TechRadar Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy F62 is a new mid-ranger that opts for a different recipe than the rest of the segment by opting for an older flagship chipset. The result, somewhat unsurprisingly, is disappointing as were left with a bulky phone with inconsistent performance and just above-average battery life. For what it’s worth, the cameras and the display are great.
Pros
- +
Capable cameras
- +
Good Super AMOLED display
- +
Android 11 out of the box
Cons
- -
Bulky
- -
Average battery life
- -
Inconsistent performance
- -
No high refresh rate
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On paper, the Samsung Galaxy F62 is a winning combination — using powerful specifications, along with a giant battery and a flagship processor at mid-range pricing. However, our review revealed underwhelming findings that make it a difficult phone to recommend.
For the uninitiated, the F62 is supposed to be an alternative to last year’s acclaimed Samsung Galaxy M51, which continues to be our battery life champion to date. The F62 changes that formula a bit with a “flagship” chipset and changes allegiance from Amazon to Flipkart. While the M series mid-ranger wasn’t particularly weak, Samsung’s extensive marketing around the Exynos 9825 had us hopeful.
The Samsung Galaxy F62 is powered by the same chipset as the Galaxy Note 10, which was Samsung’s top flagship for 2019. This is an octa-core platform built on the 7nm manufacturing process with custom Mongoose cores. So while that does technically make it a flagship, it needs to be noted that even during its glory days, it wasn’t particularly powerful – struggling to keep up with heavy games as well as offering mediocre battery life.
Unfortunately, the same is pretty much the case with the Samsung Galaxy F62. In day to day usage, it’s fine and doesn’t break a sweat (like most phones these days), but in heavier tasks such as gaming, the stability and framerate is pretty underwhelming.
Even worse was the battery back up. With a pack that’s almost twice as large as many other phones, the F62’s battery life is just above average. The M51 could easily last for two whole days when used in moderation, whereas the F62 can be killed in a day. It’s not bad by any means, but far from what one would expect at 7,000mAh.
This also means having to put up using a very bulky and heavy phone, without the battery life to justify the heft.
The Samsung Galaxy F62 isn’t a terrible phone. The display is great, the cameras are amongst the best, and Samsung’s service chain is pretty solid. The issue is, that the Galaxy M51 does all of that without being really bad at anything else, justifying its (literal and figurative) weight on the pocket. Unless you have a particular affinity for Flipkart, the M51 is the better buy for most users. And of course, there are always alternatives such as the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max, Realme X7, and Mi 10i, if you’re not brand conscious.
Samsung Galaxy F62 price in India and availability
The Galaxy F62 is priced at Rs 23,999 for the 6+128GB variant while the 8+128GB is priced at Rs 25,999. The device is available in Laser Green, Laser Grey and Laser Blue colour options. The Galaxy F62 is available on Flipkart.
Samsung Galaxy F62 specs
- Processor: Exynos 9825
- Display: 6.7-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED
- RAM: 6/8GB
- Storage: 128GB UFS 3.0, microSD card support
- Rear camera: 64+12+5+5MP
- Front camera: 32MP
- Battery: 7,000mAh, 25W fast charging
- OS: Android 11, OneUI 3.1
- Weight: 218 grams
- Thickness: 9.5mm
- Colours: Laser Green, Laser Gray, and Laser Blue
Design
The Samsung Galaxy F62 also follows the design language that’s pretty much similar to the Galaxy M series with a few minor changes and new colourways. The Galaxy F62 is available in three colour options - Laser Green, Laser Gray, and Laser Blue. We are testing the Laser Green variant for review. It has a unique look to it and comes with vertical lines at the back. The bottom part on the back looks like a mirror which gives the phone a dual-tone finish. Overall, I liked this new design approach from Samsung, especially the Laser Green colour.
While the back of the Galaxy M51 had a plain and boring back, the F62 brings gradient and stripes design to the back, which looks good. However, the back is still a “Glasstic” which is Samsung’s fancy name for polycarbonate. The back panel is smooth and offers a good grip to hold in the hand. Similar to the Galaxy M51, the F62’s back is also prone to scratches as well as smudges easily. It’s a fingerprint magnet as well. To make things even worse, Samsung is not providing a case in the box as well.
Furthermore, the device weighs 218 grams, which is quite bulky and might not be everyone’s cup of tea. The thickness is the same as the Galaxy M51 at 9.5mm. The device has a good balance of weight and in-hand feel, but it is quite heavy(5 grams more than M51) and will be hard to manage the large screen to many.
On the back, the quad cameras are placed inside a square camera module while the LED flash is placed just outside the module. The Samsung logo is present on the bottom. To the front, the device comes with an Infinity-O display with a centre punch-hole cutout while the earpiece is placed inside the top bezel. To the right of the device, you get volume rockers and the power button which has an integrated fingerprint scanner. The top has a microphone and on the left side of the device, you get a triple- slot (Two nano-SIM + microSD card) while on the bottom there is a 3.5mm headphone jack, Type-C port, secondary mic, and solo down-firing speaker. Samsung should have at the latest given stereo speakers setup as compared to Galaxy M51.
While the gradient pattern and stripes are a welcome addition, the quality of the back panel could have been improved. We’d like to see Samsung come up with a frosted glass or a better polycarbonate back (like S20 FE) with the next mid-range phones.
Display
Things are pretty much the same here from the Galaxy M51, the Samsung Galaxy F62 sports a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED Plus Infinity-O panel with a tall 20:9 aspect ratio with Full HD+ resolution. The display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. As for the content support, you get Widevine L1 t to stream HD content on Amazon Prime and Netflix and also HDR video playback.
The Super AMOLED screen feels nice and bright. The deep blacks, rich contrast, and vivid colours are also present. You can even adjust the colour tone of your liking if you are not happy with the default colour temperature. There is also an Always-on Display feature with a ton of themes from the Samsung theme store. The screen is bright enough to view content in the direct sunlight as well. Watching shows and movies were fine on the Galaxy F62.
There is no doubt that Samsung makes the best displays for smartphones. However, not having a high refresh rate screen is a disappointment. For a phone that costs over Rs 20,000 in 2021, it looks like Samsung has missed the opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Considering we have seen OnePlus, Realme and recently the Redmi Note 10 Pro series are offering a high refresh rate + AMOLED combo at this price point or even less, we really hope Samsung jumps to the train soon.
Performance
The star of the show and the key feature is what’s inside the Galaxy F62. The device is powered by Samsung’s in-house Exynos 9825 processor which is built on top of a 7nm process. It is an octa-core chipset with two custom cores running at 2.7GHz, two Cortex A75 running at 2.4GHz and four Cortex A55 cores clocked at 1.9GHz. The same chipset was also powering the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10 Plus in India - the endurance was poor on these phones.
The Samsung Galaxy F62 comes in two configurations - 128GB UFS 3.0 storage with either 6GB or 8GB of RAM. There is also a dedicated microSD card slot up to 1TB for storage expansion. The UFS 3.0 storage is a great addition at this price point while most of them still offer UFS 2.1 or UFS 2.2.
The day to day performance of the Galaxy F62 is mostly smooth and fast. Opening apps, watching a video, social media, and opening a camera were fine for the first few days. A few days later, the phone started to stutter here and there and the camera app started to take a few seconds to load the options after opening. This is not the kind of performance that we’d expect from a flagship-grade processor. In fact, we also ran the same set of apps on the Galaxy M51 simultaneously and it worked just fine even after six months. Further, the phone is also slow when it comes to showing up search results in the Settings app. This is definitely not the fastest phone in the segment by any means.
When it comes to gaming, the phone performed well initially but the frame drop became noticeable and the game started lagging a bit. The COD Mobile is playable in very high graphics and Max frames settings, which is good for a sub Rs 25,000 phone. But, the performance in the game itself is disappointing. The battery also drains quicker and the phone gets thermals up easily while gaming which results in throttling.
It looks like Samsung is not utilizing the full strength of the phone’s CPU and throttling the heavy performance like gaming on the Exynos chipset to prevent overheating - but that’s not working either. Though we do not test benchmarks usually in our reviews, we gave a shot on this phone as Samsung was marketing this phone to score over 4.5 lakh points in the AnTuTu benchmark.
In our testings, we got 3,06,271 in the first test and 2,62,360 in the second and 3,16,469 in the third test at room temperature. Upon keeping the phone in the refrigerator for 5 minutes and testing we got 3,31,952 and finally, while we tested the scores while keeping the phone inside the fridge, we got 4,11,690 - which is still about 40,000 points shy of what Samsung is claiming.
In a nutshell, the performance on the Samsung Galaxy F62 is not very consistent while the performance is above average in the day to day usage, the phone is definitely not meant for gaming and we’d not recommend this phone for the same.
Cameras
As for cameras, the Galaxy F62 packs in a 64MP primary sensor(Sony IMX682) on the back followed by a 12MP ultra-wide lens, a 5MP macro shooter and a 5MP depth sensor. To the front is a 32MP selfie camera. The camera specs are similar to the Galaxy M51 and also the Galaxy M31s. The camera on the Galaxy M51 was good, but not the best in the segment.
As for the camera features, you get Single take which captures images and videos with all of the cameras and gives you the best shots and moments in one album. There is also AR Doodle, Pro, Panorama, Food, Night, Macro, Portrait, Portrait video, Pro Video, Slow-mo, Super Slow-mo, and Hyperlapse modes. As for the video recording, the device can shoot up to 4K videos with both front and back cameras.
The camera performance is better than the Galaxy M51, but not by a big margin. The differences are noticeable only when you compare them side by side. The results from the main camera are excellent in daylight with an excellent amount of detail, great sharpness, vivid colours, and dynamic range. As always with the Samsung phones, the pictures look a tad oversaturated. The 64MP images give more detail and it slightly over sharpens the image but the result is that you get slightly more detail and good if you’d like to zoom in and see.
The night mode performance was good as well, but it struggled to keep the subject under focus. It tries to add more details in the darker section of the image thus, producing a much brighter and sharper image. These are usable but don't expect too many details as they are blurry more often than not. The Mi 10i is still a better performer when it comes to night mode shots.
The wide-angle camera is a 12MP shooter which brings a 123-degree field of view to give a different perspective. Thanks to the higher-res lens, the images look good with and also retain most of the colours from the main camera.
The 5MP macro camera can click some great close-ups, but you have to make sure you have a steady hand or a tripod. Focusing might be an occasional issue as well. The images are decent and usable. Lastly, the 5MP depth sensor does pretty good with regards to the edge detection and bokeh effect.
The 32MP shoots at 8MP by default while you can also click 32MP selfies. There is a wide-angle option for groufies as well. The results were quite good here as well. The colours were close to reality with a good dynamic range. Just like the M51, the skin tone sometimes tended to alter but, most of the time it worked fine.
Both the cameras can record videos up to 4K @ 30fps. There is no option to shoot at 60fps which is sad as the phone is powered by a flagship-grade chip, we hope Samsung can enable the 60fps function in the coming days. The lack of OIS makes the video look very average, though the software-based stabilization tries to make it up for it.
The Galaxy F62 has capable cameras with excellent performance in daylight and on par performance in low-light scenarios. Selfies are also handled pretty well on the Galaxy F62.
Software
Credit where it’s due, Samsung has done a good job here in terms of the software. The Galaxy F62 runs on Android 11 out of the box based on OneUI 3.1. The newer version of OneUI skin brings features like Google Discover feed integration, Google Home smart controls under ‘Devices’ in quick settings, privacy features like removing location data before sharing an image, and a bunch of camera enhancements.
In the past year or so, Samsung has been one of the few OEMs to be proactive in terms of Android updates. With the new OneUI 3.1, the device feels smoother and faster. There are a few pre-installed apps that can be uninstalled. There is also Samsung Pay onboard which uses NFC for payments.
However, Samsung asks you to download apps from its own store while setting up the phone, which I personally did not feel right. There are quite a few push notifications from Samsung’s own app - which is quite alloying but can be blocked easily. Also, the system-wide search is also quite slow, which I think Samsung should really focus on in the next update.
As for the goodies, you get complete system-wide dark mode, additional themes. The settings page has most of the interactive stuff on the bottom of the screen for easy access. The default launcher lets you select grid size, layout, and a few more customization options.
The smart pop feature brings a messenger-like chat head to other messaging apps as well. There is also an option to enable a floating window of a custom size. There is also a one-handed mode for those who want to make use of it. Swiping down the fingerprint scanner to bring down the notification panel is still one of my favourite features on the device. There is also Digital well being, parental controls, ultra data saving mode, and apps cloning features.
Battery
The battery life is better than most phones but far from what we had expected.
The Galaxy F62 comes with a massive battery. It is backed by a 7,000mAh battery with 25W wired fast charging support via Type-C port and reverse charging support. The device misses out on wireless charging. The Exynos 9825 had a history of overheating and thereby affecting the battery life. While there isn’t much overheating on the F62, the battery life was just average for a 7,000mAh battery unit.
The battery life was very consistent throughout my testing, I got around 7 to 8 hours of battery life, which is very good for sure, but not the kind of battery life you’d expect from a gigantic 7,000mAh battery. In my usage, I couldn’t get close to two working days as the better drained out to 0% in the middle of the day.
For context, on the Galaxy M51, I got around 13 to 14 hours of screen on time regularly - which is what I was expecting from the Galaxy F62. The difference of at least 6 hours of screen on time is a massive difference. The Exynos 9825, being a more powerful chipset built on a superior manufacturing node, barely provides any advantage.
Samsung is bundling a Type-C to Type-C cable provided in the box along with a 25W fast charger. Though this is not the fastest charger phone in the segment, it takes about under 2 hours to fully charge from nothing, which is good considering the battery size.
When it comes to battery life, the Samsung Galaxy M51 is still the phone to beat here. The Galaxy F62 comes nowhere near.
Biometrics
Similar to the Galaxy M51, the F62 also comes with a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. It is reachable easily with one hand. However, you can register a maximum of three fingerprint scanners only, which is disappointing. The fingerprint scanner performance is just average as this is not the fastest or the most accurate I’ve tested. It's also the same case with the face unlock as well. Most of the time, the phone refused to unlock the device.
Verdict
If you have reached this far, you might have an idea about our verdict by now. The Samsung Galaxy F62 has a good Super AMOLED display, capable cameras, and runs on the latest Android version out of the box, which are its strongest points.
While these are the good things, the Galaxy F62 has issues with regards to performance as it was inconsistent overall and was pretty bad during the gaming. Further, the battery life is also pretty bad (for the size) and gave us like 60% of what the Galaxy M51 offered.
All in all, at the end of the day, the Samsung Galaxy F62 is a hard phone to recommend from us and we’d suggest you stick with the Galaxy M51 which performs more consistently and offers insane battery life.
