Are affordable 5G Galaxy phones really worth it? It depends on what you want

Samsung’s done a pretty good job at bringing 5G to lower and lower price points ever since it started making 5G phones back in 2019. You can get a 5G Galaxy phone at prices ranging from as low as $300 to as high as $2000, and Samsung is launching these phones even in markets where 5G networks are still yet to go live and, in many cases, won’t do so for at least another couple of years.

Yet, using this Galaxy M42 5G that Samsung sent over to us for review, I’ve begun to wonder: Are Samsung’s affordable 5G phones really worth it?

5G and surprisingly decent processors, but that’s about it

I would say no, as I’ve realized that the compromises you have to deal with to get an affordable 5G phone from Samsung are just too many. I mean, take the Galaxy A32. You get both LTE and 5G variants of the phone, but you would expect the latter to simply add support for fifth-generation cellular networks on top of whatever you get on the LTE variant of the device.

Instead, despite carrying the same name, the A32 and A32 5G are two completely different phones. The A32 LTE gives you exciting features like a 90Hz Full HD+ AMOLED display, an under-display fingerprint sensor, and a 64MP main camera. The 5G variant has a 60Hz HD+ TFT LCD display, a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, and a 48MP main camera. The one benefit on the A32 5G is that the 5G connectivity necessitates a better chipset under the hood, so you get faster performance than that of the LTE variant.

The Galaxy M42 5G, like the A32 5G, offers a considerably powerful processor (the Snapdragon 750G) for a low price, but the rest is just meh. Even the budget-friendly Galaxy M12 has a 90Hz display, but the Galaxy M42 5G doesn’t, because it’s a rebranded duplicate of last year’s Galaxy A42 5G. Thankfully, it does have an AMOLED display, even if the screen resolution is a measly HD+ like the Galaxy A32 5G’s.

Basically, you’re only getting relatively faster performance and 5G support with these phones. The rest is mostly outdated specs that you wouldn’t wish on your enemy in 2021, especially since you can get considerably better overall hardware in the same price range from Samsung and from many other manufacturers (most of them Chinese, naturally).

If faster performance and 5G support are of prime importance to you and nothing else matters, Samsung’s affordable 5G phones are great. For everyone else, it’s better to just wait another year or so for Samsung’s wallet-friendly 5G offerings to mature into devices that don’t make you sacrifice so much of the user experience. This is especially applicable in markets where 5G networks aren’t even going to be a thing anytime soon – buying these devices for future-proofing your daily driver just isn’t worth it at the moment.

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ARM’s powerful new cores for Samsung’s next flagship Exynos chip unveiled

Semiconductor company Arm has announced its new CPU and GPU designs that will power next year’s flagship Samsung Exynos chip. Arm’s core architecture is getting a major upgrade for the first time in a decade – the ARMv8 architecture that’s been seen in pretty much every Android chipset over the last ten years is being replaced by ARMv9, which brings with it more powerful and efficient processor cores.

The Exynos 2100 and Snapdragon 888 chipsets use a big.LITTLE setup that includes a single ultra-high-performance Cortex-X1 core, three high-performance Cortex-A78 cores, and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores, and all of these cores are now being upgraded with new designs. There’s the Cortex-X2, which promises 16% higher performance compared to the X1 and twice as fast machine learning performance. The Cortex-A78, meanwhile, promises 30% higher efficiency and 10% better performance.

For the first time in many years, Arm is introducing new power-efficient cores as well. The Cortex-A510 offers up to 30% better performance over the Cortex-A55 and up to 20% better efficiency. Since many basic tasks on a phone are handled by these low-performance but highly efficient cores, this promises to be the biggest upgrade of all with the ArmV9 architecture.

Coming to a Samsung Exynos chip near you… with an AMD GPU?

According to Arm, these new cores can be used in a similar configuration as before, so we should see one Cortex-X2, three Cortex-A710, and four Cortex-A510 cores in whatever new flagship chipsets Samsung and Qualcomm will come up with next year. Arm has also introduced three new GPUs, with the flagship Mali-G710 promising up to 20% better gaming performance over the Mali-G78 found inside the Galaxy S21’s Exynos variant.

However, the way Samsung has been teasing things this year, the Korean giant could switch to an AMD GPU for its next flagship Exynos chip. Rumors suggest the Samsung and AMD partnership will first bear fruit with a laptop later this year, and while there is no guarantee that Samsung will have an AMD GPU ready for its phones by 2022, it is looking highly likely given how long the two companies seem to have been working together.

Even if the AMD GPU isn’t ready by 2022, we should see faster performance and better efficiency on Samsung’s flagship phones (whichever form they might take), thanks to the new Arm CPU and GPU designs that are bound to be used in Samsung and Qualcomm’s next-generation chips. We’ll learn more by the end of this year when those chips are typically announced.

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Samsung signs contract to build a 5G network for Japan’s OPTAGE

Samsung has won another 5G project in Japan. The company announced today that it has partnered with Japanese telecommunications company and service provider OPTAGE to implement a dedicated private 5G network and a real-time video monitoring system at one of its factories.

Samsung will provide OPTAGE with its industry-leading end-to-end 5G solutions including 5G radios, baseband unit, and Compact Core, the latter of which was designed precisely to support smart factories, R&D complexes, and more.

The private 5G network that Samsung implement at OPTAGE’s facility will livestream 4K Ultra HD videos from multiple sources including security cameras located throughout the factory. Leveraging Samsung’s private 5G network equipment, the video feeds will be transmitted to a remote maintenance system where site inspections can be remotely conducted from a control center.

The system is meant to eliminate the need for a technician to visit certain locations, and it can improve productivity, efficiency, and safety by allowing for the early detection of failures.

Half a year ago, Samsung also entered a partnership with KDDI with the purpose of bringing 5G enterprise solutions to Japan, and two months ago the company announced that it is providing 5G network solutions to one of Japan’s largest network operators, NTT DOCOMO.

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New evidence shows Samsung is preparing the Galaxy M32 for release

New evidence found on Samsung’s India portal suggests that the company is preparing to release the Galaxy M32 soon. Support pages for the Galaxy M32 (SM-M325F) went live on Samsung India’s website, and while they don’t include any technical details, their existence could mean that the device is about to go on sale.

There’s never a clear indication as to when a product’s release will happen once its support pages go live. The timeframe usually varies. The Galaxy Tab S7 FE, for example, was added to Samsung’s German e-shop mere hours after its support pages went live, while other Galaxy devices have remained in limbo for more than a day.

The Galaxy A32 4G might hold the answers

Although Samsung has so far kept the Galaxy M32 in relative secrecy, the bits of evidence that exist indicate that the phone is a rebranded Galaxy A32 4G. Support pages for a 5G-enabled Galaxy M32 alternative don’t exist on Samsung’s website, which could mean that the 4G variant will be the only one.

And that’s actually great news, considering the fact that the Galaxy A32 5G is an inferior device to the 4G model in all respects aside from connectivity. So, if the Galaxy A32 4G is our benchmark, then the Galaxy M32 could be equipped with a 64MP main camera, a 20MP selfie sensor, a 5,000mAh battery, and more importantly, a Super AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate.

Then again, there’s no guarantee that the Galaxy M32 is a carbon copy of the Galaxy A32 4G. Samsung could have combined some of the characteristics of both the Galaxy A32 4G and the Galaxy A32 5G into a single M-branded device.

Samsung will likely shed more light on the matter soon, so stay tuned for the Galaxy M32’s inevitable release.

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Samsung maintained lead and broke TV sales revenue records in Q1

Samsung’s winning streak over the global TV market continued in the first quarter of the year, which is to be expected given that the company has been the world’s top TV manufacturer since 2006. It’s difficult to imagine that one of Samsung’s rivals could turn the tables in a single quarter, so if anyone can breaking any records, it’s going to be Samsung.

Indeed, the company did break its own sales revenue records in the January-March period, topping 32.9% of the global TV market. It’s the highest sales revenue percentage recorded by the company in the first quarter of any given year.

Samsung was followed by its neighbor, LG, who has secured 19.2% of global sales revenues in Q1 2021. Sony won the bronze medal with 8% of the market, according to market research firm Omdia via Business Standard.

Samsung dominated the premium, large TV, and QLED sectors

By the end of Q1, Samsung was able to capture 46.6% of revenues from the premium TV market segment, which is characterized by smart TVs that are priced above $2,500. Once again, Samsung was followed by LG and Sony with 24.5% and 17.6% of global revenues, respectively. Samsung also led the 80-inch-or-larger TV segment with a market share of 52.4%.

The QLED TV segment experienced a hike of 74.3% year-on-year as global sales topped 2.68 million in Q1, and Samsung was by far the biggest player in this segment, having accounted for 2.01 million QLED TVs that were sold in the first quarter.

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Galaxy A7 (2018) update brings support for Google RCS

The Galaxy A7 (2018) is more than two years old at this point, but it is still getting updates that bring more than just new security fixes, probably because it was not just your usual mid-range phone when it launched (it was the first Galaxy phone with three rear cameras). One such update is now rolling out to the Galaxy A7 (2018), and it brings an important feature: Google RCS (Rich Communication Services) support.

For those wondering what RCS is, it’s basically an advanced SMS protocol that puts functionality similar to what you get on instant messaging apps like WhatsApp inside your phone’s default messaging app (which is Samsung Messages in this case, or Google Messages if you bought a Galaxy phone running One UI 3.1). RCS lets you chat with friends over Wi-Fi and mobile data, create group chats, send high-resolution photos and videos, see when the other party is typing or has read your message, and more.

Latest Galaxy A7 (2018) update includes April 2021 security patch

Samsung and Google started working together to bring the latter’s RCS implementation to Galaxy devices since 2018 (which is when the Galaxy A7 came out), but it wasn’t until 2020 that the feature actually started to make its way to customers. Samsung’s Messages app has supported RCS for a long time, and Galaxy A7 (2018) will now be able to use Google’s version of the same, which lets you use RCS messaging even if your carrier doesn’t support it.

In addition to Google RCS support, the latest Galaxy A7 (2018) update (A750FXXU5CUD3) improves the stability of the camera and brings the April 2021 security patch. It is rolling out in India at this time but should make its way to more countries in the near future. You can download it over the air from the phone’s Settings » Software update menu. You can also download the latest firmware from our archive and install it on your phone using a Windows PC.

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Samsung hides Galaxy Tab S7 FE listing, but the cat’s out of the bag

In a surprising move, Samsung quietly made the Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G tablet official yesterday on its German website, or did it? It seemed the “announcement” was a fluke, as the link to the Tab S7 FE listing on the Samsung Germany website now redirects you to a page where you can see all of the company’s actually available tablets.

However, what’s interesting here is that Samsung hasn’t removed the Galaxy Tab S7 FE page. You can see it for a second or two before the redirect takes place, which suggests that the company’s first Fan Edition tablet is on its way to becoming official really soon. Rumors have suggested the Tab S7 FE could launch in June, which is less than a week away at this point.

Galaxy Tab S7 FE is a mid-range tablet through and through

The cat’s out of the bag already, though, as we now know pretty much everything there is to know about the Galaxy Tab S7 FE. It’s a mid-range tablet that takes some of the Galaxy Tab S7 and Galaxy Tab S7+’s features, like a 12.4-inch 2560×1600 LCD display, a 10090 mAh battery with 45W charging, S Pen support, and software features such as DeX mode and preloaded apps like Clip Studio Paint.

The Galaxy Tab S7 FE will be powered by the Snapdragon 750G chipset that is accompanied by at least 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage (yes, the microSD slot hasn’t been chopped off). Imaging duties are handled by an 8MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera, while connectivity features include 5G, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and VHT80 MU-MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0, and GPS.

The Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G will have a price tag of €649 and will come with a range of accessories, including a keyboard cover. We’ll let you know once details on the tablet’s availability for various markets are revealed, which should be sooner rather than later.

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Which is your favorite Samsung app from your Galaxy device, and why?

Samsung has an insane number of apps for doing all sorts of things on Galaxy smartphones and tablets. These apps run the whole gamut. From basic apps like Clock, Calendar, Messages, and Voice Recorder to big ones like Samsung Internet, Health, Email, Music, Good Lock, Pay, and Notes, there’s a lot to choose from.

While not all of them manage to achieve milestones like crossing a billion installs off the Google Play Store or are available to every customer, there’s no denying the fact that almost all of these apps do what they’re supposed to, and do them well. Not every app is great, of course: Samsung Free/Samsung Daily, for example, is best replaced by Google Discover or completely disabled the first chance you get. But most of them offer excellent functionality and features, often to the point that you don’t need to download any third-party apps to do the same stuff.

And if you have been a long-time user of Galaxy smartphones and/or tablets, you probably cannot get through your daily routine without using at least some Samsung apps. You probably also have an app that you like better than the others, and if that’s the case, we want to hear from you: Which Samsung app is your favorite (or favorites, in case you love more than just one), and why do you like it? Take to the comments section to let us know – you can also join our Telegram channel to engage in a discussion with other Samsung fans!

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