Samsung Galaxy A05s is a budget-balancing act

The Samsung Galaxy A05s review reveals that we have evaluated this smartphone over the last month and are glad to give it a top rating. This low-cost device successfully mixes performance and design, making it a dependable choice. Samsung’s Galaxy A05s displays its ability to deliver outstanding features at an inexpensive price, thanks to its strong construction, appealing looks, and impressive battery life.

The Samsung A05s is an excellent choice in the low-cost market, with a Snapdragon 680 chip often found in mid-range handsets, a large 5,000mAh battery, and a smooth 90Hz screen.

SAMSUNG GALAXY A05s KEY FEATURES

Samsung is continually expanding its entry-level Galaxy A line. The Galaxy A05 and Galaxy A05s are currently at the bottom of the lineup, with the latter being the subject of our review today. The Galaxy A05s debuted in Malaysia before making its way to India, and it is a low-cost gadget. To make the Galaxy A05s even more inexpensive and achievable, Samsung has introduced a 4GB RAM variant in addition to the original 6GB version. The device we’re reviewing today is an A05s with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of expandable storage.

Compared to last year’s Galaxy 04s, there are some noticeable improvements. The display has increased to 6.7 inches and now supports FullHD (1080 x 2400 pixel) quality at 90Hz, up from HD+. The chipset has been upgraded to the Snapdragon 680, which is still ancient but technically superior. You still don’t have 5G connectivity, but it’s a 6nm device, so it should be more efficient now. The selfie camera has also received a major improvement. It now has a greater 13MP resolution and can record 1080p video. Furthermore, charging is now faster at 25W on the same large 5,000 mAh battery pack as before.

Overall, the Galaxy A05s appears to be a more well-rounded smartphone than its predecessor, but that does not mean it is without flaws. Even on paper, we can’t overlook the fact that several components haven’t been improved, such as the relatively slow eMMC 5.1 internal storage. Of course, we’ll go over all of that in the review.

SAMSUNG GALAXY A05s UNBOXING

The Galaxy A05s comes with a rather small retail box. The box itself is nothing extraordinary, just a two-piece slide-out constructed completely of cardboard, which we welcome from an environmental standpoint. The interior cardboard cradle that holds the phone works properly, which is vital.

We don’t, and shouldn’t, expect a large accessory bundle with the Galaxy A05s. It’s as easy as it gets: a USB Type-C to Type-C connector and a SIM ejector tool. Nothing more. Nothing less.

CAMERA

Interestingly, Samsung has included more cameras than you may anticipate for a cheap phone, giving you three to work with, and they are better than expected, even if the camera performance is poor.

Technically, there is a 50-megapixel camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2 megapixel depth camera, but you only have access to two of them. The depth camera is used to blur the background, thus consider the Galaxy A05s to be a two-camera system, even though it appears to have three.

Even so, this sounds promising for such a low-cost phone, but the usability of both cameras is limited by the phone’s terrible system performance, as we discovered throughout our testing.

When you press the on-screen shutter, the phone will take the photo roughly half a second to a full second later. This is not an instantaneous response, as one might expect. It isn’t even fast, but rather plodding, like the rest of the phone.

While your photographs will most likely be delayed slightly — or more than slightly at times — the outcomes range from satisfactory to being better served by using your memory. In daylight, the A05s’ 50-megapixel camera may capture some decent images a second or so after you push the on-screen shutter or the volume key. It’s not fast, but it works.

At night, however, the camera system struggles. If the camera’s slowness wasn’t awful enough, the bracketing mechanism for combining photos only produces noisy shots with mediocre contrast. We don’t normally recommend using the flash, but if you need to take a night shot with the A05s, you might want to think about it.

DESIGN AND SCREEN

The A05s, marketed as a low-cost choice in the Galaxy range, has a slightly distinct appearance from other budget phones, simply because it appears more premium than much of what is available for less than $300. If you’ve seen Samsung’s Galaxy S23 and can imagine swapping the luxury materials of glass and metal with plastic and plastic, that’s the vibe Samsung is going for with the A05s. It’s a phone modeled after the Galaxy lineup but made of plastic.

The matte black design of the A05s we tested was simple enough, and it appears a touch more quality than many other budget phones because it mimics more costly Samsung Galaxy models at first sight.

The Galaxy A05s’ display quality is quite nice, in my opinion. It has a PLS LCD panel with Full HD+ resolution (1,080 x 2,400 pixels) and a maximum brightness of 500 nits. Although the colors are not as vivid as those on an AMOLED panel, they still provide an acceptable degree of quality. The Galaxy A05s performs admirably for daily leisure activities like viewing movies and playing games.

The tablet features a 6.7-inch screen with a “waterdrop” design and a 13MP selfie camera, which is usual for low-cost devices. The bezels around the screen are still rather thick.

Despite the lack of an AMOLED panel, the device’s PLS LCD panel provides a satisfactory viewing experience. The colors are accurate, and the brightness is good. Furthermore, the tablet sports a 90Hz refresh rate, making it extremely responsive to touch.

HOW’S THE PERFORMANCE?

Android on the A05s may be similar to using any other Samsung phone, but the performance is not, with subpar performance in almost every way possible.

Even when we installed our usual selection of apps on the Galaxy A05s for testing, we had a feeling this wouldn’t be a particularly enjoyable review. The keyboard wasn’t very responsive, we couldn’t switch between programs quickly, and the overall experience felt clumsy from the start.

It’s a big cry from the magnificence of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, and the price is much different as well. We then conducted benchmarks, which revealed how poor the performance is on this phone.

“Not great” would be the kindest way of putting it, with the A05s giving one of the worst sets of speed benchmarks we’ve seen, taking hours to complete the benching process and even crashing on one test. Synthetic benchmarks may not be the best way to measure performance, but they do provide insight into raw performance potential, which is not great for the Galaxy A05s.

It seems worse when you compare opposite ends of the spectrum, with the Galaxy A05s being slower than the Galaxy S24 Ultra. These two phones differ significantly not just in terms of features, design, and performance, but also in terms of price.

However, it does demonstrate that the A05s are not designed for performance at all. It’s designed to function as a phone and a little more. How little more you require will be determined by your needs and patience levels. This phone is not particularly powerful, even for a low-cost phone.

When we tested the Telstra network in Australia, we got 4G speeds as high as 58Mbps in Sydney, and the phone performed well for the most part. It should provide excellent performance for web browsing, email, and music and video streaming.

Buy it if...

• Nice design with good build quality.
• Good battery life.
• Good daytime camera performance.
• Expandable storage with a dedicated microSD slot, as well as a 3.5mm audio jack.

Don't buy it if…

• Lackluster LCD with ghosting and a set refresh rate.
• No NFC, gyroscope, magnetometer, or compass.
• (Barely) average speaker volume.
• The Snapdragon 680 chipset performs relatively poorly, with UI slowdowns.
• The camera performs poorly in low light conditions.
• No video stabilization.

FULL SPECIFICATION