Review: Samsung Galaxy A02s is a budget phone you won’t hate

Not everyone needs or can afford a $1,000 flagship phone, but how much money can you save before a cheap phone goes from “affordable” to “terrible”? This is a line in the sand that moves every year from one plant to another and from one person to another. For me, the 2021 A02s are the best. This is precisely the minimum viable smartphone, but for $110 brand new, Samsung is at an unbelievable price. Four years of updates. For the price, I don’t think you can go wrong, but spend a little more to get a better phone if you can.

Specifications

Goodness

Not very good

Note that specifications vary between markets and even transport companies. The US Cellular, Verizon, and unlocked versions only have 2GB of RAM, while the international model has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and lacks 5GHz Wi-Fi support. We have revised the US open model.

Design, hardware and what’s in the box

The A02s is a great phone, especially for the money. The 6.5-inch screen was considered Galaxy Note size just two years ago. As you’d expect at this price, it has a plastic body, but it’s decorated with a geometric pattern made up of small lines at different angles that makes it more pleasant to use (read: less greasy) than the glossy plastic that many cheap phones have.

The glass-covered display may be large, but it’s low-res at just 720p. At arm’s length, text is clear, but closer than two feet and good eyesight can see fuzzy edges. It’s not the brightest screen – it’s fine indoors or on a cloudy day, but full sunlight can make it a bit difficult to read. Auto brightness was good, though better than some other phones I’ve used recently. The screen is Mostly Edge to edge, with surprisingly narrow bezels on the sides, a notched top, and a large chin at the bottom.

As a budget phone, it retains the headphone jack, which is handy. It’s located next to the USB Type-C port at the bottom, which is used for charging. I’m very glad that even budget phones have moved away from Micro USB in the last couple of years. However, it doesn’t have a fingerprint sensor, so you’ll be using a more complex PIN/password or insecure camera-based facial recognition technology to access your phone.

I was surprised to see that not only is this phone expandable using a microSD card for storage, but it’s also dual-SIM-ready, which is a nice bonus at this price. And with just 32GB of storage, you probably can needs To use micro. This represents the minimum amount of space available, and you’ll be left with micromanaging installed apps, offline media downloads, and photos within a few months.

The haptics are very good, but the audio performance was a bit of a surprise. It’s not stereo, but the single speaker gets much louder than I expected and doesn’t distort terribly — which is pretty good for a smartphone.

In the box are the phone, charger, and USB Type A to Type C cable.

Software, performance and battery

Samsung’s OneUI 2.5 is a bit old at this point, as it’s based on 2019’s Android 10, but it’s well known. Those who have used any Samsung phone in the past few years must feel right at home. If it’s been a while since you’ve used Samsung’s version of Android, the days of TouchWiz’s unbearable clutter and confusing user experience are long gone. Thank goodness. It’s not “stock”, but it’s quite comfortable. From my perspective, it looks like Samsung has made a bunch of small tweaks to the A02s, such as reducing haptic effects (possibly to save battery). But at its core, this is Samsung software that’s now tried and tested, and can run all the apps you rely on.

I ran into one major snag in our review, which was that the A02s originally refused to connect to my home’s wireless network. Subsequent updates fixed the issue (although it would still randomly claim that the network had no Internet when it did), but that required updating the device through a second hotspot or network it wanted to use; It is not possible to update via mobile data. I expect most people won’t have this problem, but if they do, it can be obnoxious to solve.

When it comes to longevity, Samsung told us the A02s will get four years of updates, with two years of OS upgrades – and we’re assuming we’ll carry it through to the Android 12 version of OneUI. With other budget phone makers, like Motorola, promising budget models after just two years of updates and a single OS version upgrade, Samsung is making them look a bit like clowns.

Samsung still insists on bundling its own calendar, browser, and keyboard, but you’ll probably want to replace them as soon as possible, especially on this phone. That’s not because they’re necessarily bad (that’s up to you, though I find Google’s design language more pleasing). The real reason is that the performance in Google apps is low usually Better, you’ll need every ounce of speed you can get here. At the very least, definitely replace the Samsung keyboard.

In fact, overall performance with the 2017-era Snapdragon 450 is pretty poor. If the phone doesn’t specifically do anything else, it can convince you that it’s capable of this for a few seconds or even a minute or two in a row, but that’s just an illusion. The second you tackle a low-effort task or multitask, you expect everything to stop. Even just navigation gestures can be frustrating to use if the phone is doing anything at all in the background, and the lock screen PIN pad times out before it’s fully finished loading. I’d encourage you to stick with the software’s navigation buttons, but there’s no limiting the phone’s overall speed without buying a better phone. It also means that even if this phone gets four years of updates, it will likely be nearly unusable by the end of that window.

Although it seemed like apps were pushed out of memory in the background quite quickly with just 2GB of RAM on the US model, it didn’t interfere with things like Spotify, but I doubt it will age gracefully. I would prefer Samsung give us 4GB like the international version.

The A02s requires you to be patient, and although it can do most of the same things that better phones can, it can’t do them very quickly. However, there is one big exception: stay away from games. While most of the requested titles are thankfully incompatible, many of the games that don’t make the Galaxy A02s on the Play Store’s allowed list are floundering. It runs some older titles well, as well as the kind of games that can run on potatoes with very low requirements.

Whether it’s the disappointing chipset or the 5,000 mAh battery that’s to blame, the battery life on the A02s is excellent. I just managed to blush Eight hours of screen time over four days. This is very good. Samsung claims it can charge at up to 15W via Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0/Samsung AFC. Via USB-PD, the fastest I’ve seen was 8W.

Cameras

At first I thought the extra shutter button was a bug, but it’s a feature: you can reposition it wherever you want.

There’s no sugarcoating: The A02s has a terrible camera. Of the three on the back, there’s one in particular that does something important as the 13MP f/2.2 primary camera, though that narrow aperture lacks light gathering ability. The other two cameras are 2-megapixel “depth” and macro models for portrait effects and ultra-resolution photos. Neither is particularly useful, but it increases the numerical count on the spec sheet or in stores, which I assume was Samsung’s goal.

The biggest issue you’ll have with the A02s outside of its generally poor photo performance is the fact that the phone indicates that photos were taken in many cases long before the photos were actually taken. About 2/3 of the low-light photos I took for our review were completely ruined by this. Furthermore, autofocus can be hit and miss. Although I thought it was a bug at first, since I didn’t enable it myself, the extra shutter button is actually a feature: you can put it anywhere you want. However, I haven’t enabled it myself, so either it turns on or the general delay makes it unlikely that it turns on.

Leave: A02s said the photo was taken. It wasn’t. right: and likes to grab focus badly. less: The soft and loud pleasures of a macro camera are for specs only.

This is an objectively bad camera, but at $110, that’s to be expected.

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Should you buy it? Rating 7.5/10

Samsung Galaxy A02s

The Galaxy A02s doesn’t compete with flagship devices or even mid-range devices. It’s slow enough that some of the program’s basic features become unusable without a great deal of patience. But it all works, and at $110, you can count on Samsung to assess your security and keep the phone safe for next use. Four years. It may be slow, but it is reliable. Overall, I’m very surprised at what you can get today for such a low price.

Admittedly, for just $60 more, you can get the $170 Moto G Play, which I also like. The Moto is much faster – the new Snapdragon 460 flies favorably compared to the somewhat crumbling Snapdragon 450 in the A02s. Additionally, the Moto has a fingerprint sensor, among other features. The A02s is, by all hardware metrics, a worse smartphone, but Moto’s commitment to the software of most of its phones is basically a joke in 2021; He gives up on them so quickly.

Comparing its spec sheet to almost everything released in 2021, the Galaxy A02s is probably one of the worst new smartphones you can buy in terms of hardware, but it’s also among the cheapest and longest-lasting, and in some ways it outperforms models that cost two or more. Three times that. However, it’s a very clear compromise, and you should always take into account what is most valuable in a phone. For $110, this is sailing on the edge of minimum validity, but if money is tight and you’re not going to be frustrated by poor performance or the lack of a fingerprint sensor, this phone will keep you connected and secure for the next four years — few phones can make a claim Like this.

Buy it if…

• You’re on a very tight budget and need a new, cheap phone
• The phone should last a long time, and will get four years of updates
• Battery life is a priority but performance really isn’t.

Don’t buy it if…

• You need a faster phone or a more useful camera.
• You can spend more – just a few Hamiltons will get you a better phone.
• You’re also concerned about how it will perform in that fourth year of updates.

Where to buy

• Samsung
• Verizon
• United States Cellular