Samsung Galaxy A22 review

90Hz HD+ Super AMOLED panel

The Galaxy A22 is in an interesting spot when it comes to its display. It is equipped with a 6.4-inch, 90Hz Super AMOLED panel that has HDR support and is advertised to boost up to 600 nits of brightness. It is a bit lacking in the resolution department at 720 x 1600 pixels.

On the one hand, it is great to see OLED, which is sorely missing on the Galaxy A22 5G and without sacrificing the faster 90Hz refresh rate either. On the other, the 5G model has a larger 6.6-inch panel with 1080 x 2400 pixels resolution. As we said, the resolution is a weak point on the Galaxy A22. At HD+ and 6.4 inches diagonal, it has a pixel density of right around 274 ppi. Nowhere near the 400 or so ppi, an FHD+ panel provides at this size, and indeed you can spot the difference in sharpness if you look at the A22 alongside the A22 5G or, better yet, the Galaxy A32. To be fair, though, in isolation, the Galaxy A22 still looks perfectly sharp.

Speaking of the Galaxy A32, however, we can't neglect the fact that its 6.4-inch Super AMOLED panel does have a 1080 x 2400-pixel resolution. Plus, it does so while still maintaining a 90Hz refresh rate and by offering an excellent brightness of over 800 nits, which we verified in our review. Unfortunately, Samsung neglected to offer any HDR support on the A32, despite its excellent panel performance.

HDR and Widevine

The same goes for the Galaxy A22. It does not report any HDR support. At least it does have the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM, which enables full resolution streaming from services like Netflix.

The lack of HDR is a bit of a bummer, but on the flip side, the Galaxy A22's panel offers great overall performance. Brightness is officially advertised as 600 nits, and we managed to get very close to that figure in our testing. Though, it should be noted that that figure is only achievable once auto max brightness kicks in. That, unfortunately, is a little bit unreliable and sluggish at times since the Galaxy A22 lacks a hardware light sensor and instead relies on its selfie camera to measure ambient light. We found this to occasionally be a problem when taking the phone out of a pocket in bright sunlight. Max auto mode often took a hot minute to kick in, but once it did, 600 nits were plenty. Not quite flagship-grade, especially for a Samsung, but perfectly good to be usable outdoors. We just wish Samsung sprung for a light sensor.

With auto-brightness turned off, we got just shy of 400 nits of brightness by maxing out the slider.

Brightness isn't the only strong suit of the Galaxy A22's display. It is also pretty great when it comes to color accuracy. In keeping with the recent Samsung status quo, the A22 has two color modes - Vivid and Natural. The former targets the DCI-P3 color space and also offers a color temperature slider as well as advanced per-channel correction sliders.

Color modes

Vivid mode comes close to being color-accurate but doesn't quite hit the mark, which is likely by design. It keeps the three primary channels and particularly reds nicely boosted to deliver that OLED "pop" that tends to be appealing to the human eye. Natural mode, on the other hand, sticks closely to the sRGB color space and can even be considered good enough for color-sensitive work.

High refresh rate handling

The Galaxy A22 has a simple and straightforward approach to its 90Hz refresh rate. There are two modes in display settings for Motion smoothness - Standard and High. Standard locks everything to 60Hz, while High basically locks everything to 90Hz.

This has its positives and negatives, for sure, the latter mostly boiling down to the battery-wasting potential in certain situations, like watching video.

On the other hand, if you are aware of how the logic is set up and are remember to toggle down to 60Hz for things like movie watching sessions - everything else remains simple and straightforward.

Both Chrome and the Samsung browser, which we tried, take full advantage of the 90Hz refresh rate of the display, as verified by the Blurbusters UFO test.

Apps running at 90Hz

Samsung never promised any automatic refresh rate switching. Plus, having such logic implemented in a poor way has been known to cause issues with utilizing high refresh rate modes on other devices, especially for gaming. With this simple binary system in place, we managed to get a noticeably smoother (higher than 60fps) experience from pretty much every high-refresh-rate-supported game we tried.

Games running at 90Hz

The only situation we managed to find where the A22 switched down to 60Hz on its own was in the camera app. This is perfectly expected since the camera viewfinder is one of those Android UI components that traditionally require 60Hz to function properly.

Some apps require 60Hz to operate correctly

Battery life

The Galaxy A22 is pretty predictable in the battery department. It has the same 5,000 mAh pack as the Galaxy A22 5G and A32, among others. We also have a good idea of the expected performance and efficiency of the MediaTek Helio G80 chipset - a 12nm part. In fact, as we noted, the Galaxy A32 and A22 share quite a few similarities, one of which is the aforementioned chipset.

In terms of actual endurance numbers, the Galaxy A22 falls in line nicely with its siblings as well, with a solid total endurance number of 121 hours. In fact, that's actually a bit better than the 118 hours the Galaxy A22 5G managed. However, that one has a Dimensity 700 5G chipset. The A22 also does better than the Galaxy A32. Since the two have the same battery capacity and chipset, it seems that the lower display resolution on the Galaxy A22 is at least partially behind its better overall battery numbers.

Since we already mentioned that the Galaxy A22 has comparable endurance to other similar Samsung phones, here is how it stacks up against some of its main competitors in the same price range.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage patterns check out our all-time battery test results chart where you can also find all phones we've tested.

Charging speed

For charging, the Galaxy A22 has the familiar, old Samsung-staple that is 15W Adaptive Fast Charging (based on Quick Charge 2.0). You get a matching charger in the box. Nothing special overall. In fact, the Galaxy A22 has one of the slowest charging rates around, compared to its competitors. Using it, the A22 charges from flat to full in 2:20h, with 23% showing in the battery indicator half an hour into the process. Right around what we would expect from 15W AFC on a 5,000 mAh battery and within margin of error from similar devices like the A22 5G, A32 and A32 5G. At least you get faster charging than lesser Galaxies like the A02s and A12, if that counts for something.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• Realme 8 Pro
  88%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  65%
• Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 4G
  58%
• Realme 8
  56%
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  54%
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  54%
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  53%
• Samsung Galaxy A52 (25W)
  52%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  50%
• Poco X3 Pro
  50%
• Realme 8s 5G
  50%
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  34%
• Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
  34%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 5G
  33%
• Poco M3 Pro 5G
  33%
• Samsung Galaxy A02s
  30%
• Realme 8i
  30%
• Realme 8 5G
  29%
• Xiaomi Redmi 10
  26%
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  25%
• Samsung Galaxy A32 5G
  23%
• Samsung Galaxy A22 5G
  23%
• Samsung Galaxy A22
  23%
• Samsung Galaxy A12
  20%

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Realme 8 Pro
  0:38h
• Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 4G
  1:04h
• Poco M4 Pro 5G
  1:07h
• Poco X3 Pro
  1:08h
• Realme 8
  1:09h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  1:13h
• Realme 8s 5G
  1:14h
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  1:15h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  1:21h
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  1:28h
• Samsung Galaxy A52 (25W)
  1:30h
• Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
  1:39h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 5G
  2:00h
• Poco M3 Pro 5G
  2:00h
• Samsung Galaxy A52
  2:03h
• Xiaomi Redmi 10
  2:13h
• Samsung Galaxy A32
  2:19h
• Samsung Galaxy A22
  2:20h
• Realme 8 5G
  2:20h
• Realme 8i
  2:21h
• Samsung Galaxy A32 5G
  2:24h
• Samsung Galaxy A22 5G
  2:29h
• Samsung Galaxy A02s
  2:36h
• Samsung Galaxy A12
  3:03h

Speaker test

Like most other non-flagship Samsungs, the Galaxy A22 has a single loudspeaker placed on the bottom of the phone. And, like most other non-flagship Samsungs, it's not particularly impressive in terms of loudness - the A22 earned a 'Below average' rating for loudness in our 7-track test, just like the A32.

That actually makes it sort of the runt of the family, since even the Galaxy A32 managed a slightly louder 30.3 LUFS of output, and both the Galaxy A32 5G and A22 5G did notably better at 28.5 LUFS. At least better enough to squeeze out an 'Average' rating, that is. None of them is particularly impressive overall.

Frequency response is similar on all of these devices as well. That is to say, not overly impressive either. The Galaxy A22 doesn't have any built-in equalizers or optimizers for its loudspeaker. There is Dolby Atmos under audio settings, but that is just for headphones.

It is potentially worth noting that some competitors like the Redmi Note 10 Pro and Poco X3 do offer a stereo speaker setup.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.