Samsung Galaxy A71 review
What is it?
Samsung’s Snapdragon SoC powered upper mid-range smartphone.
Design & Construction
- The A71 undoubtedly looks very cool in this blue shade and the reflective prism design only makes everything better.
- The build is ‘Glasstic’, which is basically plastic. So, while the phone while it may not be very premium, but it feels quite sturdy nonetheless. The in-hand feel is pretty good as well thanks to the slim profile.
Display
- The Samsung A71 features a fantastic 6.7-inch AMOLED display with bright colours and great outlook legibility.
- The centrally-mounted Infinity-O hole-punch is a bit too large for my liking. The amount of screen space it takes isn’t much less from a traditional U-shaped notch.
- The display’s refresh rate is only 60 Hz, but that’s not surprising since Samsung is usually the last one to bring premium features to its mid-range phones.
User Interface & Performance
- The Galaxy A71 is also one of the few Samsung phones on sale in India to have a Snapdragon processor, as most of the brand’s phones feature home-brewed Exynos chips.
- The Snapdragon 730 on this phone is quite a good midrange chip and it shows. The overall performance is decently smooth as well and 8GB of RAM ensures good multitasking.
- You can occasionally play heavy games on the Samsung A71, but the Snapdragon 730 is not designed for commanding games, so you’d be better off playing casual games instead.
- On the software front, you have android 10 with One UI 2.0. The UI is pretty familiar for anyone who has used a Samsung phone in the past. A disappointing aspect is that the A71 did come with a lot of pre-installed bloatware, though.
Cameras
- You get a quad-rear camera setup here. The 64MP main camera produces generally good photos with great dynamic range and punchy colours. The 12MP ultra-wide camera also gives usable results, even though the images are softer and a bit distorted around the edges.
- However, the performance of both these sensors does dip in low light. There is a night mode on-board, but low lights pics and always noisy and quite underwhelming in general, both from main and ultra-wide cameras.
- Both the main and ultra-wide cameras also take good videos in daylight impressive dynamic range and good electronic stabilization. But, turning on Samsung’s much-hyped Super Steady mode just amps up the saturation levels abnormally.
- The third 5MP macro camera on the A71 can take interesting phots, but the problem is that there’s no autofocus here, so unless you keep your hands really stable, you’d end up with a blurred photo.
- The fourth camera is a 2MP depth sensor, and if you take a lot of portrait mode pics, then you’d be happy with its performance.
- The hole-punch up front houses a 32MP selfie camera and given enough light, it does a pretty good job as well.
Battery Life
- This is an impressive aspect of the Galaxy A71. The 4,500mAh cell on this phone can easily give you between 6-7 hours of screen on time depending upon your usage.
- The phone also comes bundled with a 25W fast charger which delivers power via a USB-C to USB-C cable. It takes you from 0-50 per cent in 30 minutes.
What Else?
- The optical in-display fingerprint scanner on the A71, like most Samsung smartphones, is pretty inconsistent.
- You still get a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the Galaxy A71.
Verdict
- Priced at Rs 32,999 (as tested, after the GST hike) for its sole 8GB RAM/ 128GB ROM variant, the A71 is quite an expensive smartphone.
- It is a kind of phone that does not excel in any particular area but is more of an all-rounder. Plus it’s a Samsung, and that holds more brand value than the equivalent Chinese competition.
- However, for a couple of grand extra, you can go for the OnePlus 7T, which is a far better phone. Or, you can save some money and consider either the Realme X2 Pro or even the last year’s Redmi K20 Pro, both of which have superior chipsets than the A71.
- All things considered, while the A71 is a good phone, it’s pricing more or less ensures that only Samsung fans will consider buying it.
Check out our video review of the Galaxy A71
Samsung Galaxy A71
Rs 32,999 (as tested)
7.6
Pros
- Punchy AMOLED display
- Attractive design
- Great battery life with 25W fast charging
Cons
- Expensive
- Low light camera performance
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