What is cheap phones in 2019 based on Samsung in South Africa?
Samsung A50 is the Samsung proposal for you if you are looking for a good looking phone that is performing well but not costing a fortune. The smaller brother, the Samsung A40, proposes you the same thing, but in a much more compact bod.
If you want a new phone - from the category of those cheap phones - and you do not want to spend too much then you'd better read about the two Korean models because they might look at you.
The Samsung A50 has a modern design with a crest-shaped screen at the top and has fairly small edges. It's easy and thin and enjoyable to hold. The phone is made of plastic and a layer of glass has been applied. It's not as well built as premium phones, but it's solid, it's glossy and shiny.
The Samsung A50 enjoys a 6.4 inch Super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels and is a high quality one. The colors are intense, the contrast is good and is a screen that you do not see in this price category. Games and movies look great on this display.
By the way. Samsung has chosen to implement a fingerprint sensor on the A50 on the display. Something you do not see on a mid-range phone, but it's not very accurate or very fast. Unlocking the phone takes two or three seconds too long and I would have liked a classic sensor instead.
At the photo department the things are as follows: three rooms on the back and one on the front. The system consists of a 25 MP (f / 1.7) main sensor, which works alongside an ultra-wide 8 MP (f / 2.2) sensor and a 5 MP camera, which is used to measure the depth of field in the image. For a self-esteem you have a 25 MP (f / 2.0) camera.
The photos taken by the A50 are surprisingly good and on sunny days you can even get some quality frames. Still, the 25 MP sensor pictures are not as detailed as we hope. As expected, the photos taken with the A50 have bright colors, and the contrast in the picture is high, sometimes too much, but in this price category you want the phone to make good-looking pictures, not necessarily faithful to the green of the grass.
Also, the fact that it has an ultra wide camera helps and you have more flexibility when you are a tourist and want to take the whole building into a picture. The ultra wide camera captures more space and is great for landscapes and city breaks.
Of course the phone also has the portrait photo function and you can choose the background blur from 0 to 7. Somewhere in 3 or 4 is the most realistic and the place where it is not obvious that this segmentation of the subject to the background is not just a purely artificial one. Such photos have gone better than I expected from a phone in this price category.
There is no night shooting mode. But even so the night shots are decent. In urban lighting situations, you can get some good frames, but do not expect too much.
Selfies are good during the day, but with the decrease in brightness decreases and quality. At the same time, it is very possible to have "moved" pictures if the light is not good.
With the Samsung A50 you can achieve 1080p video at 30 frames per second, slow motion, but only at 720p quality and has a timelapse function.
In theory, the Exynos processor supports 4K to 30fps, but does not offer this possibility in the camera application. To fillet 4K you need to download another camera application like OpenCamera. We have no optical stabilization for line images, but only electronic, but it does a pretty good job.
The Samsung A50 is an attractive model among other cheap phones
The Samsung A50 has an Exynos 9610 (10 nm) processor, a Mali-G71 MP3 graphics processor, 4 GB of RAM (up to 6 GB RAM) and 128 GB of storage with support for microSD up to 512 GB. The headphone jack is present, as is the NFC, and the battery is 4000 mAh and supports fast charging at 15 watts.
The Exynos 9160 has four A73 cores at 2.3 GHz and four A53 at 1.7 GHz, which means it's strong enough for whatever you give it. I tried games with big system requirements like Asphalt 9 or Elder Scrolls Blades and I had no problems.
In general, apps go well and everything is pretty smooth. However, during the tests I noticed that some applications are opening a little harder than I expected or have a lag that you do not encounter in expensive handsets with top processors.
In synthetic tests, the A50 scored 1274 in 3D Mark Sling Shot - OpenGL and 1389 points in Sling Shot - Vulkan, and in AnTuTu it achieved a score of 145,461 points. That's pretty good for the price you pay for him.
The A50's 4000 mAh battery is great enough to spend a day without worries and no charging or even two days if you're more conservative. Depends on the level of use. Loaded, it loads pretty fast, about 30% in 30 minutes.
The phone has only one loud speaker, but the sound at full volume is "broken". It will be okay to see a video on YouTube, but not enough to enjoy a movie at full volume.
Overall, the Samsung A50 is an attractive phone. For 1500-1600 lei, you get a 6.4-inch large and beautiful phone, a phone that takes good daytime photos and an ultra-wide camera. In addition, the A50 is a phone that is performing well for common applications and games.
I would have liked the Samsung A40 to be a miniature version of the A50, but unfortunately it is not the case. I would have liked to share the same performance of the A50 as with the same cameras but in a smaller body. The A40 looks like the A50, but it does not have a sensor in the screen or three cameras, but a fingerprint sensor and two photo cameras.
The Samsung A40 is a compact phone that reminded me how pleasant it is to use such a small phone. The A40 has a diagonal screen of 5.9 inches. If in the past such a smartphone was a big one, nowadays, due to the small edges of the display, such a phone is considered small. As a result, it is excellent to use with one hand.
It is absolutely delightful to use it with confidence and to naturally get your finger to the fingerprint sensor and buttons. If you are one of the people who think the weight of a phone is a premium product then the A40 and A50 are not for you.
The screen on the A40 is the same on the A50, but it is "crammed" in a smaller body. Which makes the pixel density increase and the images look even more contrasting.
The Samsung A40 has an Exynos 7885 (14 nm) processor, a Mali-G71 MP2 graphics processor, 4 GB RAM and 64 GB of storage space, but supports a microSD card up to 512 GB. It has a headphone jack and the battery is 3100 mAh and charges quickly through USB-C at 15 watts.
The Samsung A40 performance is slightly lower than the A50, but I played smoothly as well Asphalt 9 and Elder Scrolls Blades. Yes, the applications do not load as fast as the A50 and the switch from one application to another is not as smooth, but it did not seem too big a difference.
The battery is not as generous, but it has no size, but the 3100 mAh is enough to ensure a day's running.
On the back we find a two-camera system: one 16 MP (f / 1.7) and another 5 MP (f / 2.2) ultrawide. The front of the phone has a 25 MP camera (f / 2.0). Like the A50, the Samsung A40 can capture high quality, day-to-day images with a bright, contrasting and crisp color. At night, the situation is similar to the A50.
Instead, the ultra wide camera on the A40 is not as good. It was expected because it is only 5 megapixels. Here the photos are not very detailed and the picture is distorted at the corners. At night you should quit ultra wide because the results are not good.
We also have the love for portrait photos, but we do not have a dedicated sensor for that, and the whole thing is made of software. The result is below the A50, but even portraits are decent.
In the past, you did not want a Samsung phone for software, but you bought it despite that. The Korean company made changes to the interface and OneUI is the best Android skin you can use today. The interface is intuitive, enjoyable, and even if you are not a fan of this "cartonish" style of icons, OneUI is a step forward for Samsung. This is true for both smartphones.
You have dark mode, you have digital balance and everything that brings new Android Pie. What I did not like was, instead, the gesture navigation system implemented by Samsung. It's horrible and you should stay with Samsung's smartphone buttons.
Samsung A4o and Samsung A50 are handsets that are surprisingly good for this price category. If I were to choose between the two then I would go on the Samsung A50 for the camera and the big battery, but if I only interested in usability and design then the A40 is perfect .