Review of the Samsung Galaxy A12: A Budget-Friendly Smartphone with a Strong Camera System and Large Battery Life

Announced late in 2015 and available since January, the Galaxy A12 isn't the outright most affordable telephone Samsung offers; the Galaxy M02 obtains that title. Samsung's calling is a little bit iffy at the lower rate, and it can be confusing what's what in between the A and M collections, but the A12 is simply listed below the M12 and over the M02s. Not all of these models are available worldwide, so you might or might not have the ability to snag one of the most affordable Samsungs in your particular neck of the woods.

Review of the Samsung Galaxy A12: A Budget-Friendly Smartphone with a Strong Camera System and Large Battery Life

The Galaxy A12 we have here is equipped with a 6.5-inch display, and the repercussions of the budget restrictions are easy to spot. It is among a couple of LCDs in the OLED-dominated Galaxy schedule, and the 720p resolution is also on the reduced side of average for the angled. It is a relatively standard combination of dimension, technology, and resolution for the section, so the A12 isn't unfit, in truth.


The Mediatek Helio P35 is doing the mathematics inside the A12, which also isn't an especially interesting bit of equipment by itself. Again, however, it is perfectly adequate for the price point - you are obtaining an octa-core CPU and the chip is improved a 12nm construction process, so it should be decently effective and frugal at the same time.


The quad video camera configuration on the back actually makes a solid situation for the Galaxy A12 in its market context. While the effectiveness of both 2MP components is debatable (one for depth information, the various other for "macro"), the 48MP main video cam and a 5MP ultrawide produce a nice tandem that is hard to find. An 8MP selfie video camera finishes the picture in the imaging division.


Samsung Galaxy A12 specifications at a glance:

  • Body: 164.0x75.8x8.9mm, 205g; glass front, plastic back.
  • Display: 6.50" PLS IPS, 720x1600px resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, 270 ppi.
  • Chipset: Mediatek MT6765 Helio P35 (12nm): Octa-core (4x2.35 GHz Cortex-A53 and 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A53); PowerVR GE8320.
  • Memory: 32GB with 3GB of RAM, 64GB with 4GB of RAM, 128GB with 6GB of RAM, eMMC 5.1, and microSDXC (with a dedicated port).
  • OS/Software: Android 10, OneUI 2.5.
  • Back video cam: wide (main): 48 MP, f/2.0, 26 mm, AF; extremely wide angle: 5 MP, f/2.2, 123 ; macro: 2 MP, f/2.4; depth: 2 MP, f/2.4.
  • Front video camera: 8 MP, f/2.2.
  • Video clip catch: Back video camera: 1080p@30fps; front video camera: 1080p@30fps.
  • Battery: 5000 mAh; fast charging (15 W).
  • Misc: finger print reader (side-mounted); FM radio; 3.5 mm jack.


One last important bit: the Galaxy A12 is powered by a 5,000mAh battery, and that is a lot of battery for a 12nm entry-level chipset and a 720p display (maybe a 6.5-inch one). We're anticipating strong numbers for battery life.


Design

The Galaxy A12 is made mainly from plastic, an extremely attractive and nice-feeling plastic. It is not truly a back panel and frame kind of development—there is no defined "frame." Instead, it is a unibody design where the back cover also envelops the perimeter of the handset.


Review of the Samsung Galaxy A12: A Budget-Friendly Smartphone with a Strong Camera System and Large Battery Life


The back is split three-to-one, with the bigger top part treated to an angled red-stripe structure. We would not say it improves hold, but it is not harmful to it either. It's pleasing to the eye, however, and that is a win.


Down in the all-time low quarter, Samsung's logo design is accompanied by some regulative markings, the last in a much less different series, fortunately.


Returning to the top, there is a quad-camera island that has not been enough to make a blink, so it has been listed below the video cam collection. We're not saying 2MP macro and depth components are bad uses of space, but 2MP macro and depth components are bad uses of space. We obtain how marketing divisions might differ, however.


Review of the Samsung Galaxy A12: A Budget-Friendly Smartphone with a Strong Camera System and Large Battery Life


The front is the home of the Infinity-V display, with a small scratch up top for the selfie video cam. A nearly invisible slit over it is where the earpiece's sound appears from.


Bordering the display are reasonably-sized bezels. It is not a cost-effective telephone, so a little bit of extra black frame all around is to be expected. The chin, particularly, is a little bit chunkier, but it is well-suited to rivals in the course, such as a Poco M3 or a Realme 7i. All the same, we'd say the Galaxy A12 isn't looking outdated or inexpensive, therefore its bezels.


Review of the Samsung Galaxy A12: A Budget-Friendly Smartphone with a Strong Camera System and Large Battery Life

We're not huge fans of the display's coating; however, it is among the more susceptible to oil buildup of those we've handled recently. Granted, we mainly handle front-runner phones, and there's absolutely nothing a glass screen guard with an oleophobic coating can't fix.


When it comes to the glass itself, Samsung does not say anything about the kind used on the A12, and Corning does not mention it in its data source either.


Review of the Samsung Galaxy A12: A Budget-Friendly Smartphone with a Strong Camera System and Large Battery Life


Exploring the sides of the telephone, we find the finger print reader/power switch combination on the right. Positioned a little bit over the midpoint, it is ever so slightly too expensive for an "average" left index finger to get to, but a small modification of the hold gets you there. no problems for the same average-handed person's right thumb either.


The quantity rocker over the finger print reader is a little bit harder to get to but hardly a dealbreaker.


High up on the opposite side of the A12 is where you will find the SIM port. It is our favorite kind, allowing you to use two nano SIMs and a microSD card for storage space growth all at the same time.


The Galaxy A12 measures 164x75.8x8.9mm and weighs 205g. It is about the same dimension as most significant rivals, and while they're done in a comparable weight ballpark, the A12 is a couple of grams heavier.


Overall, we like the development of the Galaxy A12. The distinctive back is a breath of fresh air, the plastic is pleasing to the touch, and the three-way card port is a factor for versatility. The screen is covering fallen leaves a little bit more than would be preferred, but that's about it.


Adequate 6.5-inch LCD

The Galaxy A12 remains among a handful of phones on Samsung's schedule that do not use an OLED display. It is a PLS panel, or, as Samsung calls it, an IPS LCD. At 6.5 inches diagonally, it is anything but small, so if you are looking for screen estate, the A12 provides it. The 1600x720px resolution extends a little bit thin on this dimension; pixel thickness works at 270 ppi; however, if you are not intentionally looking at fine text from up close, you should be alright.

In our tests, the Galaxy A12 produced simply under 400 nits of illumination when we operated the slider by hand. The telephone does not have a dedicated ambient light sensing unit, but it obtains an analysis from the selfie webcamera for flexible illumination purposes, and keeping that toggle enabled, we obtained a small boost to 472 nits. Boost or no boost, comparison hovered around 1:3,00—a great if unremarkable number as telephone LCDs go.

Unlike most various other Samsungs, the Galaxy A12 has no color settings; it is what it is. And what it is is a panel that can fairly consistently recreate the sRGB color space. We measured an average dE2000 of 4.9; however, there was a visible blue shift, and the white point was some 8 units off-target.

More info

The Samsung Galaxy A71 A Review of Design, Camera, and Performance

Samsung Galaxy A12 battery life

The Galaxy A12 is powered by a 5,000 mAh battery, sufficient capacity for its fairly moderate equipment. Certainly, the mix makes for some pretty reputable endurance numbers.


Review of the Samsung Galaxy A12: A Budget-Friendly Smartphone with a Strong Camera System and Large Battery Life

We clocked over 16 hours of internet browsing over Wi-Fi and a much shorter hour of looping video clips offline. The A12 managed over 31 hours on an articulate call, which is pretty great, and covered everything off with a reduced standby power draw. In completion, the Galaxy A12's endurance score functioned as expected on 123.


Billing speed

The battery charger is the old and reliable Samsung Flexible Fast Billing Unit (QuickCharge 2.0 certified) that we've seen for many years. It is uncertain what billing standard the telephone supports, but in our experiments, it maxes out the 15W adaptor just with the screen on. With the screen off, it hovers around the 11W note.

 

With this configuration, it took the Galaxy A12 3:03h to receive from 0% to 100%, which is quite slow. The 20% you obtain after connecting it for thirty minutes is pretty disappointing too. Overnight billing seems like the default way to go with this Galaxy. The advantage is that its battery life is sufficient, so you should not typically be stressed over its production throughout the day.

 

Audio speaker test

Review of the Samsung Galaxy A12: A Budget-Friendly Smartphone with a Strong Camera System and Large Battery Life

The Galaxy A12 has a single bottom-firing audio speaker. It is among the quieter handsets in the course, posting a "below average" score for loudness in our 7-track test. It does not stand out in quality either, with missing lows and muted treble reactions. There is no distortion to mention at maximum quantity, so that is nice.


Android 10 and OneUI 2.5

Our Galaxy A12 review unit is operating Android 10 with Samsung's One UI 2.5 on top. It is a little bit of a bummer that there is no Android 11 with One UI 3.0 on the A12 right now, but we're hopeful it will obtain an upgrade eventually.

 

One UI is very consistent from phone to phone and in between launches, so there is not a lot missing on the A12 to start with, v2.5 or otherwise. The lockscreen is a familiar view, with a pair of faster ways in all-time low edges and notice symbols under a clock. This being an LCD-equipped telephone, it does not support Always-On Display.

 

For opening, the side-mounted finger print sensing unit is one of the most obvious choices. It takes a sensible variety of faucets to set up and works well for both left index finger and right thumb procedures.

 

As with various other such applications, you run the risk of triggering the sensing unit by any skin contact by simply holding the telephone in your pocket, leading to a secured telephone and an unusable sensing unit once you do get bent on using it. You can have the sensing unit just engage with a switch click, or else a click isn't required if you experience that more often than you did before.

 

Artificial benchmarks

Inside the Galaxy A12, there is a simple Mediatek Helio P35 chipset. Its octa-core CPU uses Cortex-A53 cores, just four of which are clocked at up to 2.35 GHz, while the other four are topped at 1.8 GHz. It is better compared to the Snapdragon 450-equipped lower Galaxy models, such as the A02s and M02s, which obtain a 1.8GHz top speed across all 8 cores.

 

The PowerVR GE8320 GPU used in the Helio P35 can be found in various other Helios—for instance, the G25 and G35—and, as a result, in quite a lot of budget-focused devices.

 

The Galaxy A12 is available in several RAM and storage space configurations, covering a wide variety—from 3 GB/32 GB to 6 GB/128 GB. Our review unit remains in 4GB/128GB format.

 

The moderate nature of the Galaxy A12's chips reveals itself quickly in GeekBench, where it is tracking in the graphs. We included a Nokia 2.4 for context to make the A12 appear a bit better. Potential rivals such as the Realme 7 or Redmi 9/9T are greatly more effective, and also the Realme 7i and Poco M3 are comfortably ahead.

 

Looking at the Galaxy A12 spec sheet, we understood not to anticipate a lot from it in benchmarks, so the dull outcomes here are hardly unexpected. It is not just benchmarks either. We skilled the periodic misstep in routine use as well. Eventually, if you are looking for high efficiency or better futureproofing, the Galaxy A12 may not be a great option.


A quad-camera system of the 2+2 variety

The Galaxy A12 has 4 video cams on its back, in a rather typical for the course 2+2 arrangement: there are 2 "real" video cams and 2 more to make it appear better in promotional products.


The primary video camera uses a Samsung GM2 48MP sensing unit. With a tetracell (or quad bayer) color filter array, it teams four 0.8-m pixels right into one, and the default picture resolution is 12 MP. The lens has a 25mm equivalent focal size and an f/2.0 aperture.


After that, there is the extremely wide-angle video camera. A moderate 5 MP sensing unit is combined with an incredibly wide lens covering a 123-degree field of vision. Unlike extremely wide screens on phones with a higher profile, there is no software distortion adjustment on this.


The various other 2 video cameras utilize 2 MP sensing units. Among the units is "macro," which is used for close-ups with a topic range in the 3.5 cm range. The various other devices are for gathering depth information and aren't accessible straight away to take photos with.


For selfies, there is an 8MP video camera in the corner of the display. This, too, records a 25mm equivalent focal size and has an f/2.2 aperture.


The video cam application on the A12 is the same as on other Samsung devices, which is an advantage since it is simple and easy to use. The fundamentals are customarily: swiping left and right will switch in between available settings, and there is a choice to re-arrange, include, or remove some of the settings from the viewfinder. Upright swipes in either instructions will switch in between back video cams and front.


The familiar tree classification for zoom control is here too, and with no telephoto aboard, you obtain 3 trees for ultra-wide and 2 trees for the main webcamera. You could focus with a squeeze motion, at which point additional preset zoom degrees would show up at 2x, 4x, and 10x.


The viewfinder has the standard set of symbols, with the setup cog wheel located in the top left corner of the screen. The usual stuff, such as video clip resolution, grid lines, place information, and so on., can be found in the food selection. There's no scene optimizer on the A12, Samsung's AI-powered scene-based processing improvement feature.


There is a Professional setting, but it is a very basic application that just allows you to pick ISO (100–800) and white balance (by light temperature level with symbols for common light sources), as well as direct exposure payment (-2EV to +2EV in 0.1EV increments). A metering setting selector also made the cut (center-weighted, matrix, and spot). There is no manual concentrating option, unfortunately.


Daytime picture quality

Daytime pictures from the Galaxy A12's main video camera are sharp and catch fairly high degrees of information while maintaining sound to a minimum. The vibrant range is quite wide, especially for a telephone of this quality. We'd value some more color standout, but perhaps that is simply us being conditioned by Samsung's typically livelier output—we'd say the A12's shades are too accurate for their own good.


The native resolution setting of 48 MP does, in truth, expose a little bit more information, but it comes at the expense of a decrease in vibrant range and an increase in sound. The trade-off isn't well worth it.


The native resolution setting of 48 MP does, in truth, expose a little bit more information, but it comes at the expense of a decrease in vibrant range and an increase in sound. The trade-off isn't well worth it.


There is no telephoto video camera on the A12, and Samsung does not deceive you with zoom degrees instantly in the viewfinder, which it can't support with equipment. You can squeeze into zoom electronically, however, and after that presets show up—up to 10x. That much electronic zoom would certainly be a stretch for a phone of any price range, including the moderately priced A12, but we did fire a couple of 2x examples.


Viewed at 1:1 zoom, these get on the soft side and have noticeably hefty sharpening as well as some pixelation along slanted straight lines. Still, at fit-to-screen degrees, the pictures' appearance is very functional and easily great enough for social media.


The simple 5 MP ultra-wide video camera does not amazingly produce excellent pictures; they are quite loud, and 5 MP isn't a great deal for a 123-degree field of vision, so information is limited. It does manage to catch a broad, vibrant range, and the severe point of view is valued. Some distortion adjustment would certainly have been valued too, but it is missing.


There is no telephoto video camera on the A12, and Samsung does not deceive you with zoom degrees instantly in the viewfinder, which it can't support with equipment. You can squeeze into zoom electronically, however, and after that presets show up—up to 10x. That much electronic zoom would certainly be a stretch for a phone of any price range, including the moderately priced A12, but we did fire a couple of 2x examples.


Viewed at 1:1 zoom, these get on the soft side and have noticeably hefty sharpening as well as some pixelation along slanted straight lines. Still, at fit-to-screen degrees, the pictures' appearance is very functional and easily great enough for social media.


The simple 5 MP ultra-wide video camera does not amazingly produce excellent pictures; they are quite loud, and 5 MP isn't a great deal for a 123-degree field of vision, so information is limited. It does manage to catch a broad, vibrant range, and the severe point of view is valued. Some distortion adjustment would certainly have been valued too, but it is missing.


Low-light picture quality

The A12's low-light efficiency isn't spectacular. The vibrant range is pretty narrow on the main webcamera at high ISOs, pronounced in the blown highlights of lights but equally visible in nighttime darkness. The pictures are quite loud; however, they're reasonably detailed for the equipment. Color saturation is decently well preserved, too, despite the cranked-up ISOs.

The ultra-wide struggles much more at night. With a maximum of ISO 1600, it can't subject bright enough in darker scenes, but even when there is more light, it is still refraining from doing great. Anticipate to see gentleness and lots of sound, as well as blown highlights and deep black darkness. None of this is uncommon for the course, mind you.

There's no evening setting for either webcamera on the Galaxy A12.

Once you are finished with the real-world examples, go to our picture contrast device to see how the Samsung Galaxy A12 stacks up against the competitors.


Selfies

The A12's selfie video cam, on the various other hand, isn't regrettable. The 8MP sensing unit provides great information in plentiful light, and it does not break down totally inside your home in dimming problems. We'd have expected a little bit more saturation overall and a warmer complexion, but this Galaxy is more conservative with its color standout.

Vibrant range is average to great, and HDR will help greatly in backlit scenes where the telephone will expose your cup properly and not totally eliminate the highlights at the same time.

Highlights, however, obtain clipped in the live focus setting, where the blurred history processing leaves no sources for HDR. Topic discovery is a little bit questionable with untidy hairlines but mainly great or else.


Video clip tape-taping

The Galaxy A12 isn't an extremely outstanding video-recording device. In truth, it is a rather basic one; it peaks at 1080p/30fps for both its main and ultra-wide video cameras. There is no stabilization of any sort either.

The video clip quality from the main webcam in 1080p has to do with what is average for a telephone in this course. The picture is both soft and greatly sharpened at the same time, so there is very little fine information, but on a favorable note, there is little sound either. Vibrant range is good, and shades are more accurate compared to punchy, but, all in all, they are pleasing.

The ultra-wide proceeds along the same lines of providing "conditionally okay" output. It is not very sharp, but it is easily sharp enough for a budget plan's ultra-wide, and sound is thoroughly removed. The vibrant range is relatively wide, and the shades are pleasant too.

Here is a peek at how the Samsung Galaxy A12 contrasts to competitors in our video clip comparison device.
Going
there for the complete picture.

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post