With the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, mid-range, and budget-friendly devices are now getting better and better with different smartphone brands launching lots of affordable devices with quality specs. They’re now becoming the best option for people. The latest to join the list of budget-friendly smartphones is the Samsung Galaxy A21s. This is a device integrated with some of the best camera lenses and massive battery capacity.
The Galaxy A and Galaxy M Series have been a well known mid-range smartphone from Samsung for years now. The launch of Galaxy A21s is not entirely surprising as the company is constantly releasing tons of phones designed to satisfy you and your needs.
The Samsung Galaxy A21s sells for a retail price of ₦77,000 ($201) of which is why it has a mass appeal. The device offers quality quad cameras on the rear, with a notch-less display that gave it a rich-style look. There are lots of competitions at this price range especially from the likes of Oppo, Xiaomi, and Huawei as they all offer similar prices and specs that can be compared to Samsung’s. Can Samsung keep up with these competitions? Read on to see our full review and verdict about the Galaxy A21s.
Samsung Galaxy A21 Key Features
- Display: 6.5-inches IPS LCD
- Resolution: 720 x 1600 pixels
- Processor: Exynos 850 (8nm)
- Front Camera: 13-megapixel
- Rear Camera: 48-megapixel + 8-megapixel + 2-megapixel + 2-megapixel
- RAM: 4GB
- Storage: 128GB
- Battery Capacity: 5000mAh
- OS: Android Android 10, One UI 2.1
Samsung Galaxy A21s: Design
To start with, the Samsung Galaxy A21s has a simple and unobtrusive design that’s present on most mid-range smartphones. The 6.5-inches display is surrounded by thin black bezels. On the top left hand of the screen, there’s a dot-hole notch, housing the selfie camera. The phone comes in simple colors of blue, black, and white which usually reflects to rainbow when lights hit at certain angles.
The rear part of the phone is made up of a plastic panel, and we found a quad-camera bump, which is followed by a fingerprint sensor. The phone is, however, very comfortable for one-hand operation, although you’ll experience some rough edges. Overall, the Galaxy A21s is quite rigid though, and it does creak when in bending motion.
The front panel is similar to most of the flagship devices produced recently, thanks to the notch-less display. The selfie camera is well-positioned at the upper left corner and it doesn’t disrupt your phone’s activities. The phone is lightweight and weighs just 192g which is normal for a mid-range smartphone.
The Samsung Galaxy A21s features the latest USB-C port which works at only USB 2.0 speeds. This makes data transfer from PC or other gadgets through USB cord take a longer time. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack that’s accompanied by single speaker grills. As norm with modern devices, the A21s comes with the power button and volume rockers which are well positioned on the right edge. On the other side is the dual SIM tray accompanied by an SDcard tray.
Samsung Galaxy A21s: Display
The Galaxy A21s display is colorful, vibrant, and bright although the colors are sometimes blue-ish and the viewing angles are nothing compared to what we expected. The 1600×720 pixels resolution is quite poor for a 6.5-inches screen as other mid-range smartphones from Tecno, Xiaomi, or Oppo have better resolutions on their mid-range phones.
Samsung Galaxy A21s: Camera Review
The Samsung Galaxy A21s unsurprisingly comes with a rear quad camera set-up which includes a 48-MP primary lens, an 8-MP ultra-wide lens, 2-MP depth sensor, and 2-MP macro camera although the latter performs below average while the main shooter is the one that impresses us most.
Photos taken in good lighting conditions are very great with the presence of Samsung’s usual image processor which is incomparable. Photos taken with the 48-MP shooter are always blurry and the color reproduction is always great. The only setback is on low light conditions which the quad cameras performs poorly at. The phone just like other mid-range smartphones can record 1080p videos @30fps, and the video qualities are decent enough for this price tag.
The Samsung A21s is equipped with a 13-MP selfie camera, conjoined with Samsung’s beauty effect which helps to deliver stunning photo qualities. Photos taken under normal lighting are colorful, well detailed, and sharp while you’ll find it perform differently under low light conditions.
Samsung Galaxy A21s: Hardware Performance and Software
This is where the A21s performs below average. The phone ships in Samsung’s recently released Exynos 850 processor which runs at speed of 2GHz. However, the processor works well to trounce the Helio P22 that is usually found on Tecno and Infinix smartphones, but when compared to their closest mid-range competitors like Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo, the Galaxy A21s doesn’t do well as other phone brands offer faster processors.
On the other side, the GPU is not particularly bad like the processor. The Mali-G52 GPU offers a limited level of performance with support for modern APIs which assists the processor in delivering faster game performance.
The Samsung Galaxy A21s comes in six storage options. You can choose to buy between the 2GB/3GB RAM + 32GB variant, 4GB/6GB RAM + 64GB, or 4GB/6GB + 128GB models all depending on your budget and what you want to use the phone on as the bigger storage models will perform faster than the lower once.
Gamings and running RAM-hungry apps are not particularly fun especially when it comes to high-end games like the racing Asphalt 9 or PUBG. They use to take time to load on the initial launch and that doesn’t stop there as they’ll also slow down while on action.
The Samsung Galaxy A21s runs on the latest Android 10 on top of Samsung’s One UI 2.0 user interface. The software is pretty much okay and you’ll find it more fun because of the customizable panel it offers.
Samsung Galaxy A21s: Battery Capacity
The Samsung Galaxy A21s comes with an enormous 5000mAh battery capacity which gives you up to 15h of browsing time using a Wi-Fi connection. In normal day-to-day use, the smartphone was able to last up to 72h on full charge. Unfortunately, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9s were able to get more battery life with the same battery capacity. The A21s also comes with a 15w fast charger which takes not more than 2h to fully charge the device.
Samsung Galaxy A21s: Price and Availability
Like we earlier mentioned, the Galaxy A21s is one of the mid-range smartphones from Samsung, and its selling point is the camera, modern design, and large battery capacity. The phone was launched in May 2020, and its price tag has sloped down a bit. You can now buy the A21s for ₦77,000 ($201) at any mobile store in Nigeria.
Samsung Galaxy A21s Full Specifications
General
- Brand: Samsung
- Model: Galaxy A21s
- Release Date: May 15, 2020
- Operating System: Android 10, One UI 2.0
- Weight: 192g
- Colors: Blue, Black, White
Display
- Touchscreen: YES
- Type: PLC TFT
- Screen Size: 6.5-inches
- Screen Resolution: 720 x 1600 pixels
- Dimensions: 163.7 x 75.3 x 8.9 mm
- FaceLock: YES
- In-display fingerprint scanner: NO
- Fingerprint sensor: YES (Rear-mounted)
Processor
- CPU: Octa-core (4×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 & 4×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55)
- Chipset: Exynos 850 (8nm)
- GPU: Mali G52
- RAM: 2GB/3GB/4GB/6GB
- Inbuilt Storage: 32GB/64GB/128GB
- SD Card slot: YES
Camera
- Rear Flash: LED Flashlight
- Rear Camera: 48-MP + 8-MP + 2-MP + 2-MP
- Front Camera: 13-MP
- Front Flash: —
Connectivity
- Wi-Fi: YES
- Bluetooth: 5.0
- USB: MicroUSB 2.0
- GPS: YES
- WLAN: YES
Number of Sims: Two (2)
Sim 1
- SIM Type: Nano-SIM
- 3G Support: Yes
- 4G/ LTE Support: Yes
- 5G Support: NO
Sim 2
- SIM Type: Nano-SIM
- 3G Support: Yes
- 4G/ LTE Support: Yes
- 5G Support: NO
Battery
- Capacity: Non-removable 5000mAh battery
- Fast Charge: 15w
Price
- Price in Nigeria: ₦77,000
- Price in Dollar: $201
