Samsung launches the new Galaxy M30, triple rear cameras and 5000 mAh battery in tow

Samsung’s new M series of phones is supposed to be the company’s ultimate play at recapturing the Indian smartphone market from rivals Xiaomi. The South Korean giants released the Galaxy M10 and M20 there earlier this month and, yesterday, have now followed it up with a more powerful and capable device, the M30.

The M30 sports a 6.4-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display. The M10 and M20 both opted for LCD panels, and it’s nice to see the M30 use Samsung’s lauded AMOLED display instead. At the top of the display is Samsung’s Infinity-U thing, which is just a fancy way of describing a waterdrop notch.

At the back of M30 is a triple camera setup comprised of a 13 MP main camera with f/1.9 aperture, a 5 MP wide-angle lens with f/2.2 aperture, and a 5 MP depth sensor also with f/2.2 aperture. Not the most impressive camera hardware, we have to admit, and we hope the M30’s cameras perform better than the M20’s, since the latter has been panned for its underwhelming performance.

Running things on the M30 is an Exynos 7904, same as on the M20. There’s 4/6 GB of RAM and 64/128 GB of storage, expandable to 512 GB with a MicroSD card. The M30’s biggest feature—literally—is its hefty 5000 mAh battery. Thankfully, the unit has support for 15 W fast charging via a Type-C port. There’s also a fingerprint reader on the device’s back.

Sadly, the M30 runs on Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. Considering the fact that we’re effectively five months away from the release of Android Q, this is a bit shambolic from Samsung. The company promises to send the Android Pie update to the M30 quickly but that’s something of a cop-out.

The M30 starts at Rs 14,990 (US$210)  for the 4/64 GB model, and Rs 17,990 (US$252) for the 6/128 GB unit.