I know a lot of people reading this review are thinking of buying this phone. And why wouldn’t they, after all? It’s a Samsung, so a well-known brand, it’s from a series of phones and it’s very well-known and popular in Romania, it also has beautiful colors. What’s more, it seems perfect for someone who uses the phone for Facebook, TikTok, maybe even took a few pictures. But is this description still suitable for a midrange phone? It remains to be seen in the following lines.
The Galaxy A35 doesn’t come with a lot of changes over the A34, but some of them are significant. First of all, the construction is now much more solid: the A35 comes with glass on both the back and the front, and the latter is Gorilla Glass Victus+ itself. The frame of the phone has remained plastic, but we have IP67 dust and water resistance, which is what you find on most of the top phones in the industry. It is also about 10 grams heavier than last year’s phone, having a larger size, which you only notice on paper. In the box, you will find the already classic package – phone, charging cable, SIM key and that’s it, because you will have to pay for everything else.
Key Island is not “the key”
The back is glossy, but you can’t really see the fingerprints on it, and it reflects the colors very nicely. The camera island is not really an island, it’s just the 3 lenses that are raised, and on the edge you’ll find that Key Island, Samsung’s new design for this series, which slightly highlights the Power and Volume buttons. E..ok, I guess, it doesn’t seem like anything special to me honestly, it’s a change that would have taken me a while to notice, if I didn’t know about it. The corners are rounded, the edges straight, similar to those on the A55, but they didn’t bother me too much. And if you’re not necessarily a fan of pink, don’t worry, there are 3 other color options that might appeal to you – the classic black, a light blue and a yellow.
The screen is 6.6 inches and it’s very good. We already know, if we are to bet on one chapter where Samsung excels in a phone, that is the screen, because the South Koreans always come with a bright panel, with a good color representation and that you enjoy looking at you forget This is also the case with the one on the Galaxy A35, which is a Super AMOLED Full HD that reaches 1000 nits in High Brightness Mode and has a refresh rate of 120Hz. It moves well, it’s fluid, it offers a pleasant content viewing experience and it still remains that category where Samsung impresses even with the midranges. The main problem would be that it is no longer the only manufacturer that can do this.
The sound is stereo and it’s ok, for a midrange. It doesn’t give you any quality, but it doesn’t need to, and it distorts a bit at higher volumes. However, if you’re like me and listen to stuff when you’re tidying around the house or doing similar things, then it won’t bother you too much.
A performance upgrade
Inside is an Exynos 1380 processor, built on a 5nm, 8-core process, another major change from last year’s variant, which used a Dimensity 1080 from Mediatek. Now, Samsung has integrated on the A series its new Exynos processors designed specifically for midranges, and the performance it offers is decent. For example, the score in AnTuTu is better than last year’s Galaxy A54, in a configuration of 6GB + 128GB storage, identical to the one we have in this phone. We also ran Geekbench 6, 3D Mark and PC Mark, and you can see the results for each below.
To see how it fares in games, we downloaded Asphalt 9, Call of Duty Mobile and Call of Duty Warzone. I tried the last one more for the sake of art, because I knew it wouldn’t bring great results – finally we have a mobile game that “puts phones in the head” again. Asphalt 9 and Call of Duty in the “normal” version ran well, without making any compromises in terms of graphics.
The variant we received is the most affordable. Fortunately, Samsung has completely abandoned the version with 4GB of RAM, which still existed last year, and offers for the A35 two slightly more powerful models, with 8GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of storage. But there’s also a microSD card slot, if you don’t want to pay extra for the latter.
There were no changes to the battery. The same 5000mAh is charged at 25W per wire, without any possibility of wireless charging. It’s pretty well optimized though, and I managed to get 2 days of use out of it when I didn’t stress it in performance tests.
Long-term updates and Knox warranty
The interface is OneUI 6.1 and if you’ve used a Samsung phone in the last few years, you already know what to expect. It’s pretty breezy, simple and easy to use, and I can’t say I’ve run into any problems. We don’t have bloatware either, an advantage that Samsung maintains over Chinese competitors in this segment.
Finally, the last major novelty of the Galaxy A35 is represented by the fact that the entire A series has received an upgrade in terms of security, because it now integrates the Samsung Knox Vault architecture. It’s not something you can see on your phone or through settings, because its role is a “silent guardian” that keeps your data safe. We also have a video on the channel, made some time ago by my colleague Iulian, in which he explains more about what exactly Knox does on a device and how it works. This technology was until now only reserved for flagships, so it’s good that it also reaches the midrange area.
The Samsung Galaxy A35 runs Android 14 and, very good news, it comes with up to 4 years of OS updates and 5 years of security updates. It’s another important plus for the South Korean manufacturer, especially in this midrange sector, where many can’t afford to change their phone very often.
Vibrant, Samsung-specific colors and a camera that’s difficult to understand
On the camera front, there’s only one change from last year, with a 50MP main sensor with f/1.8 and optical stabilization replacing the 48MP on the A34. Otherwise, the Galaxy A35 comes with the same ultrawide camera of 8MP and f/2.2 and macro of 5MP with f/2.4. On the front there is also a 13MP selfie camera with f/2.2. The ultrawide is the only difference to the Galaxy A55 in this respect.
So let’s take them one at a time.
I like the main one, although it oversaturates the colors, which is common on Samsung devices. The sky is not so blue, the ground not so green unfortunately, and the Mexican Bizness hat is not that shade of red either. But, there are photos that can be put instantly on social media, without any editing, by 99.9% of those who will use this phone, so I don’t really have much to blame Samsung here. The dynamic range is great, there are some problems sometimes with lots of elements, but overall I would say that, for a midrange camera, it does well enough.
Zoom shots don’t look bad either, as long as you stick to 2x, because the zoom is obviously digital, not optical. You will lose some details this way, but the pictures taken this way still look good to me.
The ultrawide is weaker in all chapters. The colors are even more saturated than the main one, the dynamic range is weak, the deformation is visible and the quality suffers due to the only 8MP of the camera. It has great results in good light, but when you push it a bit, it shows its limitations.
Macro camera. Offff, the macro camera. Why phone manufacturers insist on bringing these macro cameras to devices in the year of Mr. 2024, I will not be able to understand. Ok, in the present case, the one on the Samsung Galaxy A35 can take a good picture out of 5 attempts, but the 5MP screen it has still exceeds the barrier.
The night shots aren’t extraordinary, but you can’t really expect that either. They’re pretty blurry once you zoom in, but there’s no over-lighting of the scene from post-processing. However, the ultrawide is unusable at night, it has no dynamic range at all and the entire image is erased.
Portraits come out well if the subject is completely still. If you’re trying to photograph your dog, cat, parrot, or any other pet you may have, you’ll have to pray that it stays still, because otherwise many areas will be out of focus. Cropping is good, but skin tones, while not the most accurate, should be satisfactory. And the selfie camera does its job, although it’s a bit too reddish with skin. It reproduces enough facial detail and the bokeh on this camera is surprisingly good with proper cropping.
Filming can be done up to 4K quality at 30fps, just like last year. The problem is that there is no optical stabilization on video, so you have to be very sure of your hands if you want to get some footage with the Galaxy A35. Or at least don’t drink a Red Bull beforehand.
What does a midrange still mean in 2024?
And now finally, before the conclusion, I would like to establish one more thing. I was wondering, at the beginning of this review, what is the appropriate description for a midrange. Before there were those phones with which you could do all the everyday things – browsing, a Candy Crush, one or two pictures, social media, but quite quickly and well. These phones weren’t buzzing, but you didn’t wait too long for them either. In recent years, however, we have seen a lot of functions and specifications that are more and more spectacular on the midrange phones we tested, and which cost up to 2500 lei. The recently launched Realme 12 Pro Plus has two very good cameras on the back, 50MP and 64MP. The Nothing Phone 2a, tested by Claudiu, has a spectacular look and software, the Honor Magic6 Lite has a fabulous screen and it also comes with a 108MP camera.
What I want to say, actually, is that the midrange area has evolved in recent years, really a lot. The phones here are getting better and better, they offer more and more things and functions, and it’s not enough to copy/paste to a device anymore. This only applies to flagships, if you’re Apple
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