New Delhi, Samsung India, which sold five million units of Galaxy A phones in just 70 days, is banking big time on the A-series — in an attempt to outshine the Chinese rivals that have carved out a niche in the Indian smartphone market with competitively-priced devices.
The launch of the Galaxy A70, which comes with 6.7-inch display and a massive 4,500mAh battery for Rs 28,990, signals the South Korean giant’s intention to go aggressive in the country with a neatly laid out strategy.
The A70 comes packed with several premium features such as in-display fingerprint scanner, a triple rear camera system and the FHD+ Super AMOLED Infinity-U display.
Let’s see if the phone measures up to expectation.
In terms of look and feel, the device scores high despite the plastic back with a glass-like finish. It appears fairly tall and does feel heavy on the hand.
The front has very tiny bezels and a dew-drop notch for the front camera, giving users benefit of a very large screen that comes handy while playing games or streaming movies and videos. The back, however, picks up fingerprint very easily.
Samsung is known for offering great display and this phone testifies to that. The internal storage of the 6GB RAM phone is 128GB which can be expanded up to 512GB. The SIM tray has space for two nano-SIM card and a dedicated microSD card.
In terms of media consumption, you get enough storage for a lot of content and a great display to enhance the experience. What is more, the phone is backed by a 4,500mAH battery and with 25W fast charging capacity.
It took, on an average, around a minute to charge one per cent of the battery.
The phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 processor and runs Samsung’s One UI based on Android Pie.
The user interface made navigating apps quite a smooth experience. There is Samsung’s Bixby voice-based assistant that can do a lot of thing like setting the alarm or finding the app for you. The A70 also comes with Samsung Pay which makes shopping easier.
The phone comes with a 32MP+8MP+5MP triple rear camera system and a 32MP selfie shooter. Assisted by a wide angle lens and features such as “Live Focus” that lets you blur the background just as much as you want, the primary camera captures vivid photos in adequate day light.
In low-light scenarios, the photos come grainy, but using the flash can offset some of the effects. The camera is also great for creating high-quality videos.
Among other features, it gives users option to shoot super-slow motion videos which could be a delight for the TikTok generation.
The selfie shooter took sharp pictures and in low-light, the screen doubled up as the flash to make face look brighter (but this does not improve the background much).
The in-display fingerprint is too slow for effective use as the face unlock feature offers a faster and much convenient alternative. There is also scope for improving the cameras, to make them better suited for low-light photography.
Conclusion: Although facing tough fight from devices like POCO F1 from Xiaomi and Vivo V15 Pro, the Galaxy A70 is well equipped to offer users decent performance across the departments, without making them pay through their nose.