With the newly announced Galaxy A53 5G smartphone, Samsung updates its ~$450 smartphone offering, a high-volume segment particularly popular with younger users.
Based on the official specs, this handset does a good job bringing the look and feel of more expensive phones down to that market segment.
Compared to a high-end phone, “some” performance is proportional to the price. However, many features such as the large battery capacity, in-screen fingerprint display, or the 120 Hz, 800 NITs, 6.5-inch display will “feel” nearly identical.
The chassis is waterproof and has an IP67 rating, which is not that common for that market. That alone would be an essential factor to consider since water damage is a common reason phones are permanently disabled.
The rear camera system features four cameras. The Primary (64MP, f1.8, OIS) and Ultrawide camera (12MP, f/2.2) will do the heavy lifting, while a macro camera can help with fun shots of insects and other tiny subjects. The 5MP depth camera increases the Bokeh accuracy.
There’s also a 32MP (f2.2) selfie camera that seems very promising and way better than any PC webcam for video calls.
From a camera software point of view, Samsung does a great job with having the same color tuning across all cameras, minus the extra quality that more expensive camera hardware brings.
Samsung doesn’t reveal much about the 5nm processor platform, but since it’s a modern architecture, I expect the performance/price to align with market standards.
The 6/8GB of RAM and 128/256GB of storage are very decent, although probably not the most competitive offering at that price. However, a microSD slot supports up to an additional 1TB of affordable storage.
Samsung claims a 2-day battery life, and for select users, that might be possible as the 5000 mAh battery is paired with a seemingly very power-efficient processor. I suspect that you could easily last a day without worries for heavy users. If needed, the 25W fast-charging can quickly replenish the battery if you own such a charger.
This phone seems very attractive for its intended young target audience, although Samsung’s security and office features are embedded and could make this an affordable Enterprise device, as Patrick Moorhead pointed out.
I find the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G (official page) very attractive and a great multimedia and social smartphone that should deliver outstanding value across the board.
While others might have a specific feature that’s better, Samsung tends to build very balanced products that perform well on all fronts. This has been proven over and over using objective metrics.
The Samsung A53 is available directly from Samsung as an unlocked phone, but also from high-profile carriers such as AT&T for example. Samsung offers significant discounts if you pre-order on their site, including Galaxy Buds Live earphones ($169.99 value) and a $100 trade-in for select phones.
AT&T’s best deal is $149.99, only for new subscribers of a 2-year plan. More information here.