Samsung - Galaxy A50 With 64gb Memory Cell Phone (Unlocked) Review

The Galaxy A50 is 1 of Samsung'southward first A-serial phones to hit the US. At a incomparably midrange $349, it offers a flagship-level design, a beautiful AMOLED display, and a battery that volition easily go you through the twenty-four hour period. But with only-average functioning, a lackluster speaker, a poor fingerprint sensor, and no guarantee of software updates, the Milky way A50 but doesn't offering the same value proposition as the $399 Google Pixel 3a.

Design, Display, and Durability

The A50 looks every flake the flagship. Information technology'due south sparse, sleek, and sports an edge-to-edge brandish that's uncommon to find on phones in this price range. With the exception of a small teardrop notch for the selfie cam, in that location's nigh no bezel—some other rarity for the price. It measures half dozen.24 by 2.94 past 0.thirty inches (HWD) and weighs 5.86 ounces.

Samsung Galaxy A50-2

Flip the A50 over and you'll find a sleeky plastic dorsum in an most iridescent black. A vertically aligned triple photographic camera stack is at the top left, and there'due south a monochromatic Samsung logo in the middle. While the pattern is undoubtedly attractive, information technology picked upward a number of nicks and scratches during our review menstruation.

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The summit of the telephone is bare, while the bottom is domicile to a headphone jack, a speaker, and a USB-C charging port. On the left you'll find a hybrid SIM/microSD slot, and the correct houses the book rocker and power buttons. The buttons are like shooting fish in a barrel enough to reach, even with modest easily, and provide a satisfying click when pressed.

Samsung Galaxy A50-3

The half-dozen.iv-inch AMOLED display is, without a dubiety, the A50's best feature. Resolution comes in at 2,340 past 1,080, for 403 pixels per inch, and everything looks wonderfully crisp, with inky blacks and vivid colors. The only downside is the in-display fingerprint sensor. In testing, it only worked about forty percent of the time, and with a dirty finger or a smudged screen, it failed to reply at all.

Like about phones in this price range, the display uses Gorilla Glass 3, an older version of Corning's strengthened glass that's more than likely to break with an accidental drib. And similar the Pixel 3a and most other midrange phones, the A50 isn't water resistant, so we recommend a case to protect the phone from drops and water harm.

Network, Call, and Audio Quality

The Samsung Galaxy A50 supports LTE bands LTE ii,3,4,5,vii,12,13,20,25,26,28,41,66,71. It'southward compatible with every U.s. carrier, and even has band 71 for rural T-Mobile customers. In our tests on Verizon'south network in downtown Manhattan, we clocked average data speeds of 57.4Mbps down and 64.8Mbps up.

Samsung Galaxy A50-6

Call quality is solid. Noise cancellation worked without a hitch, and at 68dB, the speaker is fine for indoor conversations, though you lot may encounter a lilliputian difficulty hearing calls on a decorated street. The speakerphone clocked in at 82dB, which is loud enough to hear in a noisy room.

On the other paw, the Milky way A50'south bottom-firing speaker is a disappointment. With a peak volume of 93dB, it can easily fill a room, but audio quality gets tinny at college volumes, so you don't want to rely on it for multimedia streaming. Fortunately, in that location's a headphone jack for wired sound, equally well every bit Bluetooth five.0 for wireless audio and vesture connectivity. NFC is likewise nowadays for mobile payments.

Cameras

3 sensors sit on the back of the Galaxy A50. The main broad-angle sensor comes in at 25MP and has an f/1.7 aperture. It's complemented past a secondary 8MP ultrawide lens with an f/2.2 aperture, and a 5MP depth sensor.

Samsung Galaxy A50-4

The majority of our daylight test shots with the 25MP sensor looked crisp and offered excellent depth of field, though there were a couple with slight groundwork blurring. The ultrawide sensor performed similarly, though we noticed a shot with some minor distortion around the edges.

For depression-light photos with the 25MP sensor, most of our images were adequate, but somewhat muted, with a hint of background dissonance. Photos with the ultrawide lens had noticeably more dissonance as well as some background blurring. There's really no comparison here with the terrific Pixel 3a, which has the absolute best camera you can get exterior of a pricey flagship.

The front end of the phone holds a 25MP selfie photographic camera with an f/two.0 aperture. In vivid lite, subjects were well defined, background details were crisp, and color accurateness was spot-on. Low-light photos were pretty solid equally well, with good color accuracy and well-defined foreground detail. In that location was a picayune background blurring, but not enough to detract from the photograph. Again, though, the Pixel 3a hands has the advantage in the camera section.

Hardware and Performance

The Milky way A50 is powered by a Samsung Exynos 9610 processor (comparable with Qualcomm'southward Snapdragon 600 series) and 4GB of RAM. There'southward also 64GB of storage, of which 48GB is available out of the box. If you need more infinite, the A50 supports up to 512GB of external storage with a microSD menu.

Samsung Galaxy A50-5

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For bones tasks similar email, web browsing, and social media, the A50 performs perfectly well. Once again than half a dozen apps are open, however, the A50 quickly slows down. Gaming is striking or miss as well. We tested the telephone with Cobblestone eight and encountered long load times and intermittent skipped frames, but however managed to play without too much frustration.

Criterion scores support our real-world findings. The telephone turned in five,389 on PCMark, an app that emulates everyday utilise. That's significantly backside many competitors in this cost range including the Google Pixel 3a (7,378) and the Moto G7 Power (6,107).

The A50 packs a 4,000mAh battery. In our power drain test, in which nosotros stream HD video over Wi-Fi at full brightness, the phone lasted 8 hours and 54 minutes from a total charge. That's less than the Pixel 3a Forty (nine hours, 22 minutes), but you should accept no problem making it through a total day with more conservative utilise. Fast charging is supported with the 15W adapter included in the box.

Software

The Galaxy A50 ships with Android ix.0 Pie and Samsung'due south Ane UI. Over the past few years, Samsung's custom UI has become more refined and doesn't deviate too far from stock Android. The well-nigh noticeable changes include a custom navigation bar, Samsung'due south suite of apps that indistinguishable most of Google'due south, and Samsung's Bixby taking the identify of Google's Discover Feed.

Samsung Galaxy A50-8

We tested a review unit from Verizon, which included well-nigh a dozen bloatware apps (non counting Samsung's own). Fortunately, we were able to uninstall all of them.

While the Galaxy A50 doesn't have the latest version of Android, it appears that an update is in the cards for 2020. After that, however, all bets are off. If software updates are important to you, remember that the Pixel line runs stock Android and is guaranteed to go Bone updates for at to the lowest degree three years.

Conclusions

The Samsung Milky way A50 is a solid midrange phone with good looks, a gorgeous OLED brandish, and solid bombardment life. If you're a die-hard Samsung fan in search of a good midrange handset, this is your best bet. If not, you should consider the Pixel 3a. It checks off all the same boxes as the A50, forth with a superior fingerprint sensor, faster performance, meliorate camera quality, and guaranteed software updates, making it our Editors' Choice.