Samsung Galaxy A50s review

The revisited A50 is here

(Image: © Future)

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Performance

Samsung Galaxy A50s is powered by the home-grown Exynos 9611 chipset with an octa-core CPU clocked upto 2.3GHz. This processor is manufactured on a 10nm FinFET fabrication process and is paired with 4GB/6GB RAM and 128GB storage. The new chipset has been optimized to consume less power without compromising on efficiency. The Mali-G72 MP3 handles graphics rendering across apps and games.

Buyers will also have an option to increase the storage up by 512GB using microSD cards.

The Galaxy A50s runs on Android 9.0 Pie-based One UI 1.5.

(Image credit: Future)

Samsung has added a Game Booster tool to the A50s for users to experience lag-free gaming and smooth multi-task operations. The phone also supports Samsung Pay which is powered by Knox security.

There’s an in-display fingerprint sensor on the screen which in our usage takes a bit longer to unlock the phone. It just ruins the unlocking experience and isn’t any better than what we saw on the A50.

(Image credit: Future)

As far as the benchmarks are concerned, the A50s scored 1670 points in Geekbench 4 single-core tests and 5257 in multi-core testing. On AnTuTu, the A50s manages to overtake the score of A50 with 152686 points.

While these scores do not translate into a better user experience, we found the general performance of the A50s to be pretty decent in daily use. Having said that, if you’re someone who uses a lot of different apps, this phone will start showing signs of fatigue with lags and frame drops here and there.

PUBG Mobile on high graphics pushes the phone’s performance to its capabilities but that’s not upto the mark. So, if you are more than just a casual gamer, the A50s isn’t for you as it doesn’t feel smooth in regular use.

(Image credit: Future)

The phone comes pre-loaded with a bunch of apps including Netflix, Facebook, Microsoft Apps, Amazon India, Booking.com, Dailyhunt, Helo, Prime Video and Snapchat. All of these apps can be uninstalled with the exception of OneDrive, Netflix and Facebook.

Battery Life

Samsung Galaxy A50s is powered by a 4,000mAh battery which supports 15W fast charging adapter provided in-the-box. This is the same as the battery capacity on the A50 and the performance is largely similar as well.

It takes close to 2 hours for the A50s to charge from 0% to 100% via the fast charging adapter. The phone lasts over 14 hours in average use case including web browsing, watching YouTube videos, texting and scrolling through the Facebook timeline.

Verdict

(Image credit: Future)

Samsung Galaxy A50s doesn’t look like a definitive update to the Galaxy A50 and is more of an incremental upgrade. The A50s builds upon the fundamentals of the Galaxy A50 and tries to improve the overall user experience. A large focus here has gone into optimizing the 48MP camera which is a significant upgrade over the A50.

However, the night performance of the A50s cameras is not good and we expect Samsung to improve this via Software updates. In fact, by the time of writing this review, we have received two software patches which come with camera improvements in tow.

Otherwise, if you’re someone who consumes a lot of content on their phones, the A50s with its Super AMOLED display provides a great viewing experience and is great for watching videos, movies and bingewatch shows on Netflix.

The A50s is a much-refined phone from the A50 which launched earlier this year but doesn’t come close to the experience of phones like Redmi K20, Realme X or even Samsung’s M40.

Siddharth Chauhan
  • Siddharth Chauhan is the Consumer Technology Reporter at Digit India. He used to work as an Assistant Editor at TechRadar India