Samsung Galaxy A53: Once again, the Exynos SoC fails to impress

While the Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G was quite compelling with its Snapdragon SoC, the successor struggled a bit in our in-depth review.

Overall, Samsung hasn't made that many changes, and it has even improved some things: The battery is more powerful now, which makes the smartphone more enduring. Furthermore, there's now a great software update policy for the Samsung phone, which includes 4 Android updates and 5 years of security patches.

Our review of the Galaxy A53 5G also found its positioning to be very accurate, and the camera system continues to be decent, even though the phone doesn't manage to stand out from the crowd of mid-range phones with it.

On the other hand, the AMOLED display impresses with its Full HD resolution, high brightness, good viewing angles, and fast 120 Hz frame rate. It's just a shame that we couldn't find a DC dimming mode to reduce the effects of PWM flickering on sensitive users. Another plus point are the decent stereo speakers.

The IP certification will be especially pleasing to clumsy users and/or those who like to use their phones outdoors, as it confirms the Galaxy A53's dust and water resistance.

But, once again, the Galaxy A53 5G's greatest drawback is its SoC: Although the Samsung Exynos 1280 is quite new, it can't keep up with the competition's similarly priced phones in terms of performance. In addition, the built-in modem causes sluggish and inconsistent Wi-Fi data rates.

Furthermore, the fact that Samsung has installed a slow storage solution, or that the storage controller isn't at least able to fully utilize the storage's speed, doesn't exactly help matters. This means that users have to make do with little performance headroom and sometimes even deal with stutters in everyday use.

Nevertheless, the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G is still a good choice for certain users. Read our in-depth review, which contains numerous benchmarks and details, to find out more about this, as well as about current alternatives.

We also recommend our detailed review video on YouTube: