Samsung Galaxy A50 review: A clean and optimized user experience

The Samsung Galaxy A50 is the company’s best mid-ranger in years. We take a closer look at it in our review.

Samsung Galaxy A50

Between the versatile cameras, bloat-free software and rather good gaming performance, the phone will more than suffice for most prospective users. The Samsung Galaxy A50 does it all while offering a really good user experience.

What we like

What we don’t like

Low-light camera performance

Our scores

Samsung Galaxy A50

Between the versatile cameras, bloat-free software and rather good gaming performance, the phone will more than suffice for most prospective users. The Samsung Galaxy A50 does it all while offering a really good user experience.

This device is no longer widely available. The Samsung Galaxy A50 is now unavailable to buy from most retailers. If you are looking for an alternative device, check out our list of the best Android phones you can buy and the best Samsung phones.

Last year if you told me Samsung would soon make some of the best mid-range smartphones, I would have laughed you off. Samsung’s mid-range J and A-series phones were utterly incompetent, with designs straight out of 2015. It took longer than expected, but the Chinese assault has finally had an effect. Samsung is now playing on the offensive and the Galaxy A50 is the best example of what happens when the company decides to get serious. Marking the top end of the A series (for now), the Galaxy A50 takes phones like the Redmi Note 7 Pro and Pocophone F1 head-on.

Follow along for our Samsung Galaxy A50 review to find out what we think about it.

About our Samsung Galaxy A50 review

I worked on this Galaxy A50 review over the course of a week. My Samsung Galaxy A50 review unit with Samsung One UI on Android 9.0 was used in India on the Airtel network. The unit was running the March 1st, 2019 security patch and build number PPR1.180610.011.A505FDDU1ASC1.

Design

Samsung’s M and A series phones share a lot of design elements. The Galaxy M30 and A50 are particularly similar. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, and Samsung made just enough changes across products to make them stand out.

The Galaxy A50 picks up the gradient style of the M30 and gives it a rather attractive rainbow-like sheen. The phone looks great and will definitely turn heads. Samsung opted to use plastic all around, which helps keep the weight of the phone down to a sprightly 166 grams. The downside, of course, is that the phone is a fingerprint and scuff magnet. The phone will definitely pick up scratches over time and you’ll be well served by a quality case.

The weight reduction combined with excellent ergonomics makes the Galaxy A50 comfortable to hold. The back panel smoothly flows and curves around the edges ensuring there are no hard edges hurting your palm. The central frame is made of metal and has the volume rocker and power button on the right. On the left is a tray with dual nano-SIM card slots as well as a dedicated microSD card slot.

Along the bottom edge of the phone is a 3.5mm headphone jack, USB-C port as well as the speaker grille. Talking about the speaker, volume levels here are significantly better than on the M30 and the audio reproduction is much fuller sounding. Despite a definite focus on the higher frequencies, there’s just a hint of bass too and you can safely crank up the volume if you wish to.

You might have noticed the lack of a fingerprint reader at the back. That’s because the Galaxy A50 employs an optical in-display fingerprint scanner. It works fine, but definitely isn’t as fast as a standard capacitive fingerprint reader. The in-display scanner takes just over a second to recognize your biometrics and let you into your phone. Personally, I found the face unlock option faster, but it definitely isn’t as safe.

The front of the phone resembles the Galaxy M30 quite a bit. The Samsung Galaxy A50’s Infinity-U waterdrop notch juts into the 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display. Bezels at the sides and top are as slim as they get in this category but the design is marred by the rather big chin at the bottom. Overall screen-to-body ratio is a very respectable 85.2 percent.

The Samsung Galaxy A50 has a 4,000mAh battery which is a step down from the larger 5,000mAh unit on the Galaxy M30. Regardless, the phone still comfortably lasts a full day of use and has a decent amount of charge left over. During my week of use, I consistently had 30-40 percent charge left over at the end of the day despite long calls, extensive social media use as well music streaming.

Display

The 6.4 inch Super AMOLED Full HD+ display on the Galaxy A50 is definitely one of the highlights of the phone. It looks absolutely fantastic and makes watching multimedia content a pleasurable experience. With support for the Widevine L1 DRM, the phone is capable of streaming HD content from Netflix.

The screen is vibrant to the point of appearing ever so slightly oversaturated. There are options within the settings menu to tweak this to your taste. Being a Super AMOLED display, black levels are sufficiently deep too.

Viewing angles on the Galaxy A50 are great and the phone works outdoors comfortably. The screen brightness more than compensates for direct sunlight. The phone comes with an option to toggle on the always-on display mode for notifications which is great since there is no dedicated notification LED here.

Hardware

The Galaxy A50 is powered by the Exynos 9610 chipset, which hasn’t been seen on any Galaxy phone yet. Built on a 10nm fabrication process, the chipset uses an octa-core big.LITTLE architecture. The four Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.3GHz are powerful enough for almost anything you throw at the phone while the four Cortex A53 efficiency cores clocked at 1.6GHz ensure that the phone sips power when not performing an intensive activity. There’s a Mali G72 MP3 GPU handling the graphics end of the business.

The phone ships with 4GB or 6GB of RAM depending on the variant you opt for. Both variants have 64GB of storage which is definitely a bit odd.

The Samsung Galaxy A50’s battery performance is right in line with what you would expect from a phone with a 4,000mAh battery. The phone lasts a full of day with moderate use and has enough charge left over to last half of the next day too. Even with heavy gaming use, the phone sips power and you should be able to get a full day of use easily. In our testing with a mixed-use case of gaming, social media use and music streaming, the phone consistently managed over six hours of screen on time. The phone supports 15-watt fast charging.

Network performance was exemplary on the Galaxy A50 and the phone managed to hold a signal even in a low network environment. Calls sounded loud and clear at both ends.

Performance

The Exynos 9610 ensures that day-to-day usability is top notch on the Galaxy A50. Be it navigation around the interface, animations, gestures or just about any app you throw at the phone, it maintains a steady clip. Samsung did an amazing job optimizing the software for the hardware and using the phone feels great. Out of the box, the interface’s animations are a bit overbearing, but turning them off is easy (and highly recommended).

The GPU section is powered by a Mali G72 MP3 which we found satisfactory. The most obvious test was to put it through the most popular smartphone game around. The phone maintains a steady frame rate in PUBG with the settings at Ultra mode. I noticed no slowdowns, the draw distance was great. The phone got just moderately warm even with extended gaming. Without a doubt, the Galaxy A50 offers one of the best PUBG experiences in this category of phones.

We put the phone through a few benchmarks.

Software

Unlike the Galaxy M series smartphones, the Galaxy A50 runs Android Pie out of the box. Not just that, the phone has a One UI-based interface which is almost exactly the same as what you get on the Galaxy S10 as well.

The software is straightforward and easy to use, with oodles of options to tweak it to your preference. From options for displaying content on the always on display to turning off animations altogether, you can also switch between button and gesture-based navigation. Should you choose to, there is an option to wake Bixby using the power button.

During initial set up, the phone lets you install a wide range of Samsung apps, which is a much better way of onboarding users than bloating up the phone’s software. However, while the Galaxy A50 doesn’t really come preloaded with a lot of apps, it doesn’t mean it’s completely guilt free. The My Galaxy app pushes quite a few notifications daily. Apps like Daily Hunt and the Microsoft app suite cannot be uninstalled.

Samsung has since issued updates that brought the phone to the December 2019 security build. Other features include improved stability, the ability to take scrolling screenshots. .

As of April 1 2020, Samsung has started rolling out the Android 10 update to the Galaxy A50. Part of the A505FDDU4BTC4 update, it not only brings the latest version of Android but also the latest security patches. Elsewhere, the software skin has been updated to OneUI 2.0, which has a range of quality-of-life improvements like a reworked and improved camera interface and numerous fixes across the UI. The changelog details additional stability enhancements as well.

In May 2020, Samsung updated the phone to the latest May security patches.

Samsung Galaxy A50 review: Value flagship

The Galaxy A50 is the budget Samsung phone of your dreams

• Excellent, modern-looking AMOLED screen
• Decent performance
• Capable, versatile camera
• Day-long battery life
• Affordable

• Won’t get Android updates quickly
• In-display fingerprint sensor is slow, fails often
• Feels cheap

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Samsung is best known for its Galaxy S and Note phones, but the company has a long history of selling budget phones under the Galaxy J and A brand. Sold with forgettable names like Galaxy J7 Prime and J7 Core, the internal specs often changed depending on where you bought them.

The latest Galaxy A-range is Samsung’s effort to streamline its budget and mid-tier lineup, and the face of the series is the Galaxy A50. Buy the Galaxy A50 from Sprint? It’s the same exact phone as the Galaxy A50 on Verizon.

At $350, it’s a great phone that delivers all-day battery life, a modern screen, solid performance, and a good camera. But its price puts it right next to our current budget champion, the $400 Pixel 3a. Can the Samsung phone pose a challenge to Google’s budget masterpiece?

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Modern looks

Expensive phones have large screens, slim bezels, and clever ways to place the selfie camera on the front — like the hole-punch camera on Samsung’s Galaxy S10 range, or the pop-up camera on the OnePlus 7 Pro. Budget phones have quickly mimicked this design, and the Galaxy A50 is no different. On the front, you get a slim bezel around the screen. The bezel is most noticeable at the bottom, also known as “a chin,” and there’s a teardrop notch at the top housing the selfie camera.

The A50 looks contemporary. The same can’t be said for the Pixel 3a, which suffers the plague of thick bezels. Around back, the A50 looks much like the iPhone XS, with a vertical camera setup in the top left corner. Ours came in glossy black, which showed rainbow-like effects when light caught the back. It’s nice, but we’d like to see brighter color options, as well.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The rear is made of plastic that looks like glass but feels cheap to the touch. The A50 is slippery, too. It’s not going to slide off a table, but it can feel hard to grip. It’s a large phone, with a 6.4-inch screen, so users with small hands may find it difficult to use comfortably.

I’m happy with the button placement — the power and volume rocker are on the right edge and are easily accessible. There’s a USB Type-C charging port at the bottom edge, next to a headphone jack, and a bottom-firing speaker.

The rear of the A50 is a bit dull. I think the Pixel 3a is more attractive. The A50 also doesn’t feel substantial in-hand like the similarly-priced Nokia 7.1, which uses a mixture of aluminum and glass. Still, it gets the job done, and the bezel-less screen is the real treat.

A bright display, but an annoying fingerprint sensor

The 6.4-inch Super AMOLED screen on the Galaxy A50 serves up 2,340 x 1,080 resolution, which is similar to the Pixel 3a’s 2,280 x 1,080 resolution. It doesn’t beat the contrast ratio of the Pixel 3a’s screen, which offers slightly darker colors, but the A50’s screen looks sharp and it’s plenty bright.

You’ll be more than satisfied with the viewing experience on either phone. The Pixel 3a has a Samsung-made screen, after all. However, the A50 earns a bonus point because videos, movies, and games look more immersive thanks to its bezel-less design.

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Does audio quality help immersion? Not exactly. There’s a single bottom-firing speaker, and while it can get loud, it sounds muffled. It can be difficult to hear audio when outdoors in noisy environments, even with the volume cranked to the max. The Pixel 3a’s stereo speakers are better, delivering richer quality, though volume is comparable.

The A50 has a headphone jack (as does the Pixel 3a), so you can plug in if you don’t have wireless earbuds. The phone also supports Dolby Atmos, and music sounds better listening in with Samsung’s own Galaxy Buds.

Samsung’s in-display fingerprint sensor is a pain point. The A50 places it under the front screen glass, and like most under-glass sensors, it’s unreliable. You can use a face unlock option, but it’s not quick, and its implementation here isn’t secure.

Solid performance

Unlike most Android phones in the U.S., Samsung’s Galaxy A50 isn’t powered by a Qualcomm processor. Instead, Samsung uses its own Exynos 9610 with 4GB of RAM. There’s 64GB of internal storage, and a MicroSD card slot in case you need more space.

The A50’s performance is acceptable, but Google’s Pixel 3a is quicker overall. Google’s phone is faster when opening apps and didn’t show many struggles when switching between them. The Pixel 3a also feels more fluid, while the A50 few stutters here and there. Take Google Maps, for example. Moving around the map is smooth on the Pixel phone, but you can see occasional lag on the A50.

Here are a few benchmark results:

• AnTuTu 3DBench: 140,900
• Geekbench 4 CPU: 1,683 single-core; 5,389 multi-core
• 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme: 1,368 (Vulkan)

The benchmark back this up. The Pixel 3a beat out the A50 in AnTuTu and 3DMark tests, though the A50 pulled ahead in Geekbench results.

Still, the Galaxy A50 is a perfectly capable phone. It didn’t have any trouble with apps, and while performance isn’t the smoothest, it never failed me. Even gaming is possible. In PUBG: Mobile, the game automatically opted for the highest graphical settings possible, and I didn’t run into any hitches while playing (though the phone felt warm to the touch). I also saw solid performance in Alto’s Odyssey and Pako: Forever.

Overall, the A50 is easily better than the Nokia 7.1, but a hair behind the Pixel 3a.

One UI software

I reviewed the Verizon Galaxy A50, which is pre-installed with many apps and games. Thankfully, I was able to uninstall most of the bloatware.

The phone runs Samsung’s One UI interface, which is laid over Android 9 Pie. It looks slick, though I wish the icons weren’t so large. It’s among the better manufacturer skins on a phone.

However, software Google’s Pixel 3a has the edge. The Pixel has smarter features in software, like Call Screen, which protects you from robocalls, and Now Playing, which detects and displays music playing in your surroundings.

Software updates are a concern, too. Samsung is notoriously slow to deliver Android version. It took the Galaxy S9 series close to six months to get Android 9 Pie on all devices in the U.S. On a more positive note, Samsung is following through with monthly security updates for several devices.

Google’s phones promise three years of security and version updates. That means you can expect the Pixel 3a to run Android S in 2021. Updates are important. They don’t just bring new features, though they are very much appreciated; security updates can keep your device protected and secure.

Samsung confirmed to Digital Trends that the Galaxy A50 will receive quarterly security updates, with unspecified “plans for an OS update.” Expect to receive Android Q, and not much else. That’s disappointing, though much better than what budget phones received a few years ago.

Surprisingly strong camera

The Samsung Galaxy A50 has a triple-camera system on the rear. That includes a 25-megapixel main lens (f/1.7 aperture), a 5-megapixel depth camera (f/2.2), and an 8-megapixel wide-angle lens (f/2.2).