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The best intermediate device?

We tested the Samsung A72

The A72 is not much different from its predecessors and it even retains many of the positive features that characterized the series.

However, it shows a lot of small upgrades, which on the surface were supposed to launch it to the top of the list of recommendations.

A Lego colleague deafened on the A72 and returned with insights and conclusions

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Lego Fellow

Sunday, 23 May 2021, 11:24 Updated: 12:54

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The best intermediate device?

We tested the Samsung A72 (Photo: PR)

"Good smartphones are getting cheaper, and cheap smartphones are getting better," Marquez Brownley, one of the best-known YouTubers in the tech world, said in one of his videos.

This is a phrase that, perhaps, best characterizes the mobile world today.

With the entry of Chinese manufacturers like Shiomi into the global and Israeli market in particular, the cards were shattered and the old companies were forced to respond to the new demands from consumers.

Samsung is talking about the J and A series, the latter of which competes mainly with the high-end mid-range devices.

The A72 is not much different from its predecessors in this aspect and it even retains many of the positive features that characterized the series.

However, it shows a lot of small upgrades, which on the surface were supposed to launch it to the top of the list of recommendations.

Yes, we are supposed to.

While the A72 is a great device, its price tag has often made me wonder if Samsung could have put a little more effort to stand out from the competition.

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This is how you design a smartphone

Aside from the screen, which we’ll talk about later, the design of the A72 is one of the most notable upgrades made from its predecessors.

I did not like the design of the A71 and A70.

In my opinion, they felt more like an attempt to imitate a flagship device that was not "cooked" enough and less like devices at almost 2,000 shekels.

This time, however, Samsung has chosen to go for a more elegant and minimal line, and the result, in my opinion, is several times better than all the previous ones in the series.

There is something in the minimal design that is simply eye-catching.

A design that does not try too hard to be something it is not.

The black curves;

The symmetry and design of the camera protrusion;

The gray frame;

They are all elements that remind me a lot of the design of its big brother, the Galaxy S21, but with a kind of humility.

In other words, there is no gimmick or reflection of light to create colors.

This is a thing of the past, and I am very happy with this decision.

Some people will call it banal, and just for them Samsung offers the device in purple, white and blue colors.

"They are all elements that remind me very much of the design of its big brother, the Galaxy S21" (Photo: PR)

Also, the A72, like its predecessors, offers a back and frame made of plastic.

For the avoidance of doubt, you can feel the materials as soon as you touch the back of the device, but that will not mislead you for a moment.

The Korean company has done a great job of connecting the frame to the back of the device, and along with the weight gain from its predecessor to 203 grams, it feels great in the hand.

For a moment I did not feel that this is a cheap intermediate device, but one that justifies its status in the price category - prestigious, massive and impressive.

The best screen in the category

It's no secret that Samsung's screens are the best in the world of Android devices. Every review I’ve ever written about one of their flagship devices has earned them a praise-filled paragraph on the subject, and it really isn’t going to be any different here. With a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED panel and 2400x1080 resolution, the A72's screen looks like it was taken from one of the flagship devices, almost. It's bigger, more colorful, brighter with the ability to reach a brightness level of 800 nits and now also smoother and faster. Yes, like its big brother, it comes with a screen with a refresh rate of 90 Hz, more than enough for the price category in which it is located.

Like many of its competitors, it features a minor flaw at the top and center to house the front camera, and in my experience, over time learn to ignore it.

This is a significant improvement over the A71, and such an unequivocal blessing, as I really enjoyed watching content like Netflix in the weeks I used it.

The colors were saturated and the sharpness was undoubtedly impressive, so I can honestly say that it is the best screen I have seen in this price category area.

Well done Samsung.

"The best screen I've seen in the area of ​​this price category" (Photo: PR)

Not the leading "performer" in the arena

Let's get this out of the way right now. The A72 costs NIS 1,799. A fairly fair price tag, even if a little high, for an intermediate device, and this of course to the extent that it provides good value. Here, unfortunately, the A72 falls short of its competitors. The smartphone comes with the Snapdragon 720G chipset and 6GB of RAM. For comparison, Samsung's A52 comes with identical data for NIS 1,379, a much more reasonable price tag for a laptop with this processor. Competitors like the One Plus Nord and the Foucault F3 offer significantly better processors at a price tag similar to that of the A72. Even the A71, the device that the A72 replaces, comes with the Snapdragon 730. To

me this is an unclear and a bit disappointing choice, especially considering people will want to use it for a few years. What's more, Qualcomm recently announced new processors in the 700 series, which will be integrated into new devices in the coming months, which in addition to everything will make the processor in the A72 obsolete.

However, I will confess and say that the A72 did not feel slow to me at any point throughout my use of it. It's no secret that with a lower processor come lower performance accordingly, but it can certainly be said that the processors in mid-range devices today are not weak by any standards. Samsung's smartphone ran the operating system and all the apps I loaded on it without any hiccups, even when the screen was constantly set at a refresh rate of 90 Hz. True, he did not run all my heaviest games at 90 frames per second, but I also did not really expect him to do it in the first place. A few weeks of use, in my experience, did not really affect the speed. The real question is whether this statement will hold for another two years.

One positive thing about the A71 is that Samsung has now added water and dust protection to the IP67 standard, a standard I am always happy to see on any device.

Also, the upgraded battery now has a capacity of 5,000 mAh and its performance was excellent.

In relatively high use, I was almost always able to get over a day of battery life, sometimes almost two days.

It is without a doubt among the best I have come across on a smartphone.

The fast charge offered here (25 watts) may not be the fastest on the market, but it does the job.

I was able to reach 50 percent after a little over half an hour and 100 percent after about an hour and a quarter.

"Samsung has now added water and dust protection in the IP67 standard, a standard that I am always happy to see in any device" (Photo: PR)

As for the software, there were good things and again there were lesser things. Samsung guarantees users of the device four years of security updates. This is good news that does not come from many manufacturers, and I am happy to see it coming from Samsung, which, as is well known, has quite a bit of influence in the industry. Another device comes with the latest Android version available today, Android 11, right out of the box without the need for a future update. The version here is wrapped in Samsung's user interface, One UI 3.1, which brings with it a host of features and improvements alongside a slightly more modern design than last year's. This is not a very significant change, but one that can be noticed quite easily.

Here you will find an option for the Always-On screen, an option to activate two different WhatsApp accounts at the same time and of course the Bixby voice assistant, which can be turned off relatively easily.

The only significant downside I can say about the software is the amount of redundant apps and advertisements that Samsung has incorporated into it.

You can't finish setting up the device without first going through a screen that recommends you download apps and games, and even when I checked that I wasn't interested, it still downloaded some of them like Wish, a dog puzzle game and a few more.

This is Samsung's way of running commercials on its software, but while other companies tend not to do so with their high-end handsets, I would expect the same from Samsung.

A classic photo array for an intermediate device

The A72 comes with a new and upgraded photo array that includes four lenses: one main 64-megapixel, the other 8-megapixel telephoto with 3x optical zoom and 30x digital, the third 12-megapixel wide-angle and the fourth macro 5-megapixel.

Even before I refer to the quality of photography at all, I want to say to Samsung and the other manufacturers - the photography system should emphasize quality and not quantity.

The macro lens, in my opinion, is almost completely useless unless you intend to shoot things really, really closely.

The rest of the lenses were great and provided excellent photo quality.

The main lens was able to produce excellent images in good lighting conditions, and alongside it, the zoom lens provided excellent sharp and saturated images without losing detail even at 3x optical zoom, in less good lighting conditions, the camera had more difficulty producing good images, often accompanied by noise and underexposure.

In the end, this is a classic and very reasonable photo array for an intermediate device.

Summary

I will try to briefly summarize my thoughts on Samsung's new midrange device: First, the new design is beautiful even being very minimalist, its screen is among the best I have seen in midrange devices and even equivalent to some of the flagship devices on the market today, its battery life is great with almost two days of use before That it is completely emptied, a perfectly reasonable photo array, a promise for software upgrades and protection against water and dust in the IP67 standard. The A72 certainly strikes a chord with all the basic things I would expect from it. On the other hand, its hardware is already outdated and slightly weaker than last year's model and it does not include support for the fifth generation, its software is full of unnecessary apps and games that will probably be deleted, and compared to competitors, it simply does not provide good enough value for NIS 1,799.

So who exactly is this device for?

Apparently for people who are looking for a device for multimedia and watching movies and are not willing to compromise on quality in this sector.

The device will also be great for those looking for a device with a very reasonable photo array and excellent battery life in the price range of the mid-range devices.

Others who are looking for a device that is more ready for the future and has better performance, should take a look at the competition, or at least wait a few months until the next round of mid-range devices arrives.

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