Samsung Galaxy A53 5G smartphone review: Galaxy phone with bright AMOLED display

[Redaktion]

The Samsung Galaxy A53 5G builds on a best-selling series with a whole new SoC and a more powerful battery. However, nothing has changed in other areas, such as the camera. Our review will reveal whether the Galaxy A53 can still get a recommendation from us.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Samsung-Galaxy-A53-5G-smartphone-review-Galaxy-phone-with-bright-AMOLED-display.623773.0.html

[Duran Sirhan]

Tech reviewers live in a bubble. It's positively freakish.
They actually poo-poo users who will complain about the lack of a headphone.
No, deluded reviewer living in a bubble, we won't bother to complain any longer: We simply won't buy the crappy phone.
Getting rid of the headphone jack was moronic and insensitive to anyone who cares about sound.

[Dave Ambly]

The A53 looked like a dog compared to the A52s when it first came out.  Despite the hype, it had caution all over it for me.  I am glad I didn't buy into it.  Samsung took a big step back compared to the A52s, and I am happy to see an article that actually highlights this with some numbers.

If the A53s comes out, it had better have a Snapdragon, or be cautious again.  And those surfing and transfer numbers on the A53 are abysmal.

[Beng Oey]

The signal reception of the A53 5G is rather weak.
Could I ask which phones is it compared to ?
I won't consider buying a phone that has weak signal reception.

[TX]

PWM @ 250 Hz (even at 100% brightness) = no deal for me.
Why no public/government health agency doesn't investigate this problem?

OLED technology with screen flickering is a dead end. I'm looking forward for micro led technology.

[abc]

Detailed extensive testing from NotebookCheck as always. Really appreciate this compared to spec reviewers, who just reiterate the marketing materials.

There are manufacturers who put in a lot of thought picking hardware and fine tune everything to make the most out of it, and there are manufacturers who pick hardware with big numbers and ship without optimizing. Samsung is the latter.

For SoC, they took the base design from ARM and used it as is. No 4k60 ISP upgrade, no AV1 codec. They even cut out WiFi 6. The only reason they created the Exynos 1280 is to save money. It's an in-house Dimensity 900 without having to pay Mediatek and TSMC.

For Camera they did a bad job calibrating it if at all. The color profiles of the main and ultra wide are different. No RAW or Level 3 support. Camera software loaded is all you get.

5G is again only there to check the checkbox but it is barely useful. It is non-standaline (NSA) and it on has 5 bands (out of 30 or so used around the world and 15 or so used in the US). That means it is always connected to LTE and only uses 5G for faster download if the conditions allow. You can't connect to 5G only. The only few bands it supports means it will be obsolete when carriers deploy new ones. The FCC application has all the details.

The phone gets hot, efficiency of the SoC is terrible compared to Dimensity 900.

It may look like they care about the mid range segment, Samsung does not. Their strategy can be summarized as "wow big numbers" and "it looks like our flagship". If you want a good phone without flagship pricing, looking at used ones or from another brand. If you just want a cheap phone and don't care about how it functions, the A53 is for you.

[Jack Smith]

Downgrade from A52s.

What apps do you use for the GPS testing?

[Mr Insight]

I have the A52 5G and I will stay with it for now.
These new phones don't add anything useful, but they do take things away like the headphone jack.

If I upgrade to a phone that has no headphone jack, it will be the Pixel 6a, which at least lets me replace the OS with something safer.

[abc]

A better comparison than the Sony Xperia 10 Mark III is the OnePlus Nord CE 2. We all know Sony hasn't came out with competitive phones since the XZ3 and is pretty irrelevant outside Japan. The Nord has very similar processor and camera to the A53 and cuts the refresh rate to 90Hz and saves you $100.