Samsung Galaxy A50 Price in India: Buy at Rs.1010 Off

For a while now Samsung has been losing the budget and mid-range smartphone segment to Chinese rivals including Huawei, Xiaomi among others. This made the company go back to the drawing boards to access where it is going wrong and start doing things afresh. The result of this changed the company’s perception of how it sees the budget offering, enter the brand new M and A-series phone which is mainly targeted at the millennial, the younger generation. From the price to specifications point of view, the Galaxy M and the A-series made sure to have grabbed the attention, however, that alone doesn’t decide how well the phone can perform, so today, here we are taking a look at the high-end A series phone; the Galaxy A50 to see how well it fares in the real-life. Read along.

The Samsung Galaxy A50 sports a 6.4-inch (2340 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ Infinity-U Super AMOLED display. It is powered by the Exynos 9610 10nm SoC with 2.3GHz Octa-Core processor with Mali-G72 GPU. It packs 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, another variant with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage that is further expandable up to 512GB via microSD card. It runs on Android 9.0 Pie with One U.I.

As for the optics, the Galaxy A50 will feature triple rear camera consisting a 25MP primary sensor with LED flash, f/1.7 aperture, 5MP depth sensor with f/2.2 aperture, and 8MP ultra-wide angle camera with f/2.2 aperture. There is a 25MP front-facing shooter with f/2.0 aperture. The Galaxy A50 has an in-display fingerprint sensor. It measures 158.5 x 74.7 x 7.7mm and connectivity features include Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5, GPS + GLONASS, NFC, USB Type-C. There is a 4000mAh battery with fast charging on board.

The new Galaxy A and M-series phones not only offer good hardware for the price but they also rock refreshed designs, and the Galaxy A50 is one of them. The handset comes in new gradient colours that makes light refract into rainbow patterns. Though it is plastic, the build is solid and fits perfectly in hands. Samsung has done an excellent job in trimming the bezels around the screen thus offering a screen-to-body ratio of 91 per cent. While there is a sizeable chin at the bottom, but it was fine and didn’t hamper the experience in any way. The plastic back panel slightly curves to meet the metal frame, and there are no sharp edges anywhere, meaning the phone won’t hurt your hands even if you use the phone for a long time. For the asking price, the build is definitely superior and better than most mid-range Galaxy phones launched until the arrival of the new series. While we are fine with the plastic build, the Galaxy A50 gets scratched quite easily which could be a problem if care about the look of the phone.

Moving to placements, up front we have the 25MP front-facing camera placed in the Waterdrop notch, the usual set of sensors, and the capacitive buttons are present within the display. On the right, you have the power and volume rocker buttons which are tactile and offer good feedback. While on the left, there is a SIM tray. The USB Type-C port and 3.5mm audio jack are present on the bottom. There is nothing on the top. The rear is where you find the triple camera setup, LED flash, Samsung branding. The back is sealed, so the battery isn’t removable. Overall, the build, design of the Galaxy A50 is decent.

The Samsung Galaxy A50 sports a 6.4-inch (2340 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ Infinity-U Super AMOLED display. This AMOLED panel is Super AMOLED screen is really crisp, bright and vibrant, in-line what you’d expect from an AMOLED panel. The outdoor visibility is very impressive as we were able to access content on the phone with maximum brightness as well. Thankfully, there’s an Ambient light sensor which when enabled adjusts the brightness based on the surroundings. The touch response is smooth even while playing games as well. There’s an always-on-display which gives a glance of your notifications without turning on the screen.

Samsung must be appreciated for using a mediocre panel as Blacks are deep and colours really pop. The viewing angles are good; we didn’t notice any off angles or colour distortion even when viewing the display from extreme angles. Colours, text, image look sharp and accurate. Thanks to the impressive 91 per cent screen-to-body ratio, we really had a good experience playing games and watching movies. The software includes the ability to tweak the colour temperature of the display. Overall, the display of the Galaxy A50 is very impressive and is on par with flagship-level quality.

The Samsung Galaxy A50 is powered by the Exynos 9610 10nm SoC with 2.3GHz Octa-Core processor with Mali-G72 GPU with 4/6GB RAM. The Exynos 9610 is the new 7-series chipset and if you were to chose the phone, go with the 6GB RAM version. Keeping the numbers aside, the Galaxy A50 performance is quite stable and consistent. Apps open up fast, and they load almost instantly as well. Tasks like calling, messaging, browsing, navigation, watching movies were a breeze. The phone was able to handle multitasking with up to 6-7 apps running in the background. Thanks to lightweight One UI, the animations and transitions were smooth too. Samsung’s phone usually lasts good for the initial few months, but they start lagging, and we hope that isn’t the case with the A50, thanks to the revamped UI.

Moving to the gaming department, we played a wide range of including PUBG, Nova 3, Leo’s Fortune, Hay Day and more. While these games ran fine with high graphics settings, games like PUBG were only playable in medium settings. The good thing is that there is no heating issue despite heavy gaming. The Galaxy A50 comes with an in-display fingerprint sensor, and it takes close to 2-3 seconds to unlock and is nowhere close to a regular physical sensor in terms of speed. There's also face relatively faster recognition. Overall, the performance of the Galaxy A50 is good enough all thanks to the optimised One UI.

In terms of camera, the Galaxy A50 features triple rear cameras consisting a 25MP primary sensor with LED flash, f/1.7 aperture, 5MP depth sensor with f/2.2 aperture, and 8MP ultra-wide angle camera with f/2.2 aperture. There is a 25MP front-facing shooter with f/2.0 aperture. The Galaxy A50 supports the high-efficiency HEIF and HEVC formats for photos and videos. Moving along, the images, clicked under good lighting conditions have decent details, bright colours. However, they tend to overexpose occasionally, but turning on the HDR balances it to an extent. The third-wide angle sensor brings out a new perspective to the photos and surprised to see how much it can fit in the frame. But then again, the wide-angle shots have a lot of noise in them which is a letdown of such a beautiful feature. The dynamic range is perfectly fine, so are the macro shots.

As for the portrait mode, the edge detection is on point. It was able to differentiate background from the subject well, but for arms and ears, it was a hit or a miss. The camera app offers you to change background blur in portrait shots with standard bokeh to effects. There’s also Pro mode but is only limited to ISO, white balance, and exposure. Samsung also brags about the Live Focus mode for the portrait mode, slow-motion video in 480fps 720p, Hyper-Lapse mode for timelapse videos, AR emojis, and intelligent scene optimisation. The rear camera can record 1080p videos but misses out 4K even though the chipset has support for it. The quality of the video is usable even though it lacks any stabilisation.

On the front, there’s a 25MP selfie snapper which also supports Live Focus mode, but as the rear, it was a hit or a miss. The default beautification mode is acceptable but turning it off results in better social media usable images. Overall, the triple rear camera setup of the Galaxy A50 can be termed as of the best in the segment.

Samsung is bundling a pair of earphones within the box, but they are ordinary quality and no in-ear style. Despite the inclusion of headphones, you will have to shell out some more on another pair. The audio quality is acceptable, and we didn’t hear any distortion or squeaking sounds even when playing songs at maximum volume. The default music player was able to play a wide range of music formats without any problem. The loudspeaker is present on the bottom, and your hands might block it when you are holding the phone in landscape mode.

In terms of video department, the Samsung Galaxy A50 was able to play 1080p videos, and the playback was smooth without any issues. It can play a wide range of video formats. Thankfully, there were no heating or freezing issues even when playing high definition videos. Since the 18:9 aspect ratio brings more screen real estate, watching videos and movies was an excellent experience. Overall, the audio and video department does a good job.

The Samsung Galaxy A50 packs a 4000mAh battery with fast charging support like the other A-series phones. Our usual working day includes navigation, stream content from Prime, Netflix, YouTube, listen to songs, scroll through social media feed, browsing, and more. With this kind of usage, the A50 was able to last till the end of the day without sweating much. There was no idle battery drain, nor the battery percentage dropped drastically during heavy, and it is a good thing. We consider our usage to be slightly mixed and A50 come out with flying colours.

The battery drain overnight was also in the range of 5-7% which is quite understandable. In our video loop test, the Galaxy A50 lasted 15 hours which is quite good. Moving to heavy usage, which includes video recording, click images, playing games, watch movies, the device could last until the late evening requiring us to charge once again before we end the day. Thanks to the 15W fast charging support, the phone took close to 2 hours 30 minutes to charge the large 4000mAh battery from 1-100%. Overall the battery of the A50 is the strongest aspects of the phone.

The Samsung Galaxy A50 runs on Android 9.0 with the brand’s latest One U.I on top. It's interesting to see a mid-range Samsung phone ship with the latest Android OS instead of waiting for a long time for the update. One UI looks quite refined and refreshing. The UI is now re-designed keeping in mind the single-handed usage as all the setting options including the quick settings panel, and default apps are now moved to bottom, so it is easily accessible when using such tall phones. The UI also brings enlarged text and icons which makes it appealing to eyes. There is an option to disable the app drawer, and you also choose whether to open it with a swipe up action or by tapping an icon.

It brings a night mode, blue light filter for not hurting your eyes. There are gesture support and an option to interchange navigation buttons. There is a theme store for customisation; most of the themes are free while some are paid. The phone comes with Samsung Pay mini which you can use to pay at stores without having to carry cash or your debit cards. It also features Google's Digital Wellbeing which you can use to see app usage times, and more. Disabling the “lock screen stories” will disable ads on the lockscreen. Apart from default apps, the phone comes with Microsoft app suite, Daily hunt, Samsung apps and more. These can’t be uninstalled unless rooted.

The phone comes in two variants; 4GB and 6GB RAM model and if you were to pick the phone, we suggest you go with the 6GB. The RAM management is good; all the apps remained in memory despite having around 6-7 apps in the background. We didn’t notice any lag or hiccups. Overall, the software and multitasking experience on the A50 is excellent.

At a starting price of Rs 19,990, the Galaxy A50 is competing against the Poco F1 which is considered to the segment leader with the unmatchable Snapdragon 845 flagship chipset. While it does have a better design, an AMOLED display, no-ad U.I, triple rear cameras, and an incredible battery, the Poco F1 takes the lead with performance and a fast, physical fingerprint sensor. With Redmi Note 7 Pro taking the second lead in the sub Rs 20,000 price segment, the Galaxy A50 despite being Samsung’s most competitive phone isn’t aggressive for the masses yet. So, if you are in the market looking for a phone, we suggest you incline towards either of the above mentioned phones.