Here’s my full review of the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G following up on my first impression of the device last week.

Samsung Galaxy A53 5G Specification

Design

Samsung follows the same formula for their last year’s best-selling Galaxy A-series, the Galaxy A52/A52s by having the same display, cameras, and even the design unchanged. The main differences are the SoC which is now powered by Samsung’s own 5nm process chip, the Exynos 1280 processor with 5G and bumped extra 500 mAh battery,

The Samsung Galaxy A53 5G is IP67 certified for protection against water and dust.

Display & Stereo Speaker

Equipped with one of the best displays you can find for a mid-range device, Samsung’s Super AMOLED with a Full HD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. The display is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 and features an optical in-display fingerprint scanner for biometric unlocking. So far, it’s accurate and quick with few retries.

Boasts with up to 800 nits peak brightness are good to view under bright sunlight. Color reproduction is expected rich, vibrant, and Widevine L1 certified for great media consumption. The stereo dual speakers with Dolby Atmos support enhanced the overall entertainment experience.

Camera

On the rear, you will get the same camera setup array as its predecessor; a Quad camera setup with 64-megapixels f/1.8 with Optical Image Stabilization main camera, a 12-megapixels ultrawide, a 5-megapixels macro lens, and a 5-megapixels depth sensor.

Samsung did some AI refinement on the images that the Galaxy A53 5G shoot, with greater details, color, and contrast.

As you can expect from Samsung, the pictures coming out of it are a little high saturation and synthetically sharper. If coming from a point-and-shoot user’s perspective, you would love it as you can skip any editing or probably just some light tweaks before sharing it on social media.

Samsung also included Snapchat filters baked into the native camera app for some fun shoots with friends or family.

Here are some photos were taken with the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G:

Higher resolution photos can be viewed on GDrive

Video recording it tops at 4K@30fps, with 30/60fps options in 1080p resolution. Video looks decent with quick autofocus, but due to lack of laser focus or 3D ToF assistant autofocus hunts are quite obvious in low light. There are OIS and EIS for stabilization but the EIS would only be available in 1080p@30fps.

Performance

The new 5nm Samsung Exynos 1280 processor is paired with 8GB of RAM and features RAM Plus which allows you to use a chunk of onboard storage to extend the amount of RAM:- up to 8GB (with a total of up to 16GB of RAM) on the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G.

Performance-wise it’s on par or slightly better compared with the Galaxy A52 5G which has the Snapdragon 750G processor. Handle daily tasks like social media, video streaming, browsing, and emailing without any issue.

There isn’t any thermals problem while I play graphic-demanding games like Asphalt 9 and Genshin Impact but I do notice minor stutters while loading the games. Because it’s a mid-range chip, the graphics settings are set to medium for smooth gameplay.

I did run some benchmark tests and the new Samsung processor performs slightly better than the Snapdragon 695 5G that was found on the HONOR 9X 5G which I reviewed earlier.

However, it still falls behind the Samsung Galaxy A52s which are powered by Snapdragon 778G 5G chip yet it’s cheaper since it has been in the market for more than 6 months now.

Battery

The Samsung Galaxy A53 5G picked an extra 500mAh over its predecessor, bringing it to 5,000 mAh. I manage to stretch the battery to two days of casual usage and connected to Wi-Fi most of the time. I can get a full day of use when I brought it outside with more intense use like photo and video taking, video streaming, short mobile gaming, and of course social media scrolling which ended me with around 30% of juice by end of the day.

Support up to 25W of fast charging, flat to 100% in less than 2 hours. Since there’s no charging brick included in the Galaxy A53 5G’s box, you may use any adapter that laying at your home but there’s a chance it doesn’t support 25W fast charging and you may need to fork out to buy it separately. I would highly recommend getting the UGREEN GaN 65W or 100W that serves as a laptop charger as well.

Solid Software Update

Samsung didn’t just only offer solid 4 years of major software updates for their flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy S22-series. Samsung did apply for its mid-tier smartphone including the new Samsung Galaxy A53 5G that already gets OneUI 4.1 based on Android 12 out of the box. This put an extra mile for you to keep your device secure with updated security patches and software.