Samsung Galaxy A20 Review. Is It Worth It?

July 8, 2019 0

At this point, Samsung has already established that its 2019 A-series Smartphones will represent its entry-level and mid-range offerings and one of them is the Samsung Galaxy A20. Priced at N54,500, is this phone worth considering, given the competition?

The Galaxy A20 shares the design language of its other A-series siblings, in fact it looks exactly like the A30 and both phone can literally share the same case. It’s got a glossy poly-carbonate material which Samsung calls Glastic (and basically, this is a plastic material which looks like glass). It looks premium and classy, especially with the black color and If you don’t like black, it comes in red and blue as like the one I have here with me.

In the Box

So what’s in the box? Well we’ve got usual, Galaxy A20, Power Adapter, Earphones, SIM Card Ejector, Quick Start Guide, Warranty Card

At the front, we get a notch design that the company calls the Infinity-V display. This component houses the 8MP front camera while on top is the call speaker. Unfortunately, there’s no LED notification light on this phone, so you’ll have to check your phone now and then manually for notifications.

Looking at the 6.4-inch screen, we get pretty slim top and side bezels which look sexy; however, any thinner than that will not allow us to hold the phone more securely.

The right side houses the typical volume rocker and power button which are both clicky and Its placement is also reachable for my thumb which is a plus.

At the left of the device, you’d find the tray that houses the Dual-SIM card slots and a dedicated micro SD card slot. On top is the noise-canceling microphone while at the bottom are the 3.5mm audio port, primary microphone, loudspeaker, and a USB Type-C port. Props to Samsung for equipping the Galaxy A20 with a Type-C port as this delivers faster file transfer speeds than micro USB ones. Kudos Samsung.

Flipping over to the back, you’d find the dual 13MP and 5MP shooters with LED flash light. Right on the middle is an oblong-shaped fingerprint scanner.
This device feels premium even with it being an entry level design. Although it gets very slippery holding the phone for long I just had to get a case for the device.which acts as a screen protector and gives the device incredible grip.

Display

This phone, despite its big size, only has an HD+ resolution which made me quite disappointed. I’m used to looking at 1080p displays and above, so I could definitely tell the difference here added to the fact that it only has a 269-pixel density which is relatively low. That aside, the good thing however is that this display is a super AMOLED display and it looks fantastic. Colors are rich and vibrant and videos look very appealing. It’s not just tack sharp like I’d want it to be.

Videos and movies are capped at 720 resolution on YouTube and Netflix. Moving on, The Samsung Galaxy A20 has loud and crisp sounds, but hardly has any bass, this is while using the external speakers though. So I’d suggest you use wired or Bluetooth earphones listening to anything on this device if you want to enjoy your experience and that because the A20 has a built-in Dolby Atmos feature.

The Galaxy A20 features the Octa-core Exynos 7884 SoC with a Mali-G71 MP2 GPU, combined with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard memory. I wouldn’t recommend playing heavy title games like PUBG and Asphalt 9 on this as you may not get the best of playing experience.

In terms of benchmarks, the Galaxy A20 scores slightly less than other smartphones in the price range.

While testing the Antutu benchmark, I got a score of 95,067 which is significantly lower than the competition including the Galaxy M20 or the Redmi Note 7. In Geekbench, the device registered a single-core score of 1209 points and a multi-core score of 3598 points.

Evident from the numbers, the handset should be fine for day to day usage but is not made for performance enthusiasts.

Software

Running the Galaxy A20’s OS department is Samsungs OneUI based on Android 9 Pie. I like this interface mainly due to its simplicity. By default, it would look like that it has no app drawer; however, swiping up or down the home screen reveals it. Apps like Spotify, Netflix, Office Mobile, Facebook, and the default Google applications all run smoothly and I’ve hardly encountered any problems with them.

There is a native dark mode in the settings which makes the whole UI suited for use in dimly lit environments. Notably, this setting helps in prolonging the battery life on the smartphone.

One place where I absolutely have a gripe with the A20 is in its gesture navigation. It’s absolutely terrible. Samsung should take a cue from Xiaomi’s MIUI Gesture navigation.

Out of its 32GB storage, this phone gets 23GB of free space which is plenty if you are an average user.

Lets talk about the cameras

You’ve got a 13MP and 5MP dual rear cameras setup and a single 8MP front shooter. The interface is simple and pretty straightforward with the Settings, Flash, Timer, Resolution, and Effects located at the top while the modes such as Panorama, Pro, Live Focus, Photo, and Video (for the rear) placed at the bottom of the display. You can also shoot with a great wide-angle lens which is a good thing.

First, the rear shooter provides excellent quality of photos with decent sharpness and good color accuracy under sufficient natural lighting. For low-light shots, the images are still useable and provides a fair amount of sharpness.Using the wide-angle lens in low light situation may however produce not so nice photos.

As for the selfie shooter, there’s absolutely too much smoothening going on. It make the photos look artificial. I also tried the live focus mode. While it works, edge detection isn’t very accurate. You’d have Ok photos in good lighting but nothing more, if you’re a casual user of the front camera, the photo quality should be perfectly fine for occasional usage or sharing on your favourite social media platform.

Video output from the rear and the front camera is locked to 30fps in 1080p resolution. There is also an option to record videos with the ultra-wide angle camera but sadly, there is no option of switching between the different sensors while recording video

Battery and Connectivity

The Samsung Galaxy A20 is powered by a 4000 mAh battery which supports 15W charging. This battery capacity combined with a low-resolution display ensures a great battery life overall. With a light to medium usage, the battery will easily last you more than a day. The average screen on time we received in our usage was around seven hours.

The Galaxy A20 has the basic connectivity features such as 4G LTE, dual-SIM support, WiFi, Bluetooth, and NFC. Checking out it sensors, though, shows that it doesn’t have a Light Sensor which helps in adapting the brightness level of the screen according to the external environment.

The Samsung Galaxy A20 has a rear mounted capacitive fingerprint sensor and also supports the increasingly popular face unlock technology. Both of these technologies help in swiftly accessing the smartphone.

The fingerprint scanner is effective in unlocking the device, but it takes a good second to do so. Face unlock, on the other hand, is a faster albeit less safe option. One more notable feature the smartphone has is the aforementioned triple card slot. The user can simultaneously insert two nano SIM cards and a microSD card which can go all the way up to 512GB.

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy A20 is a capable entry-level smartphone overall. It has a large display with decent performance, large RAM, good cameras, long battery life, and it also comes with a USB Type-C port with fast charging technology.

A couple of things I don’t like are the fingerprint scanner, the very slippery design and the HD+ resolution.

Phones like the Realme 3 and Redmi Note 7 already play in this segment and may provide marginally better performance but then, those phone do not have an AMOLED display and Dolby Atmos for great audio listening experience.

I’ll leave the specs below and if you have further questions, leave them in the comments section.

Specifications

6.4-inch HD+ (1560 x 720) S-AMOLED Infinity-V display, 268ppi
Samsung Exynos 7884 1.6GHz octa-core CPU
Mali-G71 MP2 GPU
3GB RAM
32GB storage
microSD up to 512GB (dedicated slot)
13MP f/1.9 + 5MP f/2.2 dual rear cameras
8MP f/2.0 front camera
Dual-SIM
4G LTE
WiFi
Bluetooth
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
Fingerprint scanner
USB Type-C
Android 9 Pie
4,000mAh battery w/ 15W Fast Charging

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