Samsung Galaxy A16 5G review

Design, build quality, handling

The Galaxy A16 5G is unquestionably a modern Samsung phone. You can spot its distinctive design language a mile away. And when we say distinctive, we are more or less talking about the triple vertical camera arrangement on the back without a unified camera island.

Other than that, the A16 5G looks like any other current phone. It has a mostly flat frame with nicely rounded corners that don't dig into your palms. There are subtle and gentle chamfers on the back and front of the middle frame for a better in-hand feel. There is nothing aggressive or stark about the design and the shape here, just nicely flowing natural lines.

Since we are already talking about the back of the phone, we might as well point out that it is a real fingerprint magnet. You'll never be able to keep the glossy plastic surface clean.

Despite being plastic, it feels very solid. In fact, there is no flex to the phone's frame, nor is there any hollowness.

You can get the Galaxy A16 5G in one of four colors: Blue Black, Light Gray, Gold or Light Green. In our opinion, our Black Blue unit airs more on the side of black than blue.

Let's talk materials. As we mentioned, the back of the phone is made of plastic, and so is the middle frame. Plastic is strong, light, and doesn't quite dent like metal or shatter like glass - plus, it lets signals through uninterrupted.

The front of the Galaxy A16 5G is made of some sort of glass. Unfortunately, Samsung does not specify what kind. The phone doesn't come with a factory pre-applied screen protector either.

In terms of ingress protection, the Galaxy A16 5G gets an IP54 rating, which is fairly basic. However, the SIM tray on our unit does have a pretty thick rubber gasket, so the phone might actually survive a quick dip.

At the front, the bezels are fairly wide and the teardrop selfie camera notch also screams budget. The earpiece is nicely hidden away. There are no visible sensors here, either. To be fair, Samsung has, seemingly, slimmed-down the display bezels compared to the like of the Galaxy A15 4G and 5G as well as the Galaxy A25.

The A16 5G uses a virtual proximity sensor, but it has a physical ambient light sensor tucked under the display.

The Galaxy A16 5G doesn't have an in-display fingerprint reader. Instead, it relies on a capacitive one positioned inside the power button on the right-hand side of the frame. The buttons are nice and clicky and offer plenty of tactile feedback.

The fingerprint reader works perfectly fine. It is both speedy and accurate.

Samsung Galaxy A16 5G

The raised "island" that houses the buttons on the right-hand side of the frame is also a pretty distinctive feature of the current Samsung design.

The left frame is mostly empty if you don't count the SIM slot. The top of the phone is also mostly empty. There is a tiny hole for a noise-canceling mic.

The bottom houses the single loudspeaker on the A16 5G. The main mic and the Type-C port are here. It's just the essentials really.