Samsung Galaxy A05s review

Design

Samsung has had a consistent style spanning its entire phone lineup for some time now. There is a triple vertical camera arrangement on the back, an LED flash to the right, and not much else. It is a flat design without a camera island, which looks kind of plain but is also recognizable enough.

The Galaxy A05s can be had in a total of four color options. There are the basic Black and Silver, the more youthful and playful Violet, and the Light Green unit we have for review.

The back surface is matte, slightly textured, and feels a bit smooth and almost velvety. It doesn't retain fingerprints too badly, which is surprising given the texture. However, the surface is plastic and not glass, which does help in the fingerprints department.

The Galaxy A05s employs a three-piece design with the back and front "bolted" to the middle frame. Like the back, the front side sits almost perfectly flush with the middle frame. There is nothing particularly remarkable about the front side of the phone.

The display bezels are expectedly wide, but frankly not offensively so despite the phone's budget nature.

The middle frame on the Galaxy A05s is plastic but does pull off a brushed metal appearance. Well, not so much on our green unit since the frame is color-matched with the back side.

We like how well-rounded the edges of the phone are. They offer a very comfortable, in-hand feel.

Build quality

The Galaxy A05s feels pretty well-made. We wouldn't exactly call it "solid", but it is not particularly light either, tipping the scale at 194 grams. That is perfectly reasonable for a 168 x 77.8 x 8.8 mm phone with a 6.7-inch display made predominantly out of plastic.

Both the back panel and the middle frame of the phone are plastic. However, they do have distinctly different surface finishes. Plastic may not feel as premium but it's pretty sturdy while also remaining light. It does not dent quite like metal and does not shatter quite like glass. Plus, if you care about keeping your phone safe, you will likely have a case on top of the plastic body anyway.

It is great to see that a glass surface covers the front side of the Galaxy A05s. Unfortunately, Samsung doesn't divulge exactly what kind of glass it is using for the phone.

The Galaxy A05s lacks any official ingress protection rating. Not that we expect Samsung to spend money on certifications at this price point. We only say that since there is a nice rubber gasket around the SIM card tray, which suggests that there is at least some sealing in place. Still, we wouldn't advise you to subject the phone to water or dust purposefully.

Controls

The Galaxy A05s has a perfectly standard set of controls. Well, perhaps, except for the 3.5mm audio jack, which is harder and harder to come by. It is alive and well, resting on the phone's bottom side. Since we are already on the topic of the bottom side, it also houses the singular bottom-firing speaker on the Galaxy A05s. It lacks a stereo speaker setup, even a hybrid one. The main mic and the USB Type-C port are also here.

The phone's top side is practically empty save for a hole for the secondary noise-canceling microphone. There are no antenna lines anywhere on the middle frame since it is all made of plastic, and they are not necessary.

The left side of the frame is pretty empty, too. The SIM tray is here, positioned quite high up, which is not exactly a common location for it. We are happy to see that the Galaxy A05s has two separate nano-SIM slots as well as a dedicated microSD slot on its tray. You don't have to choose between a second SIM and more storage.

The right-hand side of the phone houses the volume rocker and power button. Both are well-positioned height-wise and offer decent, if not perfect, tactile feedback. The power button on the Galaxy A05s doubles as a fingerprint reader. It is a classic capacitive reader and is both very accurate and snappy. We have no complaints about it.

As already mentioned, the fingerprint reader is embedded in the side power button and not on the front of the device. Not that you can have an in-display reader with an LCD panel, anyway. Still, at least you can enable both double tap to turn the screen on and off, which is convenient.

There are practically no controls on the front of the phone. The selfie camera sits in a fairly-deep circular notch with the earpiece neatly tucked-away above it and the light and proximity sensors hidden to the side within the top bezel.

There is no notification LED, but that is hardly a surprise since these are incredibly rare on phones nowadays.

Connectivity

The Galaxy A05s does pretty well in the connectivity department. Though, straight off the bat, we should note that it is not a 5G device. Both Nano-SIM slots on the phone support simultaneous 4G LTE connectivity.

The A05s also has Dual-band Wi-Fi ac and Bluetooth 5.1. It does offer LE support, though. Unfortunately, there is no NFC on board, nor is there and IR blaster. Though the NFC might be market dependent. Our unit does have an FM radio receiver, but that might be region-dependent too, so check with your local retailer. A receiver with GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS and QZSS support handles positioning.

The USB Type-C port on the bottom can accept up to 25W, which is a notable upgrade over the 15W charging of the Galaxy A04s. The port also supports USB Host/OTG. There is nothing really fancy beyond that, though, like video output. The Type-C port is backed up by a USB 2.0 connection, which means theoretical data transfer speeds of up to 480 Mbps.

The Galaxy A05s is a bit light in the sensor department. It has a sc7a20 accelerometer but no gyroscope. The two are usually a combo. There is a sip3515 light sensor, which is thankfully paired with a hardware proximity sensor of the same model. There is no awkward virtual proximity sensor here. The A05s notably lacks a magnetometer and a compass. However, there is no barometer on board.