Review of the Samsung Galaxy A32 If you're considering the Samsung Galaxy A32, you might be wondering whether the 4G version is better than the 5G version. In this review, we'll be focusing on the LTE version since we don't have the A32 5G yet. However, we'll revisit the comparison if we get our hands on the 5G model in the future.
Samsung Galaxy A32 A Mid-Range Phone with an Impressive Display and Camera System
Before we dive into the A32, it's worth noting that the two versions share very little in common, despite having similar names. The displays are different, with the 4G version having a much better 90Hz 1080p AMOLED screen compared to the 5G's 60Hz 720p LCD screen. Additionally, the LTE version boasts higher resolution main and selfie cameras compared to the 5G version. However, the A32 5G has a more powerful chipset with newer cores, which makes it 5G-capable.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the Galaxy A32 is its Helio G80 chipset, which may not match up to competitors in the just-under-€300 price range. However, the phone's camera system is decent, featuring a 64MP primary camera, an 8MP ultrawide camera, and a 20MP selfie camera. Nevertheless, it's the display that's the standout feature of the Galaxy A32, both on paper and in practice.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the Galaxy A32 is its Helio G80 chipset, which may not match up to competitors in the just-under-€300 price range. However, the phone's camera system is decent, featuring a 64MP primary camera, an 8MP ultrawide camera, and a 20MP selfie camera. Nevertheless, it's the display that's the standout feature of the Galaxy A32, both on paper and in practice.
The 90Hz refresh rate makes for a smooth and responsive experience, and the colors are vibrant and punchy thanks to the AMOLED panel. Viewing angles are excellent, and the brightness is more than enough for use in bright outdoor conditions. The only downside to the display is that it's not particularly bright when viewing HDR content.
In terms of design, the A32 looks and feels like a mid-range phone, with a plastic back that has a glossy finish. It's not the most premium-looking device, but it's comfortable to hold and use with one hand. The rear camera module is quite large and protrudes slightly, which may bother some users. The device also has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor that's fast and reliable.
The Galaxy A32 comes with Samsung's One UI 3.1, which is based on Android 11. The user interface is clean and easy to navigate, with a lot of customization options available. The phone comes with some bloatware preinstalled, but most of it can be uninstalled. Performance-wise, the A32 is snappy and responsive for everyday tasks, but it may struggle with more demanding applications and games.
The battery life is another strong point of the A32, with the 5,000mAh battery easily lasting a full day of heavy usage. The phone supports 15W fast charging, which is not the fastest, but it's still adequate.
Overall, the Samsung Galaxy A32 is a solid mid-range phone with a fantastic display and good battery life. Its camera system and chipset may not be the best in its price range, but they are adequate for most users. If you're in the market for a phone with a great display and long battery life, the A32 is worth considering.
Samsung Galaxy A32 specifications at a glance:
- Body: 158.9x73.6x8.4mm, 184g; glass front; plastic back; plastic frame.
- Display: 6.40" Very AMOLED, 90Hz, 1080x2400px resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, 411ppi.
- Chipset: Mediatek Helio G80 (12 nm): Octa-core (2x2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 and 6x1.8 GHz Cortex-A55); Mali-G52 MC2.
- Memory: 64GB/4GB RAM, 128GB/4GB RAM, 128GB/6GB RAM, 128GB/8GB RAM; microSDXC (dedicated port).
- OS/Software: Android 11, One UI 3.1.
- Back video cam: wide (main): 64 MP, f/1.8, 26mm, PDAF; extremely wide angle: 8 MP, f/2.2, 123, 1/4.0", 1.12um; macro: 5 MP, f/2.4; depth: 5 MP, f/2.4.
- Front video camera: 20 MP, f/2.2 (wide).
- Video clip catch: Back video cam: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30/120fps; Front video cam: 1080p@30fps.
- Battery: 5000 mAh; fast charging (15 W).
- Misc: Fingerprint reader (under display, optical); 3.5 mm jack.
Some smaller points that are easier to neglect but still set the A32 4G aside from its more forward-thinking sibling consist of the under-display finger print sensing unit and dedicated microSD port (the A32 5G's is crossbred). On the other hand, a common characteristic is the choice of battery—a 5,000 mAh power load that Samsung appears to have chosen as the ideal capacity for the mass of its phones.
Design
The Galaxy A32 is fairly uncommon in its design language, especially when it comes to the location of the video camera. Three separate components stand out each by itself from a completely level back panel.
It is kind of a common visual with the higher-end A-series models such as the A52 and A72; just those do have an increased location of the back about the video cams, and the A32 does not.
Our review unit remains in the Incredible Black colorway, with a couple of other Incredible options available: White, Blue, and Violet. This particular one we have informs us of the initial Galaxy S20 Extremely, and not in a great way—it is among the drabbest paint jobs you can find. On the other hand, if you'd rather have your handset understated, this is the one.
The panel on the back is plastic. Previously, records recommended it be Gorilla Glass 5, but we talked to Samsung about it, and they verified it's certainly plastic. It is no big deal in itself, as plastic is much less susceptible to ruining and is lighter; it is simply that it does not feel as premium.
This particular panel is as proficient at getting finger prints as glass, so keep a fabric handy if you will be taking photos of your A32's back. The Galaxy A52 we simply evaluated is treated to a frozen matte finish and is better to the touch while also being much less susceptible to spots.
The frame of the A32 is plastic as well and is treated to a high-gloss shine.
Since we're on the frame currently and we guaranteed a trip, here it goes. The power switch and quantity rocker are on the right in what Samsung has chosen as the default Galaxy control layout. Both switches are plastic and click favorably.
On the opposite side is where you will find the card port. It is the best application that allows you to use a pair of nano SIMs and a microSD card all at the same time.
There are no surprises along the remaining 2 sides. The packed bottom houses the USB-C port, the earphone jack, speaker, and primary mic, while the additional mic is up on top.
Over on the front, the 90Hz AMOLED is the centerpiece. A 6.4-incher, such as other at a passing glimpse, it does not cannot thrill the more you appearance at it. And an appearance at it we will, on the next web page.
It is an Infinity-U kind of display, with the U being the form of the selfie video cam intermediary. The bezel situation isn't as attractive as the display itself, with a fairly thick border bordering the radiating pixels.
If you are the kind that complains about diminishing bezels messing up the handling, you will like the A32. If you enjoy slim bezels and pair them with premium devices, you will not obtain them here. To be reasonable, that is practically the standard in the A32's course, so it is not even worse compared to its rivals.
The Galaxy A32, many thanks to its AMOLED display, obtains an under-display finger print sensing unit. It is the optical variety, unlike the ultrasonic ones that Samsung fits on premium handsets. We just weren't thrilled with our experience with the unit on the A32. Similar to the A52, we found it slower compared to what we're used to. And, unlike on the A52, this would certainly give us failed attempts uncommonly often.
The Galaxy A32 measures 158.9x73.6x8.4mm and weighs 184g. As far as its immediate competitors go, this Samsung remains in the middle in regards to weight: the Vivo V20 (171 g) and the Realme 8 Professional (176 g) are lighter, while the Redmi Note 7 Keep in mind the 10 Professional is heavier (193 g), but none is as hefty as the Poco X3 Professional (215 g). The A32 is one of the smallest of the bunch; however, the Poco and the Redmi do have 6.67-inch displays to show for their dimensions.
A quad-camera system of the 2+2 variety
An instead classic 2+2 video camera system is what you can find on the rear of the Galaxy A32. We imply that there are two real video cameras and two more simply to bring the total up to four. Alright, perhaps in the A32's situation, we're being a little bit too severe. Yes, it does have a "macro" and a "depth" video camera, but at the very least they are 5 MP each as opposed to simply 2 MP.
The primary video camera uses a Samsung GW3 64-MP sensing unit (S5KGW3). It is a tetrapixel design (used to be called Tetracell in Samsung talk; Sony phone calls them Quad Bayer), and it is among the more recent models with 0.7 m pixels—the same 1/1.97" imager is found in the Moto G30 we evaluated recently. It does the usual 4-to-1 binning and outputs 16 MP pictures by default. The lens has a 25mm equivalent focal size and an f/1.8 aperture.
The 8MP ultrawide video camera of the Galaxy A32 is the nearly perfect happy medium in between the ones on the A12 (5MP) and the A52 (13MP). It uses a 1/4" sensing unit with 1.0 m pixels and an f/2.2 aperture lens that covers a 123-degree field of vision. There is no software distortion adjustment on this, much like there is not on the A12; the A52 does have it, however.
For selfies, there is a 20-megapixel video camera in the notch of the display that uses an SK Hynix sensing unit with a Quad Bayer filter array and 1.0-micron pixels. The lens here has a reported equivalent focal size of 25mm and an f/2.2 aperture.
Selfies
The 20-megapixel front-facing video camera of the Galaxy A32 takes alright selfies. It conserves them in 12 MP by default, so it is doing some unorthodox demosaicking of that Quad Bayer sensing unit. Information isn't quite 12 MP-grade, therefore, but it is still easily great enough.
We're liking the selfie shades—saturation gets on point, and the complexion is uncommonly warm and all-natural for a Samsung selfie webcamera. The vibrant range is truly wide, thanks to HDR; however, that can result in some incorrect color as the formulas attempt to restore highlights in backlit scenes—a relatively small issue.
90Hz FullHD Very AMOLED is an invite-only view.
The Galaxy A32 (non-5G) is equipped with a correctly nice Very AMOLED display with 1080x2400px resolution. Perhaps more significantly, the display supports a (reasonably) high revitalize rate and can run at up to 90 Hz. All this remains in stark comparison to the Galaxy A32 5G, which obtains a significantly substandard 60 Hz 720p LCD.
It is certainly among the better AMOLEDs Samsung needs to offer, especially for the price point. Maximum illumination, for instance, was an outstanding 814 nits in Flexible mode with the telephone under direct bright light, while running the slider by hand in much less severe situations will obtain you a shutter of 400 nits -- a relatively standard number that also attracted the company's top-end model. Mind you, despite the "flexible" toggle being disabled, the telephone will crank up the illumination if you are out in the sunlight to enable the "high illumination" setting.
This being an AMOLED panel, there is no lighting when showing black, hence the comparison is basically unlimited (otherwise purely mathematically correct). Minimal illumination, on the other hand, was measured at 1.8 nits, so you are ensured comfy light degrees even in very dark atmospheres.
The color settings on the Galaxy A32 coincide with those on most other Samsungs that aren't the outright most affordable ones. You obtain the Vivid and All-natural presets, with Vivid covering a broad color range and All-natural tuned for sRGB content. In our testing, the All-Natural setting was certainly very accurate at rendering our sRGB test swatches, while Vivid (the one from the package) was okay to great at showing DCI-P3 content. A bump of the Cool-to-Warm slider in the Vivid setting allows you to almost totally terminate out the passing out of the blue color of the white point without making a lot of sacrifices somewhere else.
Samsung makes no claims for HDR abilities on the A32's display, and certainly we didn't obtain HDR streams in any one of the popular applications we examined—Netflix, Amazon.com Prime Video, and not even YouTube.
This being a 90Hz display, you can choose whether to run it at its maximum revitalize rate or the standard 60Hz. In the last setting, everything everywhere obtains 60 Hz. In a 90Hz setting, you obtain the high revitalize rate throughout the UI, as well as in social media applications and browsers, plus video clip playback applications; there is no wise downswitching to 60Hz also for video clip playback. The telephone will switch to 60 Hz for the video camera viewfinder or for applications that clearly require it, such as MSN and Yahoo Maps.
Samsung Galaxy A32 battery life
The Galaxy A32 has a 5,000 mAh battery inside, a relatively common capacity for midrangers of the day; Samsung's own A-series has lots of phones keeping that big of a powerpack. This particular model does have a 90Hz display, and it is FullHD, too, so it is perhaps among the more exhausting panels; however, the fairly moderate chipset should help offset that.
Certainly, the Galaxy A32 posted excellent results for battery life. Operating the telephone in a 90 Hz setting, we measured 16 hours of Wi-Fi internet browsing and 18 hours of offline video clip playback. With 33+ hours of articulated phone calls and good standby numbers, the Galaxy A32 posted an endurance score of 119.
Switch the telephone to the standard 60 Hz revitalize rate, and you stand to gain an hour of Wi-Fi internet browsing or about an hour and fifty percent of looping video clips. It looks like too small an advantage to sacrifice the 90 Hz level of smoothness for.
All the updates for Android 11 and OneUI 3.1
The Galaxy A32 is launching with the newest One UI 3.1 and Android 11 combination out-of-the-box, the same as the A52. As with most various other current Samsungs, the A32 should obtain 3 significant OS updates as well as 4 years of security patches. In theory, your Galaxy A32 should obtain Android 14 in 2023. That is a great dedication to support if we've ever seen one.
To be reasonable, aesthetically, One UI 3.1 hardly represents a significant jump ahead compared with 3.0 and also 2.5. Still, there are some refined distinctions well worth reviewing. For instance, the default secure screen faster ways—dialer and video cam—are currently monochrome; they used to suit the particular apps' shades. Strangely enough, if you pick various applications, they'll maintain their shades—it is not a first-party vs. third-party kind of differentiation either.
Amongst the functional changes on the secure screen is the included wellness widget; you can currently monitor how much time you've invested in your phone without also opening it. On the other hand, the always-on display setups have been streamlined.
Opening the telephone is best done using the fingerprint reader embedded in the display. The option exists if you want to use Face Open. It can be easier in certain circumstances, but it typically is much less secure since it is simply based upon the selfie video cam. Iris scanners are unfortunately a distant memory currently, not that an A32 would certainly have obtained one.
Another noteworthy change is that drawing the notice color covers the whole screen underneath, whether there is only one notice card or none at all. Formerly, the part of the screen listed below the last notice would certainly remain noticeable but be dark.
While we're here, the fast toggles can currently be modified straight from the plus switch at the completion of the list rather than entering into the food selection.
Coming thanks to Android 11, there's currently a "Notice" background, too. It is accessed from the Setups menu, so it is not within immediate reach, but it is there for those events when you reject a notice too quickly and you can't seem to find what it has to do with. Simply make certain to enable it because it is off by default.
All the standard layout modifications and toggles for the fast panel and taskbar are accounted for. Android 11 has a brand-new way of handling notifications for instant carrier applications called Bubbles, and One UI 3 embraces it too. That is along with a previously available comparable feature offered by Samsung by the name of "Wise pop-up view." You will find these setups under the "Floating Notifications" submenu, where you can additionally turn both of them off and choose the old-school cards just for the user interface.
With Google's newest OS variation, the new media controls have been implemented in the One UI as well. You obtain a pile of the energetic sound playback applications listed below the fast toggles by swiping sideways switches in between the applications.
The Media screen is currently available on One UI 2.5 pre-Android 11, and it offers comparable functionality for picking the output device or using Samsung's Songs share feature. The quantity control board has undergone a transformation too, and currently the four sliders are upright rather than the straight ones of OneUI's previous design.
Yet another of the native Android 11 improvements that Samsung also includes in One UI 3 is the ability to pin applications to the top of the sheet with Share options. It is among those points that make you wonder how it came to need to delay until Version 11 for us to arrive. Points are far better currently, but still, we'd prefer to have the ability to remove some of the options, too, because that list could certainly use some decluttering.
Another point that Microsoft and Yahoo modified in this year's launch is the consent handling, and Samsung's executed it in One UI 3. With this variation, you'll currently see a brand-new prompt for consents every time an application demands it, allowing you to reject consent, permit it just while using the application, or simply for this once. If an application requires continuous access to consent, you also obtain a fourth option that takes you to a setup web page where you can provide it. This is done to prevent the user from unintentionally choosing this option while scorching through the consent dialogs.
The setup's food selection has seen a refined but significant transformation. Subcategories are made more clear by using a populate separator and extra periods, while current searches are currently revealed as bubbles rather than a listing. Furthermore, there is a recently included feature to browse setups by hashtags, for conceptually related points found in various places in the food selection.
The dialer itself comes with a lot of aesthetic changes. You pick a couple of layouts for the in-call screen. You can also set up a history picture or video clip for that screen; however, it is most likely to be just the same for all your phone calls; you can't have a different one for each person.
There are lots of various other smaller-sized aesthetic changes spread all throughout One UI 3.1. Samsung's excellent theme support and abundant online choice exist as well. The same opts for the system navigating options, with a couple of modifications and layouts available for motions as well as old-school switch manages and the really-old initial design with the back switch on the right side.
Similarly to the A52, the Galaxy A32 has an abundant choice of additional Samsung software features. points such as the Side Panel user interface, Bixby, and complete integration of the SmartThings system. There's also the video game launcher, the center for all your video games, which also provides options for restricting interruption when video PC gaming is here to stay as well.
Samsung has still chosen not to include some of its most advanced features on the Galaxy A32, most significantly Dex. However, even in its absence, you can still obtain a great deal of its functionality through the Connect to Home Windows feature that is implemented together with Microsoft.
The CPU does have 2 Cortex-A75 cores that can produce good numbers for more demanding procedures, but most rivals use designs based upon the more recent A76, and they're often clocked higher compared to the 2.0 GHz in the G80 chipset. So the Galaxy A32 outcomes are showing it is not up there with rivals' outcomes in GeekBench. It is an insignificantly small improvement over the Galaxy A31 and significantly behind the A52 and most various other phones you can obtain for the cash.
Decision
Despite the undeniably exceptional outcomes in some locations, the Galaxy A32 has problems that can be considered dealbreakers. The chipset is perhaps the most awful wrongdoer, being too slow for the card. Most likely related, the buggy evening setting can be actually disappointing, and the telephone underdelivers on the video clip taping front.
So what you are left with after that is great endurance, an incredible display, and the Samsung badge. Can these make a solid enough situation for the Galaxy A32? Typically, they could, but at the price that Samsung charges for this set, you can obtain a lot more phones by quitting on the Galaxy name, so we feel it is unworthy of fixating on brand loyalty in this particular situation.
Pros
wonderful 90 Hz, extremely bright AMOLED display. excellent battery life. Most current Android and OneUI versions have a bright software future.
Disadvantages
Underpowered chipset.slow finger print reader experience. Buggy Evening setting on the main video camera; no 4K video cliptaping; inadequate stabilization on the ultrawide video cam.
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