Samsung Galaxy A53 5G review: A well-rounded mid-range competitor

Samsung is tip-toeing with Xiaomi for the lion's share of the Indian smartphone market. Having faced with stiff competition from Chinese giants, Samsung has levelled up and its wide range of offering says it all. Priced more competitively and configured to match its rivals, Samsung is demonstrating its A-game. The Galaxy A53 5G is one example of it.

Samsung Galaxy A53 5G comes in two variants, with 6GB and 8GB RAM, now priced at Rs 31,499 and Rs 32,999, respectively. Both models get 128GB storage as standard. But there are four colours, Awesome Blue, Awesome Black, Awesome Peach and Awesome White. The blue and peach shades are truly refreshing, whereas the black and white hues are for those who want a sober touch.

Does it have what it takes to take on the sub-Rs 40K rivals in India? Let's find out.

Design and display

Samsung Galaxy A53 5G is a well-built, good-looking smartphone that is bound to leave you impressed. Keeping in line with Samsung's signature design, the A53 5G hasn't fallen too far from the tree. Measuring just 8.1mm and weighing 189 grams, the A53 feels quite comfortable for daily tasks.

The rear panel has a matte polycarbonate panel, which feels premium and looks great too. It addresses the challenge of fingerprint smudges. But it's the camera array that grabs eyeballs. The A53 takes inspiration from the flagship Galaxy S22 Ultra for the way the camera sensors are arranged individually. The camera module slightly protrudes and it is more like the part of the back panel.

The physical buttons, both power and volume, are on the right side, and the speaker, USB Type-C port and SIM card tray are all at the bottom. The frame is also polycarbonate, but has a shiny finish with its colour complementing the phone's hue.

The A53 5G features a large 6.5-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED display, which is same as the one found on the A52s. There's Gorilla Glass 5 for protection and the bezels are extremely slim with the top and bottom chin noticeably thicker. The lower part of the display houses fingerprint sensor and the earpiece is concealed between the top frame and display. To top it all off, the phone also has IP67 certification for dust and water resistance.

We've been using the phone for multimedia consumption, gaming among other daily tasks and the display is undoubtedly suitable for everything. It's got 120Hz refresh rate, which makes animations extremely smooth. The colours are vibrant and the display is extremely bright, perfect for outdoor use even on a sunny day. Amplifying that multimedia experience, the phone gets treated with stereos, which deliver loud and clear audio output.

Camera

Samsung Galaxy A53 5G has four camera sensors on the back - 64-megapixel primary, 12-megapixel ultra-wide, 5-megapixel macro, and 5-megapixel depth cameras. The front cutout camera has a 32MP sensor. For the price, the camera setup is good. Let's see how it performs in the real world.

The camera on the smartphone is well-equipped and one of the USPs. Under natural lighting, the A53 captures good details and dynamic range. The colours are slightly on the saturated side, but appealing to the eye. Shifting to low-light settings, the camera in Auto mode didn't disappoint. Although details were slightly smudged, the colour reproduction was decent, and so was dynamic range. There's Night mode to help you capture bright photos in low light. The selfies suffered more dramatically in low light, whereas under natural lighting self portraits were good.

Switching to ultra-wide mode allowed us to capture dramatic results. In daylight, the results are better as compared to low-light. The details are amiss around the edges, but the overall image won't give it away unless zoomed in to that area.

There are many other modes worth trying in the A53. Fun mode, for instance, offers Snapchat filters right in the phone. The facial recognition for those filters works well.

The macro mode is particularly good as it captured great amount of details. The portrait mode also adds good depth effect and the outlining of the subject in the foreground is much refined. Check out a few camera samples below:

Performance and software

Samsung Galaxy A53 5G is powered by Exynos 1280, an oct-core chipset. But the decision to ditch Qualcomm for this model seems disappointing, given how it fairs against rivals in the benchmark tests. However, in real-world usage, the smartphone seemed to handle its tasks well.

As for gaming, the GPU settings go as high as Medium in games like CoD: Mobile. Extended gaming sessions would mean dropped frames and a few lags. This could be resolved by adjusting the frame rate settings to medium.

The 120Hz refresh executed super-smooth animations, but 60Hz would kick in while playing games. That coupled with the goodness of Super AMOLED display, it's a device best suited for multimedia buffs. The phone didn't heat or warm up during extended use. We did notice some lags while running multiple apps in the background. The option to extend RAM using RAM Plus feature can be considered in this case. The overall performance is satisfactory at most times, but the occasional lags would keep the phone from achieving perfection.

There's noticeable amount of bloatware in the phone, but the fact that most of them can be uninstalled is a relief. The phone runs Android 12 based OneUI 4.1 out of the box, but what's greater is Samsung's promise of four years of Android updates. Samsung's Material UI, Google's updated privacy controls makes the phone's software game strong.

Samsung Galaxy A53 comes with several 5G bands, too, which may be irrelevant now, but adds a layer of future-ready. The fingerprint sensor works efficiently, without any errors as expected.

Battery life and charging

Samsung Galaxy A53 5G has a sizeable 5,000mAh battery, which doesn't feel like when holding the phone. The phone can last an impressive full day with heavy usage and go as long as two days with moderate use. Dropping battery bars wasn't a concern during our usage.

While the phone supports 25W charging, there's no adapter in the box. You only get a Type-C to Type-C cable, so when you go shopping for the adapter, make sure you check the port on the adapter. As for charge time, a fully-drained phone gets fully charged in two hours. By today's standards, it is sluggish.

Verdict

Samsung Galaxy A53 goes head-to-head with the likes of iPhone SE and plenty other Android phones in the budget of around Rs 30,000. Performance is one area where Apple's budget iPhone excels and the other is that it offers great software and wireless charging. On other fronts, Samsung Galaxy A53 comes out shining.

Samsung Galaxy A53's design is stylish, camera is excellent and the display is the best you can get in this price range. Samsung's strong software support puts the phone ahead of other Android rivals, which may outperform in some segments, but lag behind Samsung on the software front.