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Galaxy A20s – Samsung wants a space in every pocket

Samsung’s budget phones are now finally worth your attention. Earlier this year Samsung launched the Galaxy A10 to A80 series smartphones and I reviewed two of those smartphones the A20 and the A70. And I thought they were great smartphones considering their price.

Today I have the Samsung Galaxy A20s and I’ll be giving my thoughts on the second iteration of the quite popular A20 series.

First let’s get the specifications out of the way. You’ve got a smartphone with a 6.5 inch 720p Infinity V IPS LCD screen that has a PPI of 264, you get 3GB RAM and 32GB Storage. I heard there’s a 4GB RAM and 64GB Storage version but I’m not quite sure of that. There’s a dedicated micro SD card slot that supports up to 1TB of storage.

The A20s comes with an Octa-core Snapdragon 450 processor clocked at 1.8GHz, and an Adreno 506 GPU, powering everything on this phone is a 4000mah battery. Which should be just enough for a day plus of use. The battery supports fast charging at 15watts. Thankfully the included charger supports fast charging at 15 watts.

In the camera department we get a triple lens setup at the rear of the device. These cameras include a 13MP f/1.8 27mm wide angle lens, an 8MP f/2.2 13mm Ultra-wide angle lens and a 5MP f/2.2 depth sensing lens. These trio make-up what is a very decent and capable camera system on the A20s. More on this later in the video.

Upfront we have a single front facing camera that’s 8MP and has an aperture of f/2.0.

For physical features on this device, you have the power button to the right of the device and I must say the placement of this button is quite high up. If you’ve got small hands, reaching this button will be a stretch. The volume rockers are to the left of the device, you’ve got a centered rear placed fingerprint reader with the camera module to the left top corner, there’s the 3.5mm head phone port, the USB C charging port and the external speaker grilles at the bottom of the device. Nothing but a microphone hole at the top of the device.

The device supports the GSM/HSPA and LTE networks, it’s got an in-built FM radio receiver, comes with Bluetooth 4.2 and a dedicated microphone for active noise cancellation.

On the software side of things the A20s runs Samsung’s One UI 1.0 on Android 9.0 pie and it’s the same one UI we know from the S10 and Note 10 series. It’s fast and smooth as can be and you should be fine with it in everyday use.

For color options you would be able to get the A20s in Black, Blue, Red and Green.

Cameras

So let’s take a look at the rear cameras on the Galaxy A20s. We’ve got a triple camera setup that includes a main, ultra-wide angle and depth sensing camera and these are the best combination of Camera lenses in my opinion. Images are impressive. A couple of the shots I took using the main camera were mostly clean and had good details especially under good lighting. For a budget smartphone these images are very encouraging.

The ultra-wide angle camera captures images at 123 degree which is wide but not quite as wide as what you get on the Galaxy Note 10 series. Images from the wide angle camera are decent with some distortion at the edges. Images are mostly clear and detailed although grainy in low light situations.

As for the selfie camera, results aren’t too great. There’s a lot of smoothening going on and the images seem to lack proper details. If you blow up an image you can clearly see how the images become noisy.

But overall the images from the Galaxy A20s are decent, useable and should be satisfactory for casual use.

The rear cameras shoot videos @ 1080p at 30FPS. Videos are not stabilized but can produce good looking shots if used on a tripod.

You sometimes get blown out highlights in places like the sky and where you have bright lights in the background but its decent overall.

Performance

So I had some concerns with the performance of the Galaxy A20 it was a bit slow and had occasional stutters while performing day to day tasks. But with the A20s Samsung included a snapdragon 450 processor making the A20s feel much faster and smoother than the A20.

Apps and games loaded much faster and ran much better than in the A20. I was mostly satisfied with the performance on the A20s.

Battery life performance on the A20s was a champ. That 4000mah battery paired with the 720p display is a winning formula for great battery life. I typically get more than a day’s use on the device with about 25% battery life left at the end of the day. This is with moderate use.

Even with heavy use the A20s should take you through the day.

2D and 3D games play fairly well. With the 3D games requiring the settings to be at medium for you to have a smooth playing experience.

Video and Audio

The A20s plays videos capped at 720p. Although its images look good and color representation are okay, Pictures on this display do not look vibrant. Yes it’s an LCD screen but I’ve seen better LCD panels with much vibrant colors.

Videos looked good and the human eye should totally be fine with anything 720p.

Audio output on the A20s is fine. The listening experience using plug in ear buds was great. The balance between high, mid and low tones were impressive. I dare say Samsung used some sort of quality DAC on this device.

Build

For the build quality on the A20s, it’s made with plastic and this plastic scratches easily as with any other plastic phone out there, but the device looks gorgeous and I like the way it feels in hand. It’s comfortable to hold but sometimes gets slippery.

If you’re concerned about your device scratching up over time, simply use a case to protect your device.

This phone is a big phone and to give perspective on how big it is, it fits perfectly in the A70’s case. That’s big.

Price

The A20 will retail for N56, 500.00 which isn’t too bad for a device with these specs.

Conclusion

While you’ll get great battery life for a low price with the Galaxy A20s, you’ll have to make some trade-offs in build quality and screen quality. But Samsung’s A20s also takes good photos and sports a clean software experience, making this device an intriguing option for budget-minded shoppers.

At N56, 600.00 the A20s is playing at both the spec and price range of the A20 before it and the Infinix S4. I’ll be bringing a comparison video between both phones in a later video.

So if you love the Samsung brand and want to have a decent experience using Samsung’s One UI in a sleek looking affordable device, then you may want to consider getting the Galaxy A20s.