Samsung Galaxy A22 5G Review – Future ready 5G came with few downgrades

Samsung Galaxy A22 5G is now officially available in India and for those who might be confused, the Galaxy A22 (4G) is a different model. Packed with a 48MP triple rear camera, an entry-level 5G chipset, a colossal battery, and OneUI 3.1 out-of-the-box, Galaxy A22 5G is competing against the likes of Poco M3 Pro 5G, Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G, Realme 8 5G, and Realme Narzo 30A among others.

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The question is, what makes Galaxy A22 5G stand out from its rivals? I have written a hands-on review on Samsung Galaxy A22 5G after using the device for more than 2 weeks and I have noted down all the pros and cons listed below.

The Samsung Galaxy A22 5G is a lower 4GB RAM variant, it isn’t available in India at least not at the time of writing this. The Galaxy A22 5G with 6G+128GB configuration is priced in India at Rs 20,799/- on Amazon India without offer while the offer discounts the price to just Rs 19,999/-. The highest trim with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage is available at Rs 23,990/-. There’s an exchange offer providing a  discount of up to Rs 13,700/- on eligible smartphone exchanges. There are a whole variety of offers and discounts available at your disposal during check out.

Before we talk in detail about the Realme C12 let’s see what the on-paper specs look like?

• Display: 16.72 centimeters (6.6-inch) TFT – Infinity V-cut FHD+ display, 90Hz refresh rate
• Processor: Mediatek Dimensity 700
• Storage: 6GB/8GB, 128GB
• Software: OneUI 3.1 based on Android 11
• Rear cameras: 48MP+5MP+2MP
• Front camera: 8MP
• Battery: 5000 mAh
• Weight: 203g
• Dimensions:  16.7 x 7.6 x 0.9 cm

When it comes to Samsung Galaxy A22 5G design, it hasn’t deviated from the A22 4G as much. It still carries a squaricle camera setup at the back which is both small and symmetrical and doesn’t stick out too much from the back panel. Samsung is using plastic for the frame and the back as usual given its budget-friendly price tag.

The back is matte and looks shiny, however, it is a fingerprint magnet and won’t leave you without wiping the back panel repeatedly unless you aren’t using a phone case. The phone lies at 9mm in thickness and since the sides are curved, it is grippy although its huge structure means there’s no way you will be able to read all the corners with your thumbs unless you have big hands.

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On the front, you have a giant display with a slightly inward-facing teardrop-shaped notch. Samsung calls it Infinity-V. It doesn’t necessarily dig too much into the screen although many OEMs have moved to newer punch-hole cut-outs but that’s something you’ll have to account for.

Samsung hasn’t mentioned what protection of glass it is using for the front. The A22 4G used a Corning Gorilla Glass 5 but there’s no mention of the one used for this 5G variant.

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Samsung Galaxy A22 5G has a rich set of controls around all four of its sides. The bottom is busy with a USB-C 2.0 port at the centre along with a bottom-firing loudspeaker, a primary mic, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the right, you get a well-laid out volume rocker and a recessed power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner. There’s a SIM tray on the left and finally, a noise-cancelling microphone is on the tap and there you have it all.

Samsung Galaxy A22 5G is paired with a 6.6-inch TFT FHD+ 90Hz display with 1080 by 2400 pixels resolution and a 399 PPI density. It has a 20:9 aspect ratio and has a waterdrop-shaped notch on top.

The display lights up at 385 nits of max brightness on manual mode which is about the same as Xiaomi Redmi Note 10. It won’t make your screen viewing experience extraordinary when viewing it in bright daylight, however, it is decently lit. Even the Samsung Galaxy A52 has the same level of brightness and so are many other A-series devices on manual max mode.

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The display has both 60Hz and 90Hz modes and both the modes are pretty better when compared to Galaxy A32 5G fixing the slow pixel response times on the latter. The colours on the display aren’t that accurate since the blues and greens are misaligned, saturated, and overall, the colours are colder and bluish.

The device doesn’t support HDR10, HDR Dolby, HDR HLG among others. However, the devices support L1 certification so viewing FHD content on Netflix and other OTT platforms is bliss.

The device tends to have a straightforward method of high refresh rate handling. It doesn’t use an automatic refresh rate logic under the hood so once you set everything to 60Hz which is standard, everything is locked on it. When you set it up at 60Hz, everything except Google Maps UI, camera, and video playback is locked to 60Hz while other operations such as scrolling, browser, texting, and even gaming can reach up to 60Hz.

Also Read: AMOLED vs OLED, which is better and why?

Overall, the display isn’t that bad. Even though it is not a Super AMOLED panel and does not have an upper hand when compared to LCD panels irrespective of its price segment.

Samsung Galaxy A22 5G is powered by an entry-level 5G chipset from MediaTek. The Dimensity 700 5G SoC has a max frequency of 2.2GHz and has a dual-cluster arrangement. The GPU is a Mali-G57 MC2 and comes with 4/6/8GB RAM And 64/128GB of storage onboard.

Samsung has always used more MediaTek and Exynos chipsets than its more powerful Qualcomm counterparts. No doubt even flagship devices aren’t secured from these alterations since only US variants get Qualcomm chipsets while the rest get Exynos chipsets

Also Read: Redmi Note 10 Pro Review – Most Promising Smartphone Under 20000

When it comes to Samsung Galaxy A22 5G performance, the device used Dimensity 700 SoC which is a powerful entry-level chipset and in-line with Dimensity 720 SoC as well. When compared to GeekBench 5, Realme 8 5G gets a higher score than Galaxy A22 5G even with the same processor. Overall, the chipset falls in line with SD732G. It is on AnTuTU where the performance takes a hit when compared to other smartphones such as Realme 8 5G where the difference was in the magnitude of 75K points.

Dimensity 700 SoC isn’t a graphics powerhouse. It can withstand lightweight games and casual ones but it cannot handle high-graphics games for a longer duration. Set it to Medium graphics and you will be able to play well but expect lags and stutter here and there.

Compare: Samsung Galaxy F22 vs Samsung Galaxy M32 vs Samsung Galaxy A32

Day-to-day tasks such as texting, calling, browsing, and so on aren’t that of a burden on the device. I wouldn’t say it handles it all without any hiccup, it does but it is still underwhelming compared to its Qualcomm counterpart.

The OneUI 3.1 rules on the Galaxy devices these days. Based on Android 11 out-of-the-box, OneUI 3.1 is a lightweight interface with an impeccable one-handed mode that was later adopted by OnePlus’ OxygenOS 11 as well. The Android 11-powered OneUI 3.1 brings a tonne of features including Smart Pop-up View,  Bubbles, Notification History, refined multimedia controls, among others. Galaxy A22 5G offers two years of Android OS upgrades so that counts both Android 12 and Android 13 at the least. Some features seen on expensive A-series of devices have gone including Bixby, AOD, Edge Panels, Game Launcher, and others due to one or another reason

There’s not much difference between Galaxy A22 and A22 5G appearance-wise. It has a triple-camera setup clad in a square camera bump. There’s a 48MP primary snapper with PDAF and f/1.8 aperture while the secondary snapper is an ultrawide 5MP shooter with f/2.2, 115-degree field of view, and a 2MP depth module with f/2.4. You also have an 8MP wide-angle snapper mounted in the front with an f/2.0 aperture.

The 48MP primary snapper uses a binned mode to capture 12MP with exceptional quality retention. Details are ample, sharpness is well-put, and overall, the photo quality is solid. The colours are vivid and with a natural depth of field just like the front camera. There’s a full 48MP camera mode as well that captures larger images in size although binned shots are sharper.

Check Out: Samsung Galaxy A22 Full Review in India

Low-light photography on Samsung Galaxy A22 5G produces outcomes that are better in detail than many of the budget-friendly devices out there. In fact, I compared shots on Galaxy A22 5G and the OnePlus Nord 2 5G and found out the former is better in many ways. The shots have less distortion, background details are higher, and so on.

The 5MP ultrawide snapper has a field of view of 115-degrees. It lets you take shots that have a larger field of view and it does its job pretty effectively. It takes brilliant shots but you need to understand that it is an even smaller 5MP sensor than the usual 8MP snapper mounted on many of its rivals. I did see some noise in the background albeit it was minor and acceptable.

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Its low-light photography mode products shoot better than Nord N200 5G as well. The shots had more colour accuracy and less blur and had some loss of fine details.

The depth sensor at the back works cooperatively with the primary sensor that eases on portrait mode. The subject detection and separation on Galaxy A22 5G is on-point and does a good job with it. The autofocus in the portrait mode is a bit iffy at times but pretty much does its job well in two or three takes at times.

The selfie camera on the Galaxy A22 5G is equally well-equipped and shoots excellent shots in the daytime. It does capture quality shots in most lighting conditions but extreme low-light photography. The shots are vivid, crisp, and have a natural depth of field. There were no muted or flat colours on the test shots and overall, the photos were of good quality compared to its rivals.

Samsung Galaxy A22 5G sports a decent 5,000 mAh battery and as per our tests, it lasts approx 16:52 hours on a web browsing test at 90Hz while the video playback saw a score of 15:49 hours on a single test in 60Hz mode as default. In simple words, the battery has enough potential to last a day on heavy usage while moderate to light usage would let you keep the phone afloat for two days estimated.

Tagged along with it is a 15W fast charging speed which is adaptive and takes approximately 2:25 hours to juice up the battery to its full extent. It isn’t the fast among the competitors but it is certainly something since the most you get on Galaxies is a 25W even on flagship phones. There’s no reverse and wireless charging on-board.

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To compare, Realme 8 5G takes about 2:20 hours and Poco M3 Pro 5G takes about 2:00 hours to charge 100% and both these devices have a 5,000 mAh plus Dimensity 700 SoC combo.

Samsung Galaxy A22 5G packs in a single bottom-firing loudspeaker similar to the hoard of other non-flagship Galaxy devices. The speaker is loud and offers clarity although it received a rating of “Average“ in our loudness test. To put things into perspective, the Galaxy A22 scores the same. The 5G variant does push a bit louder sound and makes use of the hollow space inside the body to good use. You have access to Dolby Atmos for headphones on Galaxy A22 5G.

The Galaxy A22 5G comes strapped with Bluetooth v5.0 covering both LE and A2DP codecs. There’s dual-band Wi-Fi ac on-board along with GPS, Radio, and a side-mounted fingerprint scanner.

Samsung Galaxy A22 5G is a 5G phone (and thus A22 5G). It operates on 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 20, 28, 38, 40, 41, 78, 79 SA/NSA/Sub-6GHz bands. However, 5G is yet unavailable in India which means we will still have to wait months (or years) to get our hands on 5G commercially. On the other hand, the device supports LTE-A so there’s no carrier aggregation but LTE-A is still lovely to use.

Check Out: What is Carrier Aggregation? Why is it so important?

Network reception wasn’t a problem even if you decide to test it in the basement. The device tends to allow calls and browsing and more even with low network strength although the data speeds will be accordingly. Call drops were fewer on Jio 4G and audio quality over calls was optimum. I didn’t notice any surprising elements with the cellular network capability of the device though there are no flaws either.

For security, you get a pretty snappy side-mounted fingerprint scanner. It takes just a tap to unlock the phone and its placement is convenient enough to bring your phone to life with a tap on the scanner. Of course, you have a face unlock but it uses a 2D-based solution which isn’t that bad but it is less secure than an optical fingerprint scanner. You can use both solutions at your convenience.

Pros 

• MediaTek Dimensity 700
• 5000 mAh battery
• 11 Bands Superfast 5G connectivity
• Clean UI experience with OneUI 3.1

Cons 

• Average cameras
• Slow charging speed