Samsung Galaxy A52s long-term review

Design, build, handling

If you've seen a Samsung, any Samsung, made in recent times, you'll instantly recognize this as a Samsung. The Korean company has slowly perfected a design language that is unique and noticeable without ever feeling too aggressive, too shouty. This year even the top dog S22 Ultra has a very similar design to what you can see on the A52s, price delta notwithstanding.

We can't say we love the design nor that we hate it, we think it works very well and it's pleasant without being either incredibly beautiful or ghastly. It's a middle of the road thing, but executed very well. You can tell that this is part of Samsung's roster, and you can also tell that it's a Samsung mid-ranger, either by looking at it, or touching it.

That gets us to the first point of contention for many people, which is the plastic build of this phone. Yes, the frame and the back are plastic. No, we were never bothered by that. Sure, it's warmer to the touch than glass would be. But in our white version fingerprints on the back were pretty much invisible, which is always appreciated. And while any phone these days is bound to be slippery, we found this one to be among the least slippery we've handled in recent times.

The only small issue we have with the plastic is with the finishing of the frame. It's excessively shiny, in an effort to convince you it's metal, but the effect is overdone to the point where most people would instantly realize it's not. Sure, it could be high-polish stainless steel, but in a phone this cheap? Definitely not. It would have to be aluminum at best, and aluminum just doesn't look like that.

On the other hand, the choice of colors is - well, first of all, you do have a choice between white, black, purple, and "mint", and we appreciate the latter duo for being colorful but still subdued in a stark contrast to the frame we were just discussing above. It's also easy to enjoy the color of your choice out of the box, since Samsung doesn't bother to ship any sort of case with its devices - it would much rather you buy one of the models it offers at an additional cost.

That makes the Korean company stand out from the crowd in a bad way, but with the A52s it also stands out from the crowd in a good way, by offering IP67 certification for water and dust resistance. This means the phone is dust tight and can withstand being submerged in up to 1m of water for up to 30 minutes. We wish more mid-range devices would have similar ratings, but for now, Samsungs rise above the competition in this regard.

This is not a small phone, not even by today's standards, but it's also not a huge one either, sitting neatly in between and covering that middle ground. That means it was very easy to handle, at least for this reviewer, although the usual caveat applies: if you have small hands you might find one-hand use problematic. Then again, you'll find it less problematic than if you had an S22 Ultra, let's not forget. Weight-wise, it's also somewhere in the middle. Not so heavy that it would require constant breaks for your hand, but not so light that it feels insubstantial. It's just right.

Of course it won't feel as "premium" as it would with metal on the sides and glass on the back, but in all honesty, it's perfectly adequate not just for its current price, but even its launch price. It gets the job done, and the rear won't shatter if you drop it. Win-win? Probably, unless you're a "premium materials" snob, in which case - why are you looking at mid-rangers in the first place?

Headphone jack, speakers

The Galaxy A52s features that rare unicorn, the 3.5mm headphone jack. So if you crave it, it's there. We wanted to say something more about it, but really - what more is there to say? It's present, and it works.

The phone has dual speakers, with a down-firing one paired with the earpiece pulling double-duty as the second channel. This is a traditional Samsung setup, so there's nothing inherently wrong with it, especially as, at the high-end, the Korean company delivers among the loudest speakers on the market. But this is one of those areas where you're reminded that the A52s isn't a high-end phone, and so corners have been cut.

Don't get us wrong, we're happy to get dual speakers, but they're not very good. They're tinny (and progressively more so the higher the volume) and don't really get very loud even at maximum volume. In a quiet room by yourself you'll have the volume slider up to 90% or higher in order to comfortably hear what's going on in the video you're watching or podcast you're listening to, and when you have any sort of noise around you'll have to bring the phone closer to your ears to actually discern what's being said.

The sound is also quite flat and lacking any sort of depth, not to mention any trace amounts of bass. And that's the reason why we haven't talked about listening to music yet - you should really use headphones or a Bluetooth speaker for that. So there are dual speakers on this phone, and they're not horrible for the price, but they're definitely not awe-inspiring either.

Vibration motor

The vibration motor, on the other hand, is really bad. It reminds us of the ones generally fitted in much cheaper devices, which is probably because it might be a similar part. It's worlds apart from the motors that some of Samsung's competitors are putting into their mid-rangers, and this is an area where the A52s trails behind most devices that are similarly priced.

It just feels incredibly cheap (probably because it is), it lacks any sort of oomph, and you can hear it more than feel it - if that makes sense. Oh, and the more you take the Vibration intensity slider to the right, the worse it sounds - but then if you go the other direction you might not even hear it. Considering you can barely feel it regardless of where the slider is, there's basically no good option to recommend regarding the intensity adjustment.

Vibration settings

There are motors that you can hear about as much as you can feel - Samsung used to put these in its flagships, up until the S22 generation. Then there are the ones which you can feel more than you hear - most people consider these to be the best, although this reviewer considers that the former are better, but still, the point is, when you think of a great vibration motor, you think of either of these. You never think about one that is all bark and no bite, as is the case with the A52s'. Even at this phone's current price, this is disappointing.

Biometrics

The Galaxy A52s has an in-display fingerprint sensor, which some of its competitors lack. Since all flagship smartphones these days have an in-display sensor, you'd think this would be an area where the A52s would punch above its weight. And it does, if we're only talking accuracy, which is indeed very good. Not quite flagship level, but very, very close.

Subjectively, our impression is that accuracy is at least 95%, but probably more like 97-98%. Again, that's very good, especially at this price. Things change if your fingers are wet or sweaty, in which case accuracy drops substantially, but the same happens with any optical sensor like this one, regardless of the price of the phone it's mounted onto. It's just a limitation of the tech being used.

So accuracy is on point, but what's not good at all is how slow the sensor is. Even with all the related animations disabled (isn't it funny that Samsung has settings for that? It's almost like the engineers know the animations just pointlessly slow down the unlocking process). It being an optical sensor, and not an ultrasonic one as seen on the S line, is definitely not why it's slow - we've used plenty of optical fingerprint scanners from other companies, in flagships as well as mid-rangers, that are much faster than this one.

So we don't know what's going on, but if you're used to other in-display fingerprint sensors (on devices that aren't Samsung mid-rangers), you'll constantly find that you pull up your finger too soon - and the phone will passive-aggressively tell you that you did. It feels like this sensor is about half a second slower than any other sensor on the market. If this was a newly launched phone, we'd hope it was a software issue that could be fixed through a software update, but the A52s has been on sale for months, and received many updates, and it's still like this.

Which means you're probably going to have to learn to live with it. That's not that hard to do, but it's frustrating to have to, especially as such slowness isn't par for the course at this price point, if you're looking at competing devices. Then again, some of those come with faster sensors that are less accurate, so perhaps this is, like most things, a tradeoff game.

Biometrics settings

If you're put off by the fingerprint unlocking experience for this reason or any other, there's also face unlock just waiting to be used, and it's the usual camera-based fare which is way less secure than fingerprints but could be slightly faster.