Samsung Galaxy A36 and A56 hands-on review

Samsung Galaxy A36 hands-on

As we said, Samsung's Galaxy A family is on top of the game when it comes to device popularity, and we believe that the A3X is the sweet spot for many buyers. Last year's Galaxy A35 definitely represented great value in the segment, and the new Galaxy A36 seems to follow its steps nicely. At least, that's our first impression.

There are no really drastic changes in the overall formula here, nor the design, for that matter. The Galaxy A36 is visually distinct from its predecessor when examined from the back side since the trio of individual cameras has now morphed into a singular vertical, well-rounded camera island.

Speaking of the camera island, while it is a lot harder to tell the A36 apart from the A56, it is possible since the A36 seems to have a flat glass surface over all three of its rear cameras, while the A56 has these glass bits sort of separate. Also, the A36 has a slightly less protruding camera island than the A56. Both still wobble on a flat surface without a case, though, but it's much worse for the A56.

Speaking of differences between the A36 and A56, the colors are definitely one of them or rather the finishes. The Galaxy A36 can be had in Lavender, Black, White or Lime. All of the colors, except for the black one, have this slight iridescent effect to them.

It makes the colors look more "engaging", for lack of a better term. They play with the light a lot more. That is compared to the Galaxy A56, which has more "solid" and monotone colors.

There have seemingly been some upgrades to the bill of materials on the Galaxy A36 compared to last year's A35, namely, that the back side is now covered with Gorilla Glass Victus+, just like the front.

The middle frame is still made of polycarbonate with a matte look. This is another subtle way to tell the A36 apart from the A56, which has a brushed metal aluminum frame instead. The Galaxy A36 still comes with IP67 ingress protection, just like the Galaxy A35.

As mentioned, all three new Galaxy A devices share the same 6.7-inch display-diagonal. Hence, they look very similar from the front. The Galaxy A26 is easy enough to tell apart since it has a camera notch rather than the punch hole shared by the A36 and A56. As we mentioned, we believe that the two phones share the same 120Hz FullHD+ panel.

In typical Samsung fashion, the display looks very impressive in person. It is vibrant and very responsive, with no signs of ghosting. We will be testing Samsung's brightness claims in the full review but we have no reason not to believe the 1,200 and 1,900 nits numbers. Pixel density and sharpness are great.

Samsung has reduced the display bezels and slimmed them down a bit. They are still not flagship-grade slim, but they are better than last year. There are no visible sensors here, and everything is nicely hidden under the display. This includes the optical, under-display fingerprint reader. It is both snappy and reliable and works well.

Looking around the rest of the phone, the buttons are all where you would expect them. Nice and clicky.

Galaxy A36

We can't fail to mention that the Galaxy A36 has lost its microSD expansion slot. The Galaxy A35 did have one.

Quickly going through some other hardware specs, it is worth noting that the hybrid stereo speaker setup is still there. There is NFC in some markets. Bluetooth has been updated to 5.4 with LE support, but the Wi-Fi is still dual-band Wi-Fi 6. Not that we can expect much more from a midranger.

Finally, it is quite interesting that the Galaxy A36 supports up to 45W charging. This is a feature Samsung previously had reserved for its premium devices. Whether or not it actually makes a huge practical difference compared to 25W charging is a whole other question, but it is still a bit odd that the Galaxy A36 now has 45W charging while the Galaxy S25, for instance, is stuck at 25W.

If you are after some early benchmark results of camera samples, be sure to head on over to the following pages.