Samsung Galaxy A52 First Impressions

We are one of the lucky ones to receive the Samsung Galaxy A52 early. While I’m sure many of you are looking forward to the review, I’m going to give you a special preview with our unboxing and first impressions of the new midrange smartphone.

Samsung Galaxy A52 First Impressions

With Galaxy Awesome Unpacked 2021 now over and done with, I’m sure many of you are wondering how well the new smartphones perform. I’m proud to announce that we managed to get our hands on the Samsung Galaxy A52 early so we’re going to give you a special preview of it. Starting off with the box, it looks like your usual midrange smartphone box by the Korean giant with a white colour scheme.

Inside the box, you do get a complete set of accessories. This includes the:

• 15W power brick
• USB-C to USB-C cable
• User guide
• Warranty card
• Samsung Pay leaflet
• SIM Ejector tool

For our review unit, we received the Awesome Black colour variant. It has a plastic back with a matte black finish, which I personally like as it’s not susceptible to fingerprints and smudges. The sides are metallic and, obviously, the front is glass as the display is there. Generally, the build quality is solid enough for a midrange smartphone and it’s easy to grip.

The new Samsung Galaxy A52 has a quad-camera system with a slight bump. The camera placement looks somewhat similar to the Galaxy Note20 rather than something like the recent Galaxy S21-series with their contour-cut design, albeit blending in with the plastic back.

In case it wasn’t obvious enough from the photo, the Samsung Galaxy A52 uses a 6.5-inch Full HD+ Infinity-O Super AMOLED display, so you do have that dot notch, which is less distracting than the dewdrop-style notch. The notch houses a 32MP f/2.2 wide-angle selfie camera. It also has Eye Comfort Shield to reduce strain while looking at it.

What’s most interesting here is that it does have a high refresh rate option, which is 90Hz, and it’s said to work better than 120Hz refresh rate on a typical LCD display. In case you’re wondering, it’s not adaptive refresh rate. As for the bezels, you can definitely see it on all four sides but it’s still relatively thin, just that we’ve seen thinner from Samsung’s own devices, albeit those are flagship smartphones.

Specifications

Processor	Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G 2 x Kryo 470 @ 2.3GHz + 6 x Kryo 470 @1.8GHz 8nm
GPU	Adreno 618 + 15% boost
RAM	8GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Bluetooth 5.0 USB Type-C GPS, Glonass, BeiDou, Galileo NFC 4G LTE
Storage	256GB UFS 2.1 Up to 1TB expandable storage (MicroSD)
Display	6.5″ FHD+ (2400 x 1080) Super AMOLED Display Eye Comfort Shield Corning Gorilla Glass Up to 90Hz Refresh Rate
Rear Camera	64MP f/1.8 wide angle camera, OIS AF 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, 123° 5MP f/2.4 macro 5MP f/2.4 depth 4K Video Snap, Tetra Binning, Night, LED flash, HDR, panorama 4K@30fps, 1080p@30/120fps, gyro-EIS
Selfie Camera	32MP f/2.2 wide-angle selfie cam, HDR 4K@30fps, 1080p@30fps
Battery	4500mAh 25W Fast Charging
OS	One UI 3.1 Android 11
Ingress Protection	IP67
Dimensions	75.1 x 159.9 x 8.4 mm 189g

Based on what I’ve experienced so far, it looks like a promising midrange smartphone. You do get decent performance that will be more than adequate for most consumers unless you’re into heavy gaming, and the camera does seem to work a lot better than I initially expected it to. For now, the Samsung Galaxy A52 is in the middle of benchmark tests. I’ll be publishing my review of it as soon as I’m done with my testing so stay tuned for that.

Looking for a new pair of TWS earbuds? Check out our review of the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro by clicking right here.