Samsung Galaxy A52s long-term review

Conclusion

The Galaxy A52s is a great value offering for its current asking price, perhaps the best value any A-series device has ever been. So if you want a Samsung mid-ranger and don't want to feel like you overpaid, this is probably the one to go for, even today when its supposed successor, the A53, is available. As we mentioned already, due to the chipset used, it might be better to consider the A73 the A52s' true successor, but it's up to you. Either way, both of those are more expensive than the A52s at the moment, while not offering a whole lot to justify that price difference.

The A52s comes with Samsung's extended software update promise of three years of big Android version updates and four years of security updates, and that's currently unmatched in the mid-range space outside of Google and Apple. So if a long update window is paramount to you, and you don't want to spend flagship-level money, again, this is the one to go for.

All that having been said, the Galaxy A52s is definitely not a perfect package, even for its price point, and while the updates keep coming in a timely and reliable fashion, some of those have in the past introduced bugs, so it's not all roses. And while we're on the software topic, One UI 4.1 on the A52s looks like One UI 4.1 on a flagship Samsung, and has practically the same features, but it doesn't feel the same.

Some of that is undoubtedly due to the lower-end chipset, but not all - the same Snapdragon 778G seems faster on some competing devices. Our glaring suspicion here is that Samsung simply isn't optimizing A-series software as much as it's now finally doing for the S line and its foldables, and this is an area in which things should definitely improve in the future. It's a shame to have reasonably capable hardware paired with a rather laggy software experience.

The A52s' battery capacity won't break any records but in actual real world use it reliably lasted us an entire day, we were never anxious about making it to the end on one charge. Which is good, since the slow charging doesn't exactly make quick midday top-ups very useful. It's nice to see a Samsung device that still ships with a charger in the box, and this brick actually supports 25W charging, which is the maximum the phone can do - unlike what happened with the A52 which was capable of 25W but had a 15W brick in the box. Charging speed is another area where improvements for Samsung devices (regardless of price point) are well overdue.

The screen is perhaps the best part of this handset, and that's great since the screen is what you're looking at when you're using it. It's a high quality panel, among the best (if not the best) you can find at this price point. The 120 Hz refresh rate is welcome, and if you don't expect flagship levels of brightness you'll find that it's good enough to make things discernible even on a sunny summer day. Only just, but still.

The cameras are good overall, with the ultrawide being the nice surprise of the package, punching above the phone's price point and delivering consistently better results than the competition. The main snapper isn't bad but it's pretty much what you'd expect from a mid-ranger, the only thing that stands out is the presence of OIS, which is still rare at this price.

Performance and smoothness are a tad lower than we expected going in, if you've ever used a Redmi Note 10 Pro or any other Redmi with a Snapdragon 720G/730G/732G things will feel incredibly familiar here - but with added 5G support, which is much less of a differentiating factor nowadays than it used to be, and yet it's still nice to have.

Considering its current price, we don't think it's a stretch to call this Samsung's best mid-range smartphone ever, but with more attention and care for the software experience, it could have been the best mid-ranger of 2022 period.

As it is, there are competitors that feel faster and smoother, so in the end it's up to you whether you value that above all of the A52s' traits that those competitors can't match: the extended software support, the screen quality, OIS on the main camera, the ultrawide image quality, the IP67 water and dust resistance, and even the brand name on the back, as some people don't want to stray from the Apple-Samsung duopoly.