Samsung Galaxy A71 review

One big display, but no HDR

The Samsung Galaxy A71 has the same screen as the Galaxy A70's but the notch is a bit different. While the A70 had the 2019's waterdrop-shaped cutout, the A71 joins the '20 trend with a punch-hole for the selfie camera. Sure, it's not as small as the one on Note10 Lite, but it's a hole alright.

Super AMOLED eye-candy - A71, S10 Lite, Note10 Lite

So, the Super AMOLED screen is 6.7" in diagonal, with rounder corners and punch-hole for the front camera. It has a resolution of 2,400 x 1,080 pixels that makes for a 20:9 aspect ratio and 393ppi density. The display is protected by a Gorilla Glass 3 piece for some extra peace of mind.

The screen omits HDR10 certification and thus you won't be able to enjoy premium HDR content over at Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, or similar streaming services. The only app that allows for HDR streaming is YouTube and we noticed the brightness boost when playing such clips, but we are not sure exactly what type of HDR is that.

Having said that, the screen does very well when it comes to brightness. Maxing out the brightness scrubber we measured 410 nits, while the Adaptive Brightness can give you an additional kick up to 515 nits.

We also measured a minimum brightness of 1.7nits - an excellent result.

As it usually happens with Samsung's Super AMOLEDs, the one on the Galaxy A71 is capable of accurately reproducing different color spaces depending on content and selected display mode. The Natural screen mode stays accurate to sRGB with an average DeltaE of 1.7, while Vivid adheres to the DCI-P3 color space with an average DeltaE of 3.3 (though by opting for Warmer White Balance you can lower it down to 2.7). No other screen modes are available.

Battery life

The Galaxy A71 has the same large battery as the A70 - it's a 4,500 mAh Li-Ion cell. The phone supports fast charging and it comes bundled with the appropriate 25W plug. Using the charger, you will be able to replenish about 51% of its empty battery in half an hour, and it takes 81 minutes for a full charge.

The results from our battery life test are in and the Samsung Galaxy A71 scored an excellent mark! The phone lasted north of 13 hours on our web browsing test, more than 17 hours when playing videos, and 30+ hours on 3G talks. Finally, when we added the very good standby performance, we got an overall Endurance Rating of 102 hours.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSer App. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Samsung Galaxy A71 for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.

Speaker test

The Galaxy A71 has a single loudspeaker on the bottom - par for the course in the segment. That just about sums up its performance in terms of loudness and the phone scored an 'Average' rating in our test. It'll do for general use if you're not too demanding, just don’t expect to hear boomy bass notes.

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.

Audio quality

When it comes to the output through the 3.5mm jack, the Samsung Galaxy A71 is a solid performer. When hooked to an active external amplifier it reproduced the test track perfectly at volume levels well above the average.

Headphones brought a moderate increase in stereo crosstalk and a tiny bit of intermodulation distortion, but no other damage whatsoever. Audiophiles should rest assured - the Galaxy A71 will play your tracks the way they were meant to sound.

Samsung Galaxy A71 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.