Samsung Galaxy A52 5G review: The most affordable waterproof 5G phone yet

Note: This review was first published on 17 Apr 2021.

Pushing mid-range phones into a polished package

Last year, we saw intense competition in the mid-range smartphone market, and it’s now finally possible to have a very respectable phone in the S$500 price point and not feel left out for not splurging twice or thrice that amount for a high-end phone. We see this trend will be a mainstay for 2021 as phone brands hailing from China will continue to put pressure on global offerings from Apple and Samsung and if it wasn’t for their persistence, we probably won’t see a capable mid-range offering from either of these two brands.

Before any of the other brands get a chance to push their offerings to retail, Samsung has aggressively launched three new Galaxy A series mid-range phones: the A72, A52, and A32. Sadly, for our local market, there are no immediate plans to bring in the A72, and since Singapore is actively expanding its 5G network, Samsung has opted to bring in only the 5G variants of the A52 and A32 to our sunny island. I managed to get my hands on the Galaxy A52 5G on its launch day, and this will be the focus of my review. 

Naturally, the A52 is an immediate successor of the A51 released last year, and the naming convention puts the A52 plainly right in the middle of the spectrum of mid-range phones released by Samsung.

In spite of that, the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G is a tremendous improvement over its predecessor, in which the Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G chip within supports 5G networks natively. Also, the phone’s rear camera has OIS, and the screen supports 120 Hz refresh rate. Above all, it is waterproof.

Wait, didn’t Samsung launch A42 just a few months back with the same processor?

Back in November 2020, Samsung launched the A42 5G. While the raw specs of the A42 are very similar to A52, the headliner differences are the waterproofing, better camera and screen. Having said that, we are curious to see whether there are any differences between the performance of A42 and A52, and that will be explored in the benchmarks section.

Design, Display and Audio

Now that we’ve figured out where the new Galaxy A52 5G is in the pecking order, let’s explore the phone in greater detail, starting with first impressions - its design. At the front, it would seem that Samsung has kept its design language for its A5- series of phones, with the same hole-punch display that facilitates the front camera at the top of the screen, right smack in the center. On its back though, while Samsung is still using plastic materials, it is now matte haze finish instead of glossy, thus it feels and looks much better in hand compared to its predecessors. The sides are also dramatically less curved and it seems that Samsung has infused some design elements of the Galaxy S21 into A52. The same goes for the camera bump; while the bump is still present, the design looks decidedly less “awkward” than the A51 and has more in common to the S21 range.

Partly because of its body construct, even though it weighs 189g - slightly heavier than the A51 - it feels comfortable in hand - not too heavy, but it feels just about right with a comfortable amount of heft without feeling any flimsiness that you might expect of this class of phones. The phone is a tad thicker than A51 at 8.4mm. Perhaps all this ‘upsizing’ is partly due to the incorporating a slightly bigger battery (4500mAh), though oddly, it’s not as large as the earlier released Galaxy A42.

On top of that, while A52 still retains the 6.5-inch display form factor with the same Super AMOLED Infinity-O display and resolution as A51 (1,080 x 2,400 pixels), the display now comes with a 120Hz refresh rate, which renders the user experience buttery smooth, in spite of it being a mid-range device. The display also incorporates an under-display fingerprint sensor, a standard thoroughfare amongst most respectable mid-range devices these days and flagships, and is decently sensitive enough; I managed to unlock the phone without fuss most of the time and this is definitely a sign of maturity for in-display fingerprint sensors. Would I perhaps prefer a fingerprint sensor incorporated in the power button as opposed to this implementation? Perhaps, if it also means the cost of the phone goes down somewhat, but otherwise, I can definitely live with this.

Besides that, there are not many other design changes between the A51 and A52. The volume rocker and the power button are positioned on the right side once again. Also found at the bottom side is a 3.5mm headphone jack, a rarity in flagship phones in this decade. The Dual-SIM card slot is found at the top, which also supports single-SIM and expandable microSD card storage (yet another rarity these days). Expectedly, the USB-C port is placed at the bottom side of the phone. 

Also at the bottom side is a speaker grill, which is part of the stereo sound system in the A52, with the other speaker being the loudspeaker at the top of the screen.  The phone supports Dolby Atmos surround sound upmixing and decoding, which was a flagship feature but slowly filtering down as a standard in some mid-range phones. With that, watching either the Mandalorian or the Falcon and Winter Soldier yields a pleasing aural experience - especially on headphones. Audio over the speaker is decent for a phone, but nothing out of the expected. Oh and if your eyes are not free enough to enjoy your favourite streaming shows, you might be delighted to know that the A52 has FM radio support - an understated feature that’s also fast becoming a thing of the past.

Colour choices-wise, the Samsung A52 comes in Awesome Black, Awesome White, Awesome Violet, and Awesome Blue. Personally, Violet looks nice, but I still prefer black.

What about the Galaxy A52 package itself? You’ll be delighted to know that unlike most flagship phones, the Samsung Galaxy A52 package actually comes with a 15W charger (though the phone can actually support 25W fast charging). This is actually a good move considering most people purchasing this tier (upgrading from older mid-range devices) would likely not have a modern fast charging adapter since their old phones wouldn’t have supported it anyway. Kudos to Samsung.

A water-resistant mid-range phone

Rejoice! The Samsung Galaxy A52 is IP67 rated. While it is now taken for granted that flagship phones feature a certain level of water resistance, it is a rarity in the mid-tier and isn't featured in any Samsung mid-range phone since the 2017 A series. The launch of A52 5G dethrones the Apple iPhone SE as the cheapest waterproof phone one can get in the local market.

One UI 3

The Samsung A52 5G is preloaded with Android 11. Overlaying it is Samsung One UI 3. My colleague has briefly covered it in his Galaxy S21 review. Overall, the One UI 3 is aesthetically pleasing and is one of the better OEM skins in the Android market.

Imaging and Videography

The rear camera module of Samsung Galaxy A52 5G comes with four lenses:-

• Main: 64MP OIS autofocus (F1.8, 0.8µm)
• Ultra Wide: 12MP fixed-focus (F2.2, 1.12µm)
• Macro: 5MP fixed-focus (F2.4, 1.12µm)
• Depth: 5MP fixed-focus (F2.4, 1.12µm)

A major step up from its predecessor is that the main camera has optical image stabilisation (OIS), thus offering better stability when taking photos. Apart from that, it has a slightly better aperture and takes in more megapixels. Photos are then sampled to 16 megapixels.

The front camera lens is a 32MP fixed-focus (F2.2, 0.8μm) unit.

To see how the camera performs in real life, we have taken the A52 for a spin and took photos and videos in various different modes. Unless when explicitly specified, all photos are taken at auto ISO, aperture, and focus settings. Please excuse the gloomy weather shots, but the weather has been unpredictable lately.

Main Camera

Main HDR

Ultra Wide Angle

Main (Night, Auto)

Ultra Wide (Night Mode)

Despite being a mid-range phone, the Samsung Galaxy A52 manages to take rather decent shots, even at night. The OIS present in the A52 certainly helped in stabilising photos with moderately low light. There is still an aggressive effort on the part of the A52 to brighten portions that are meant to be dark though, as can be seen in the night shot near Orchard Central.

Videography

Samsung A52 5G can take videos in the following modes:-

• FHD/30fps
• FHD/60fps
• UHD/30fps
• FHD in slow-mo 120fps

Video stabilisation is achieved using electronics image stabilisation (EIS). There are two types of EIS - one basic, and a Super Steady. For basic EIS, the video recording exhibits a weird effect whereby the shifting is contained only in the vertical axis, while the movements can be seen in the horizontal axis. Super steady mode does help to stabilise the video substantially but at a loss of video quality. Note that both basic stabilisation and super steady locks the video recording to FHD/30fps.

Performance and Battery Life

To recap, the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G processor. It is one of the newer mid-range Qualcomm chips supporting 5G networks all within its main SoC, though the A52 5G in Singapore only supports sub-6GHz 5G networks, which is what our 5G infrastructure primarily utilises (Singtel does deploy mmWave in limited areas though). The processor itself comprises six 2.2GHz cores and twin 1.8GHz cores. Given that the Galaxy A52 5G is one of the very few new mid-range phones that we can get our hands on this year, we can only benchmark it against other mid-range phones released late last year.

JetStream 2.0

JetStream 2 is a combination of a variety of JavaScript and Web Assembly benchmarks, including benchmarks that came before like SunSpider and Octane. It primarily tests for a system’s and browser’s ability in delivering a good web experience. It runs a total of 64 subtests, each weighted equally, with multiple iterations, and takes the geometric mean to compute the overall score.

Geekbench 5

Geekbench CPU is a cross-platform processor benchmark that tests both single-core and multi-core performance with workloads that simulate real-world usage. Geekbench 5 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 1000, which is the score of an Intel Core i3-8100.

3DMark Sling Shot Extreme

3DMark Sling Shot is an advanced 3D graphics benchmark that tests the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback. The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects. The test's Unlimited mode ignores screen resolutions.

Thoughts on benchmarks

The Snapdragon 750G in the Galaxy A52 5G performs rather decently in the benchmarks, slightly exceeding Pixel 4a’s Snapdragon 730G, the chip it was supposed to succeed. It is expectedly almost on par with its Galaxy A42 5G cousin. The benchmarks also translate well to real-life experience as the usage is so far still smooth. Most games perform decently as well.

Battery Life

Our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email

Samsung Galaxy A52 5G yields a battery life of over 13 hours in our tests, which is the longest amongst other devices tested in its class - other than its A42 cousin, which is endowed with a slightly larger battery. This translates to real-life usage as well, where I don’t find the need to reach out for the charger at the end of the day (though it’s a good practice anyway).

As iterated earlier, the Galaxy A52 5G supports 25W fast charging, though the charger that comes with the packaging is the normal Samsung 15W fast charger. While it is a pity that Samsung chose not to include a 25W charger inside the box, we are happy to see they are still including capable chargers for mid-range phones. The A52 does not support wireless charging, which is par for the course for phones priced at its tier.

While I didn't have the official 25W Samsung charger at hand, I do have a 100W GaN multiport USB-C charger, in which one of the ports supports USB PPS charging. Using that port, I found the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G charged at “Super fast charging” mode, and it managed to charge the phone from 56% to 90% in just 25 minutes.

Conclusion

Samsung’s mid-range phones have been a hit and miss affair in the past, but they have since risen to the competition, starting from last year’s A-series. This year, the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G turns up the heat further by incorporating features normally seen on more expensive phones like optical image stabilisation (OIS) for better photo taking and even being able to weather the elements with IP67 water and dust resistance rating. Truly, Samsung’s mid-range has finally become a credible recommendation and not just devices put out by the big blue to fill in different price bins without a thought towards consumer appeal.

It can be argued by some that water resistance is a useless feature since electronics don’t play well with liquids in the first place. However, the fact remains that it is a practical unsung hero when certain scenarios call for it, like being caught in heavy rain, or you really want to bring the phone by the poolside and not worry about it being drenched or splashed upon accidentally.

The Galaxy A52’s camera array, though modest compared to the likes of a Galaxy S21 that costs at least twice as much, still performs rather capably as seen in our unforgiving test shots (no thanks to the weather). If you don’t really care for zoom and other advanced use cases, the camera array on the Galaxy A52 easily fulfils most everyday usage needs. Don’t forget that it also has an ultrawide angle lens to capture those trickier group shots or an expansive landscape scene. 

Apart from these two upgrades for the Samsung A5 series (water resistance and a better camera), other notable enhancements, such as Dolby Atmos audio processing (best used with headphones), 25W fast charging, and speedy 120Hz FHD display, would easily appeal to most users looking for a modern daily driver that doesn’t leave out features that were once the domain of flagship phones. The Galaxy A52 also checks off other practical asks such as a decent 128GB internal storage with expandable storage capability, 3.5mm audio jack and FM radio.

Gaming performance may not rival top-tier phones, but since the phone can play games like Genshin Impact and MLBB comfortably, that level of performance would please most users. Perhaps the only minor disappointment is the lack of a wireless charging option, though that may not be what users are necessarily looking for since such wireless chargers are expensive and there is some efficiency loss compared to wired charging. In fact, the only reason anyone might ask for it is because the phone comes with such a capable feature set that you might associate it with a high-end phone than a mid-range one.

What's even more compelling is that all of what the phone offers come at a very modest suggested retail price of just S$548 (for 8GB RAM and 128 GB storage), or if you prefer more onboard storage, you can opt for the 256GB variant for S$648. Only those who have little time to housekeep content on their phone or install way too many apps and download content will require the higher capacity version. For everyone else, you could easily get by with the much more palatable 128GB edition and there's still microSD expansion if you need more storage. If you're keen to purchase it online, you can make the jump to Samsung's Online Store, Samsung LazMall Store or the Samsung Shopee Mall.

With so much to offer at under $550, phones like the Galaxy A52 and its competitors might start to eat into the appeal that flagship phones once held a strong grip. Is this the end of ultra-expensive phones? Or is this just the beginning as top-end phone models start to explore the realms of multi-displays, foldable display, rollable display and other such leading-edge experiences? We tend to think there’s a push for the latter as more brands are debuting showcase devices that we may one day pine for. Till then, the mainstream audience stands to benefit from the continual process and technological improvements to bring devices like the Samsung Galaxy A52 at ever more palatable price points.

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