The Samsung A50's price point makes it the true "mid-range" phone of Samsung's 2019 Galaxy A phones, but it steps above the capabilities of the Galaxy A20 and Galaxy A30 in some very specific ways, with an improved camera array the most obvious feature. It's also the only Galaxy A phone you can score right now on a contract, with Optus providing it if you prefer to get your smartphones that way.
Put the Galaxy A20, Galaxy A30 and Galaxy A50 side by side and you might not easily spot the difference. All 3 phones feature 6.4-inch AMOLED displays. This means you get a large screen, which is unusual for this kind of price point, as well as one using AMOLED for a brighter colour display.
In the case of the Galaxy A50, it's a 1080 x 2340 pixel display, which is quite sharp for this kind of money.
Like its cheaper siblings, there's a "teardrop" style notch, which stands out compared to the "infinity O" holepunch notch you find in the Galaxy S10 family. Samsung refers to this as the "Infinity U" display, and it's reasonably inconspicuous against the entire display.
The Galaxy A50 is one of the lowest-cost handsets we've seen locally to incorporate an in-display fingerprint reader. Samsung doesn't qualify it as an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, as you'd find in the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+ and Galaxy S10 5G, so don't expect super-fast unlocking. Still, it's neat technology to have, and it means you never need to fuss with smudging the rear lenses while you hunt for the fingerprint sensor.
Grab just about any budget or mid-range camera that boasts of having more than one rear lens, and it's all but assured that the secondary lens is a focusing lens only. You can't use it for its own shots, and it only fires up in portrait modes.
The Samsung Galaxy A50 does have that kind of lens, with the 5MP sensor used that way, but it's also joined by a primary 25MP lens and an 8MP wide-angle lens. At the front, selfies are handled by a 25MP sensor.
It's a triple threat of a sort, and one that should give you an overall better experience when playing around with smartphone photography. The wide-angle lens features the same 123-degree field of vision as the wide-angle lenses found on Samsung's higher-end Galaxy S10 family, although you shouldn't expect it to work quite as well as those higher-end models.
On the software front, Samsung promises that the "flaw detection" feature in its camera can analyse your shots and suggest corrections – whether it's somebody blinking at the wrong time or an awkward lighting situation that could be fixed by switching to a different position or lens selection.
Where it's used Qualcomm chips frequently for its mid-range phones, in 2019, Samsung's backing itself with an array of phones using its own Exynos silicon instead. For the Galaxy A50, that's an Exynos 9610 processor, matched up with 4GB of RAM. While that's not going to threaten the Galaxy S10 5G's position at the head of the Samsung family table, it should provide quite decent performance.
That's especially true because the Galaxy A50 ships with Google Android 9 on board, supplemented with Samsung's excellent and easy to use "One UI" launcher.
The Galaxy A50 ships with 64GB of storage on board, which is just about typical for a phone in this price range. Only 49GB of that storage is available for your own content – Android has to fit in there somewhere – but you can boost it up to 512GB with microSD storage.
We're seeing a very welcome increase in battery capacities of late for more affordable handsets, and the Galaxy A50 is no exception. It packs in a 4,000mAh battery, which, based on its core specifications should be enough for all-day battery life in all but the most taxing of situations.
Samsung has done an excellent job of differentiating out its Galaxy A series phones in 2019. The Galaxy A50 isn't quite as flashy as the Galaxy A70, but the price difference makes that quite acceptable. If you want more camera features than the dual-lens Galaxy A30, it's got a lot of potential. Stay tuned for our full review.
Images: Samsung Website
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