Samsung Galaxy A50s hands-on review

Camera

The Galaxy A50s has a triple camera setup on the back consisting of a 48MP wide-angle camera, an 8MP ultra wide-angle camera, and a 5MP depth sensor. On the front is a 32MP single selfie camera. The front and the main rear cameras are capable of 4K video, but the ultra-wide camera can only record in 1080p.

The camera app on the Galaxy A50s is similar to other recent Samsung phones. The UI is well laid out and easy to use. The main camera modes on the bottom can be customized, which means you can change their order or even remove some items that you don't use. The switch to toggle between the wide and ultra-wide camera is just above the shutter and easy to reach. The app also includes a Pro mode, but on this phone, there aren't too many options to customize, and there's also no RAW capture.

Camera application

The image quality in daylight is decent but not exceptional. Samsung tends to overdo the noise reduction, which cuts down on a lot of detail in the images. It then compensates with sharpening, which tends to cause haloing around the edges of objects.

Daylight images

However, these are things that you will notice only if you are looking at the images too closely. Details aside, the photos have an impressive dynamic range, color, and contrast. This makes them look good when you're just viewing them on the phone's screen or even when shared online. For most people, the level of image quality on offer here will be adequate.

The HDR mode on the phone does a good job. It helps bring out the detail in the shadows and also prevents blowing out the highlights.

HDR samples

The phone allows shooting in the 48MP resolution, but in the default photo mode, the images look like they are upscaled from 12MP. You do seem to get native 48MP images using Pro mode, but Pro mode images lack a lot of the image processing of the Photo mode, so they aren't all that usable unless you choose to edit them manually.

In low light, the image quality is still decent. Samsung's noise reduction goes full tilt here, stripping any signs of the fine detail along with the noise. The result is images that look like they have a beauty mode applied to them. But, they are usable images and perfectly fine for sharing.

Lowlight images

The camera also has a Night mode feature, which is now just a camera mode rather than automatically kicking in as on the older Galaxy devices. The Night mode doesn't noticeably brighten dark images more than what the standard Photo mode already does, but it helps clean up the images and also adjust the dynamic range, so nothing gets blown out. Unfortunately, there is a small crop in this mode so you might need to take a step back in some situations.

Night mode images

The ultra-wide-angle camera performance is also decent. It has a few issues; the details are soft, the dynamic range without HDR is weak, and there's distortion around the edges with no way to fix in the camera app. However, the images still look good, largely due to the good color and contrast performance and dynamic range with HDR enabled is also quite impressive despite the wide perspective.

Ultra-wide vs wide-angle

Apart from new stills capability, the Galaxy A50s also gains 4K video recording. The 4K video from the main camera looks good but is a bit oversharpened. 4K videos don't need to be over sharpened due to the already high resolution, but like with stills, Samsung must be compensating for the noise reduction algorithm.

The 4K video, unfortunately, lacks any stabilization. If you want stabilized video, you will have to drop down to 1080p. Here, you have two options. Opton 1 is to record in the normal video mode with 1080p resolution, and electronic image stabilization enabled from the settings. Option 2 is to switch to the Super steady mode, which is also 1080p. The SuperSteady mode uses the ultra-wide camera and crops from its feed to deshake the video in real-time. The standard 1080p video, however, (being shot with the higher quality main camera) looks sharper than the Super Steady version, which is quite soft.

You can also record 1080p30 video from the ultra-wide camera. The overall image quality is decent even if it's not the most detailed.

The phone also offers two slow-motion options. You can shoot 960fps slow-motion videos along with standard 240fps slow-motion videos, both in 720p. The 960fps videos use interpolation to achieve a higher frame rate, so the motion doesn't look very natural, but the overall results are still quite compelling and entirely usable. The interpolation also allows the camera to shoot in higher resolution, so the 960fps videos don't end up looking too soft or blurry like in older phones with 960fps.