Samsung Galaxy A52 is the successor to Samsung’s best-selling phone | GeekComparison

Samsung may be the most popular phone manufacturer in the world, but that doesn’t mean its best phone, the Galaxy S series, is also the most popular phone in the world. Samsung continues to top the sales charts on the power of its midrange smartphones, and last year (at least for several quarters) the company’s best-selling phone was the Samsung Galaxy A51.

So then: meet the Galaxy A52, the sequel to Samsung’s hit parade. These phones are so important now that Samsung made a presentation for them, the third online show in as many months.

There is a lot to talk about in this table. First, Samsung threw the Galaxy A72 along with the A52 in its presentation. It’s the most expensive phone of the bunch, but I don’t know why anyone would buy it when they have access to the A52 5G, which has a faster screen and faster SoC. The A72 has a slightly bigger battery, but it also has a bigger screen, so I’m not sure if that will result in significantly more runtime. Availability details are currently up in the air, so maybe regions would get the A52 5G or the A72, but not both? Speaking of availability, Samsung has only announced prices in Euros, so for now all we know is that these will go somewhere in Europe. Samsung is likely to expand the rollout over time.

The A52 5G looks like the best of the bunch, offering a 120Hz display for around $500, but anything with a 90Hz minimum screen is great. The “5G” here means sub-6GHz 5G, not the more expensive, almost nonexistent mmWave 5G you get on flagship phones. The other two models are only for 4G. All phones have most of the extras you could want, such as IP67 water and dust resistance, NFC, stereo speakers, USB-C and a MicroSD slot that doubles as a second SIM slot. The only thing missing compared to a flagship is wireless charging.

The designs for all three phones are identical. On the front you get a punch camera, flat screen and thin bezels, but still a little thicker than you’d find on a high-end phone. This is a midrange device, so the back is plastic rather than glass, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Plastic is easy to mold, so the back is all one piece, with the plastic ramping up to form the camera block, leaving only round cutouts for each lens. In addition to the usual black and white colors, there are also pastel blue and purple versions.

So many cameras

There are a ton of cameras: four on the back of each phone, along with an LED flash that does its best to also look like a camera lens. The cameras on all three phones seem identical, except the A72 drops a depth camera for a 3X telephoto lens. Samsung made a big deal this year on adding optical image stabilization to the main camera, which was not the case on the A51.

Samsung is really improving its game when it comes to the software. These pack Android 11 and they come with three years of major OS updates and four years of “regular” (not necessarily monthly) security updates. These mid-range Samsung phones have longer software support than you’ll get from Google’s Pixel line.

The phones are available in Europe from today.

List image by Samsung