The Samsung Galaxy A50 is a surprisingly complete mid-class, with three cameras and fingerprint scanner in the screen. We tried him at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Samsung Galaxy A50 hands-on: a preview of new midrange
Even before the Galaxy S10 is in stores at all, Samsung will launch a handful of new devices. The company has today announced three new devices in the Galaxy A series, of which only the Galaxy A50 will come to the United States for the time being. It is a midrange smartphone, equipped with smooth hardware for a slightly lower price than Samsung’s top devices.
The Samsung Galaxy A series gets an increasingly prominent place in the line-up of the South Korean company. Increasingly, striking, impressive features are already in a Galaxy A device before they find their way to a top device from Samsung. The aircraft also receive an increasingly competitive price. The Galaxy A50 is for sale from 349 euros for mid-March.
Sleek design with AMOLED screen
On the exhibition floor in Barcelona, we tried the device for a while. The design immediately impressed. The Galaxy A50 is available in three beautiful colors (black, blue and coral pink) and feels solid and luxurious. The housing appears to be a combination of metal and plastic, but certainly not cheap plastic. Due to the rounded corners on the back and the lightweight, the A50 is also very comfortable.
First, there is a 6.4 inch AMOLED screen that fills almost the entire front. At the bottom of the sculpture, there is a narrow black border, at the top a small notch for the selfie camera. Unlike the Galaxy S10, the A50 has no camera hole on the top right, but a notch the size of a water drop. The screen has a sharp full HD resolution. In terms of finish, the A50 is hardly distinguishable from smartphones that are twice as expensive.
This is how the three Galaxy A50 cameras work
The Galaxy A50 has three striking features that we rarely see in this price range. First of all the triple camera on the back. There is a primary lens of 25 megapixels, supplemented with a wide-angle lens of 8 megapixels and a depth sensor of 5 megapixels. With the wide-angle lens, you shoot pretty wide photos, the depth sensor is used to add a bokeh effect to portrait photos.
I have only been able to test the cameras for a short time, but they seem to be doing a pretty good job. At the end of last year, Samsung released the Galaxy A9, a device with four cameras. That turned out to be primarily a gimmick because none of the lenses made really good pictures. The first snaps I made with the Galaxy A50 were colorful and pretty sharp, even on the busy exhibition floor without natural light. It is not all that impressive as on the Galaxy S10, but you also pay hundreds of euros less for it.
The front is a 25-megapixel selfie camera. This also has a Live Focus mode with which you can add a bokeh effect to your selfies. That works pretty well: the camera perfectly distinguishes between the sharp foreground and blurred background.
Galaxy A50 fingerprint scanner unique in this price range
The second extra is the fingerprint scanner on the screen. Until now, we only saw that inexpensive smartphone of about 600 euros, but Samsung now puts it into a middle class. It is an optical scanner, in fact, a small camera under the screen that your finger photographs and scans.
It works just as smoothly as similar scanners on the OnePlus 6T and Huawei Mate 20 Pro. That means: not as fast as a ‘normal’ scanner on the back, but you unlock in just under a second. However, you have to place your finger on the screen very accurately to sit on the scanner.
Large battery with fast charging
Finally, the Galaxy A50 has a large battery with a capacity of 4000 mAh. That is enough to have a full day without charging. With a little frugality, you can even get out for two days. The device is also supplied with a fast charger of 15 Watt, which the battery after half an hour for more than half full. Charging is via the USB-c port.