Samsung Galaxy A70 Review: Better option than the A50?

Samsung found its mojo with the Galaxy A lineup. As a part of the resurrection of the budget-mid-range market, the new A-series and M series phones really set the mood for Samsung. And after the launch of A20, A30, and A50, Samsung takes aim at the upper mid-range competition with the Samsung Galaxy A70.

A70 is aimed at users that want an above average large display, performance, and fabulous battery life. The Galaxy A70 fulfills these criteria with ease, but is it enough? Let’s find out in this review!

(Price: The Samsung Galaxy A70 price in Nepal is set Rs. 47,990.)

Design

Samsung Galaxy A70 is identical to the Galaxy A50. The design is pretty much the same, the only difference being the size.

The back does look glass but it’s actually an all-plastic smartphone. The ultra-glossy rear looks good with its rainbow-like pattern but it does pick up scratch and scuffs pretty easily.

The volume rocker and power button are both on the right side. And the sim card slot is on the left with a dedicated mico-sd slot. Even though the phone is quite big I do like its ergonomics. It sits in the hand quite comfortably, however, the volume button is not fully reachable due to its height. Also, one-handed usability is a pain on all the phones this big.

Along the bottom edge lies the USB-C port which actually supports a 25W fast charging, a first on any Samsung phone. And, there’s a headphone jack as well.

READ ALSO: OnePlus 7 Pro Review: The Best Android Experience One Can Get!

Like the A50, A70 also include an in-display optical fingerprint scanner. But the performance is not that great. The sensor takes some time to recognize the input and it’s not consistent. The face unlock is a much better solution here. It’s faster and much more consistent.

Display

We all know Samsung’s phones come with a great display. And that is what we get with the Galaxy A70. It comes with a 6.7 inches Full HD+ Super AMOLED display with an aspect ratio of 20:9.

The screen is large, vibrant, and bright enough on outdoors as well. It’s a fantastic device to enjoy multimedia contents. Be it Netflix, YouTube, or any game, the experience is very impressive. Plus it comes with Widvine L1 support as well, so you’ll be able to stream HD contents as well.

However, I do feel like big screens like this do take away some comfortability while playing some games. Every time I played PUBG mobile, I found it a little uncomfortable to use the on-screen buttons. As the display is large and the buttons span more widely, it took me some time to get adjusted to it.

Performance

Samsung Galaxy A70 is one of the phones to be powered by the Snapdragon 675. Plus, it has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.

The Snapdragon 675 is an octa-core processor with two powerful Cortex A76 cores and six efficiency Cortex A55 cores. This chipset is also used on the Redmi Note 7 Pro and Vivo V15 Pro.

I had no issues with the performance of the Samsung Galaxy A70. Samsung has done a really good job with software optimization. Basic tasks such as opening apps, switching between multiple apps, and browsing is a breeze. Plus, transitions and animations are as smooth as they come.

Playing heavy games on the A70 was quite enjoyable as well. PUBG on the A70 runs at the ultra graphics setting. The phone did get slightly warm during the 45 mins runtime, it was not uncomfortable.

Battery

It’s a big phone and it has a big battery as well. It has a whopping 4500mAh battery inside it which ensures that you will easily get a full day of use and even more. For more this was almost a two-day battery. The screen on time was consistent close to the 7 hours mark. And since I’m an average user and don’t play games on a mobile phone, I was able to get almost two days of battery out of the A70.

Well, Samsung never has had a very fast charging on their phone until the A70. A70 is the first Samsung phone to come with support for 25W fast charging. It is not as fast as the VOOC or Dash charging,  4500 mAh battery reaches from 0 to 100 under 2 hours.

Software

Now, something that Samsung has really done well is the ONE UI. A70 runs on ONE UI 1.1 on top of Android pie. With the ONE UI the, you get these big icons which are better for one hand usability and they look better than the experience UI.

You get the option to access notification with a swipe down on the home screen, some nifty fingerprint gesture features and double tap to wake. There’s a lift to wake feature which was missing on the A30 and there’s the Always on display too. Well, the software has really come a long way with the ONE UI.

Camera

Samsung Galaxy A70 is running a triple camera setup on the rear; the main 32 MP sensor with f/1.7 aperture, an 8 MP ultrawide sensor with f/2.2 aperture and a 5 MP depth sensor with f/2.2 aperture.

The camera app on the A70 is what we see on most of the galaxy phones. We get scene optimizer as well along with Slow-Mo, Pro-Mode, Live Fous and others.

By default, the camera captures 12MP images by using pixel binning and these pictures are average for a premium mid-range smartphone. The colors, contrast, and dynamic range is good but the detail is only average.

However, you could get a better image by capturing a 32MP image and then downsizing the image in post. However, taking images with 32MP does take slightly more time than usual.

Ultrawide lens on the A70 is decent and the FOV is bigger than the OnePlus 7 Pro‘s. The details are obviously not that good but the colors and contrast were pretty much on point. However, the image seemed flat compared to the images from the main lens.

READ ALSO: Redmi Y3 Review: A Robust Budget Phone for Selfie Lovers!

The portrait lens on the A70 is pretty good. The edge detection is nice and obviously not perfect. However, we’ve seen flagships do a lot worse.

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The front camera on the A70 is okayish. It’s decent, not great and not bad either. The highlights seem under control most of the time with occasional inconsistency.

Videos captured by the A70 were quite good. It can capture at 4k 30fps and up to 1080p 60 fps. The dynamic range is balanced with nice color and contrast. However, there is no EIS and you can capture videos with the ultrawide lens as well.

Conclusion

On the overall, the A70 is a very balanced premium mid-range device. If you’re looking for a big phone with the best display, best battery, and good performance then A70 will work for you. There are phones with better cameras out there, but it will do the job for most of the people.

However, the Samsung Galaxy A50 looks to be the better deal than the A70.