Samsung’s Galaxy A31, the company’s first A-series smartphone for the year, was launched a few months ago. However, the smartphone reached the Pakistani smartphone market only recently and comes with a Rs. 42,000 price tag.
The handset is a mid-range device with decent specifications featuring a Mediatek Helio P65 chipset, 6.4″ Super AMOLED display, a quad-sensor rear camera, and a 5000 mAh battery.
We just got our hands on the device and here’s what we think:
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Design and Display
Considering the upper mid-range price tag, the smartphone has a quite a premium look thanks to the glasstic polycarbonate back.
As far as the camera housing is concerned, the smartphone comes with a typical L-shaped quad-camera setup seen in most Galaxy smartphones. The volume rocker and power button are on the right while the noise cancellation mic and the sim slots are located on the top and left side of the smartphone, respectively.
On the front, the Samsung Galaxy A31 comes with a 6.4-inch infinity-U Super AMOLED display with a slightly thicker chin bezel, 1080p resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, 411 PPI pixel density, and 84.9 percent screen-to-body ratio.
Performance
The smartphone is powered by the octa-core Mediatek Helio P65 chipset with Mali-G52 MC2 GPU. The SoC is topped with 4 GB RAM and 128 GB onboard expandable storage.
If you are looking for a phone that can handle simple processing tasks and games like PUBG and Fortnite as well as multimedia playback, the storage specifications are pretty reasonable for the price. Of course, if you push the handset beyond its processing capabilities, the device won’t be able to keep up.
For security, the phone comes with an in-display fingerprint sensor as well as a facial unlock. As far as the optical fingerprint sensor is concerned, it is slower than what most smartphones in the same price bracket offer. Samsung has not been doing so well with optical fingerprint sensors since the beginning, ultra sonic ones like on the S20 Ultra are very good though. Nevertheless, the minute fingerprint sensor lag is eclipsed by the accuracy of both the fingerprint sensor and facial unlock.
Moving on to the battery, as mentioned, the smartphone packs a massive 5000 mAh battery topped with 15W fast charging like most mid-range devices. Samsung Galaxy A31 can easily provide you with 8 hours of screen-on time.
Camera
One of the key features of this smartphone is its camera. It comes with a quad-sensor rear camera with 48 MP + 8 MP + 5 MP + 5 MP configuration. On the front, it features a single sensor 20 MP snapper for selfies.
The main sensor at the back is a 48 MP PDAF sensor that uses sets of dedicated light sensors aimed at different areas of the camera lens to measure exactly how out-of-focus the image is. Hence, the lens can be focused quickly and accurately.
The camera comes with basic functions such as Live Focus mode, Photo, Video, and much more. In daylight, the details and dynamic range of the images will not disappoint, especially the portrait mode and the ultra-wide mode. However, if you want to click images in low-light or at night, the phone will not do a satisfactory job.
