless payments via Google Pay or Samsung Pay. And there is biometric authentication via the in-display fingerprint sensor. It's reliable, if maybe a little slow. Did I mention the A52 is IP67 water-resistant? That kind of peace of mind, especially if you're near a pool or the ocean this hot vax summer, isn't something you'll get with the aforementioned Pixel or Moto.

Here's an oddity. By choosing this phone over one of Samsung's pricer Galaxy flagships, you're able to access some features that are missing on those more expensive models. Namely, the A52 has a headphone jack (yay!) and a MicroSD card slot to add more space if the built-in 128 gigabytes isn't enough.

An OK Camera System

The A52 5G's camera system captures respectable photos, even at night, but Google's similarly priced Pixel 4A 5G often edged it out in our results. Sure, specs-wise, the A52's 64-megapixel main sensor sounds like it should best the 12-megapixel camera on the Google phone. But it's the image processing software that does most of the heavy lifting, and Google is the clear leader in that department.

Looking over the A52's images, they're usually oversaturated, sometimes delivering an unnatural color for the sky or for trees. More often than not, the Samsung's photos are lacking in detail compared to the Pixel's shots. Also, the A52's camera doesn't do a great job of handling high-contrast scenes; the sky or windows are usually blown out. When you use the Samsung's dedicated Night mode in low-light scenes, photos can look over-sharpened or flat, as the image-processing software tends to strip out shadows too much.

These notes are all relative to the Pixel, which is our top midrange camera phone. If judged in a vacuum, most folks will be fairly satisfied with the results out of the A52. And the camera news is not all negative. Portrait mode, where the background behind a subject is blurred like a DSLR's bokeh effect, gives the Pixel 4A 5G a run for its money. Samsung also fares a little better with the 32-megapixel front camera. Selfies just look sharper on this phone.  

There's also a 12-megapixel ultrawide and a 5-megapixel macro camera to add some versatility, but neither particularly impressed me. Both require lots of light to produce images worth sharing. 

A Reliable Droid

The full-featured Galaxy A52 5G does almost everything you want in a phone without costing anywhere near $1,000. It's reliable, and it will stay that way for years thanks to the long software support period. 

Can you get most of the way there with the $350 Pixel 4A? Yes. Doesn't the $500 Pixel 4A 5G have better cameras? Absolutely. I like the Pixel 4A 5G more because camera quality matters more to me than most other features. I also think Google offers more helpful software features through its tightly integrated Assistant and Pixel-exclusive additions to other Google apps. And in my experience, performance on the Pixel phones was not as stuttery as it is on the A52 5G. 

But maybe you want the bigger screen, the 120-Hz refresh rate, the MicroSD card slot, or the IP-rated water resistance. (Or all of the above!) Those are good reasons to opt for the A52. I'd have loved to see Samsung add wireless charging to the list of things I want in this phone, but alas. That would probably be asking for too much.