Samsung Galaxy M30s review

Earlier this year, Samsung breathed new life into its budget smartphone lineup with the introduction of the Galaxy M series. It marked Samsung’s return to the popular sub-20K segment of India with phones that would offer more than just a known brand name. Unsurprisingly, the market reception was great, and just three quarters later, the M series is back with second-generation smartphones. The Samsung Galaxy M30s is the current top-of-the-line mid-ranger that the company sells in India, and here’s what using it was like.

It’s pretty similar to its predecessor, with the most prominent changes coming with the new 48MP primary camera, an Exynos 9611 chipset and a beefy 6,000 mAh battery. 

Price in India

In India, the Samsung Galaxy M30s comes in two configurations. The 4GB + 64GB variant is priced at Rs 13,999 and the 6GB + 128GB variant is priced at Rs 16,999. The phone can be purchased from Amazon India or Samsung’s retail partners.

Design

The Galaxy M30s is unapologetically a Samsung device when it comes to the design. It implements a simple curved plastic back design that has a horizontal gradient that shifts from blue to green. It was much more wieldy than we expected, considering the big 6,000 mAh battery. With a weight of about 190g, it wasn’t an uncomfortable device to carry around. It’s not very slippery either but definitely gets greasy.

The back also houses a physical fingerprint scanner that works well and fast, but the unlocking animation takes a while to take you in. Along the corner, a rectangular island houses the triple camera array. It looks really weird as there’s a lot of negative space in the same black area, which can easily fit twice as many cameras. 

Our guess is that Samsung did that to make the device a little more recognizable, as no other reason would justify this negative space. It’s not glass or a metal back panel that would lose structural integrity if the flash would have been placed outside the island. At least it sits flush with the rest of the body.

Display

Moving to the front, we are greeted with a familiar 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display with a Full HD+ resolution and a small Infinity-U notch on the top. Super AMOLED displays are not very common in this price segment, so this is a welcome addition. It’s another one of Samsung’s beautiful displays with deep blacks, vibrant colors, and accurate white balance. 

The sunlight legibility was high too, with a max brightness of 420 nits, but the panel is a little too glossy, which can bring unsolicited reflections. The bezels around the display are also just average, with the chin being a lot thicker.

As for the panel quality, the Galaxy M30s is one of the best displays in the price segment, a department that Samsung has usually aced.

Performance

Samsung has once again stuck to its gun by powering the M30s with an Exynos chipset instead of a mid-range Snapdragon, one that we usually see in this segment. It’s powered by the 10nm Exynos 9611 chipset, which is an octa-core SoC. Surprisingly, the performance was class-leading, especially for heavy games such as PUBG Mobile, which would run at “Extreme‘ framerates, consistently crossing 30fps, which is uncommon. 

However, regular usage was not as enjoyable as apps can take a couple of seconds to open fully. It is likely due to the sluggish animations that have plagued Samsung devices for years. Memory management was also just above average, with recent apps staying ready for reuse more often than not.

For users primarily looking for a gaming mid-ranger, the Samsung Galaxy M30s should serve you well. For the rest of “light” users, changing the launcher or animation speeds should help you.