Samsung Galaxy A36 review

A familiar triple camera system

Samsung has switched around the camera setup on the new Galaxy A36 a bit compared to its A35 predecessor. You are still getting the same basic setup as the A35 - a 50MP main cam, an 8MP ultrawide, and a 5MP dedicated macro as a third cam. There is a new 12MP selfie camera here, replacing the 13MP one that the A35 had.

In a bit of a spoiler, the new 12MP selfie camera here is, in fact, an upgrade to the 13MP on the A35, and you will see what we mean when we get to the camera quality assessment.

The difference to the Galaxy A56 cameras is quite marginal this year.

• Wide (main): 50 MP Sony IMX882 f/1.8, 1/1.95", 0.8µm, PDAF, OIS; 2160p@30fps
• Ultra wide angle: 8 MP GalaxyCore GC08A3, f/2.2, 123-degree, 1/4", 1.12µm, fixed focus; 1080p@30fps
• Macro: 5 MP GalaxyCore GC05A3, f/2.4; fixed focus.
• Front camera: 12 MP GalaxyCore GC12A2, f/2.2; 2160p@30fps

Samsung mostly relies on GalaxyCore sensors for the A36. The ultrawide and the macro camera, in particular, are familiar from the previous generation.

The camera app is the updated version where the modes are at the very bottom of the screen, and none of the UI elements cover the camera viewfinder entirely. You only get Pro mode on the main camera, while night mode can be used across the main, ultrawide, and selfie cams.

We do have a relatively small gripe with the video capture UI. When 4K resolution is selected, the option to zoom beyond 1x on the main camera (2x, 4x) is not obvious, and you need to click on the 1x button to reveal extra selectors. However, when you switch over to 1080p resolution, the 0.5 and 2x toggles appear alongside the 1x one. This is sort of confusing and might lead some users to believe that they can only record zoomed-in videos at FullHD, which is not the case.

Daylight photo quality

Main camera

The Sony IMX882 is not an overly popular choice for a main camera. However, it is found in some Poco, Realme, and vivo devices, just to name a few brands. It takes binned shots by default with a resolution of around 12.5MP. It's interesting how Samsung insists on resizing to 12MP on some of its devices while on others, like the A36 and A35 before it, 12.5MP is just fine. These are just random musings.

Anyway, the overall quality of the main cam is solid, even if not impressive in any particular way. You get plenty of detail with a nicely wide dynamic range. Shadows and highlights are well developed. The colors are not exactly true-to-life and have a bit of extra "pop" to them, but they are still not overly exaggerated.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 12.5MP main camera samples

The main gripe we have with the main camera is consistency, or rather lack thereof. Exposure can differ wildly from shot to shot, and so can color rendition. This is not that noticeable in good lighting conditions, but it can become annoying in low light.

At 2x, shots don't look half bad, either. There is a bit more sharpening going on for fine detail, which, by the way, is also a thing even at 1x. Some surfaces can appear a bit softer, but other than that, these shots are perfectly usable.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom samples

For some reason, the Galaxy A36 refuses to capture 2x portraits despite seemingly having all the necessary hardware tools, and the A56 has no trouble doing 2x portraits. Still, we get pretty clean 1x portrait shots with nice facial features, pleasant skin tones, good subject detection and separation and high-quality background blur.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples

You can force the main camera to capture in its full 50MP resolution, and surprisingly, since this is not typically the case, we tend to like these 1x shots even better than the binned ones. Sure, you will have to deal with larger file sizes and slower capture times, but if you pixel-peep, the 50MP shots genuinely have more fine detail and far less aggressive sharpening after the fact. We can definitely see a use case for the 50MP mode.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 50MP main camera samples

Ultrawide camera

Let's be frank here: there's only so much we can expect from an 8MP ultrawide of this caliber. Just like on last year's A35, this camera does well enough without shining in any way.

The amount of detail is alright, and that's about the best we can say about this camera. Due to the poor shot-to-shot consistency of both this and the main camera, we can't say that the colors match well across these two snappers.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 8MP ultrawide camera samples

Macro camera

The 5MP macro cam is another familiar camera and certainly nothing to phone home about. It does a better job than all of the 2MP macro shooters we've seen.

We definitely like the overall quality of these shots. Again, they are nothing to praise but are certainly usable.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 5MP macro camera samples

Selfie camera

Depending on the crop setting you choose, the photos from the selfie camera come out in either exactly 12MP or around 7.6MP.

The image quality out of this selfie cam is excellent. We particularly like the facial features and skin tones. Detail is quite good. The Dynamic range could be better, but it's not a major issue.

Samsung Galaxy A36: selfie camera samples

Low-light camera quality

Just like practically every other Samsung phone in recent memory, the Galaxy A36 has automatic night mode. However, for some reason, the automatic detection and triggering are tuned very conservatively, and the phone never actually wanted to toggle night mode by itself in any of our standard low-light scenes.

Hence, we decided to use the manual night mode for one set of shots and then the regular camera mode for another. The results are, well, different. Having night mode on definitely preserves highlights better and leads to less blowout in light sources. Noise is a lot less, too.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 12.5MP main camera night mode samples

However, on the flip side, fine detail seems to be a bit better without forcing night mode. Some of the finer details apparently get "painted over" by the noise suppression. Without it, you get noisier surfaces but also a bit more detail. So, both modes are a valid choice depending on your desires.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 12.5MP main camera low-light samples

These observations hold true in 2x zoom mode. You have to deal with even more noise when zooming in, as expected, so you might be pushed more towards forcing night mode.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom night mode samples

Samsung Galaxy A36: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom low-light samples

The same general observations are also true with the ultrawide camera. Due to its innate extra softness we find ourselves favoring night mode for it too, even if the difference isn't that huge.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 8MP ultrawide camera night mode samples

Samsung Galaxy A36: 8MP ultrawide camera low-light samples

Low-light selfies are merely alright. Nothing special.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 12MP selfie camera low-light samples

Video capture quality

The Galaxy A36 can capture 4K@30fps video on its main and selfie cameras. The ultrawide is limited to 1080p. This is not the case with the Galaxy A56, which can also do 4K on its ultrawide. Speaking of differences between the two devices, the A36 is also missing the advanced video capture options - 360 audio recording and audio playback that are present on the A56.

As usual, you get the option to capture videos in h.265/HEVC instead of the default h.264/AVC. By default, videos get saved with an AVC stream and a stereo 48 kHz AAC audio stream inside an MP4 container.

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

In daylight conditions, the main camera captures pretty solid 4K videos. The detail is good and so are the colors and dynamic range. Surprisingly, there is a bit more noise than we would have liked. It is even more evident at 2x zoom, along with some fringing on fine geometrical patterns. FullHD video from the ultrawide camera is also a bit noisy, but that's something we expect from the ultrawide camera, unlike the main one. Detail is alright, but far from spectacular. The same goes for colors and dynamic range.

The Galaxy A36 has always-on video stabilization that can be toggled off in settings for every camera at every resolution. It works pretty well and does away with most shakes.

There is also a Super steady mode that takes its footage from the ultrawide camera and is capped at 1080p. Its quality isn't particularly high, and we don't see ourselves using it often.

Low-light video from the main camera is a bit on the noisier side as well, but other than that, it is solid, with good detail and well-developed highlights and shadows. The ultrawide expectedly struggles quite badly in these conditions.