REVIEW: Galaxy A15 5G, another good mid-range option

A Samsung recently launched the new Galaxy A15 and divided them into two models, one version 4G and this is what we are going to talk about in this review, the Galaxy A15 5G. The differences go a little further than just faster mobile data, ensuring better performance for those who like games on their cell phones. If you are interested in the new smartphone, check out our full review of the device now.

Design

O Galaxy A15 5G It is a beautiful smartphone in terms of its design. Its back, although made of plastic, has a finish that gives the feeling of a more sophisticated product and unfortunately leaves a lot of fingerprints. The positioning of the cameras follows the standard of all recent models of the Samsung and here we have three lenses. What bothers me is that they are very jumpy, making them a big target for accidents if a case is not used.

The color I received for testing is dark blue, but it is also available in colors Light Blue e light green. In all of them, there is a really cool effect where the colors mix and depending on the angle, there is a visual change in the colors. In addition to the lenses, on the back there is a flash and on the bottom the company logo. Samsung.

Moving to the right side, there are three buttons. The top two are for volume and the bottom one, alone, for energy, a company standard for years. What's different about this model is a projection to indicate where the buttons are on that side. A small design touch that I particularly liked. Of course, the power button also doubles as the fingerprint reader.

On the left side, everything is smooth and the only thing present is the cradle for chips and memory cards. At the bottom, there is a P2 port for headphones, a microphone, a USB-C 2.0 input and the sound output, in this case the only one on the device. At the top, we have another microphone and these are basically the items that make up the smartphone's design.

O Galaxy A15 5G It weighs 200g and has a 6,5-inch screen. It is a little bigger than the Galaxy A54, last year's king of the intermediates and, personally, it passed the grip test for me. I've said several times here that I don't like very large devices because I have small hands and I believe that the size of this device is the limit for me. Before moving on to the screen, it's worth mentioning that the front has a teardrop-shaped camera and a considerable edge, but it doesn't get in the way.

Regarding items in the box, count on a 15W charger and a USB-C cable, essential for your smartphone survival kit. Maybe a simple headphone could be included here, since it has the P2 input, but that's okay.

Fabric

As I said, the Galaxy A15 5G It has a 6,5-inch screen. The difference here is the technologies chosen by Samsung. The main and most successful one is technology Super AMOLED instead of LCD. With this decision, the colors are more vivid and the contrast is great. To help with this, the brightness is a total of 800 nits, a good number considering the Galaxy A54 reaches 1000 nits and the S23 reaches 1200 nits.

As for the fluidity of the screen, it reaches 90Hz, but there are no personalized options like in more robust models, where it is variable and decides when to be more fluid according to the app used. Here you need to decide whether you want it at 90Hz or 60Hz. I used it at 90 in all tests and even so the device had excellent battery performance, but I'll go into detail about that later. I believe that, currently, the battery gain from using 60Hz mode is minimal on all smartphones with these technologies.

More advanced technologies such as HDR10 + They are not on this smartphone, but I have never seen a big difference between one smartphone and another because of it. Something that I see as a clear difference and that makes the smartphone somehow uglier is the front camera. With the teardrop-shaped positioning, this camera becomes dependent on the edges and gives the impression that it is stealing a piece of the screen at the top. It could just be a little hole in the screen and it would be much prettier.

The resolution is 1080 x 2340 pixels (Full HD+), in a 19.5:9 aspect, guaranteeing good details in every corner of it. For watching videos or consuming any type of entertainment, it is very competent and will be superior to practically any rival in the same price range. The edges aren't the thinnest, but that's not something that bothers you either and it even adds charm to the smartphone.

Another detail that I noticed is for the Always on Display, which in this model are super limited, not even being possible to adjust the settings. The only function that looks like Always on Display available here is to show the battery % while the smartphone charges.

Performance

We are talking about an entry-level smartphone, equipped with a processor MediaTek Dimension 6100+, 6 nanometers. This is an excellent processor for its category and with excellent delivery, especially in games. However, I faced some annoying problems with the model I received for testing. This model is 128GB storage and just 4GB de RAM, an amount of memory that impairs the performance of the Galaxy A15 5G. It doesn't necessarily get stuck, but it chokes all the time.

Before explaining the details, we need to get the white elephant out of the room. The cell phone manages to perform its functions in all ways, but with a very annoying performance, I would say. It's the type of problem that makes you very nervous, as it's not a freeze, or a complete restart of the system. It's a constant delay in functions because it doesn't have the ability to read it more quickly due to lack of memory.

To give you an idea, the Galaxy A05s The one I tested recently has a weaker processor, but has 6GB of RAM and works more fluidly. It is clear that any Galaxy smartphone with less than 6GB of RAM is no longer viable today.

This lack of memory mainly affected the smartphone's multitasking. For example, I opened the YouTube Music, while checking a message on WhatsApp and then I saw something in the Gym app. When transitioning between one app and another, one of them always closed or restarted in front of me. As I said, it's an annoying performance, as it's a constant problem and with things that affect your day to day life. And even if you argue that you won't need to use multitasking, believe me, at some point you will be using the bank app and when it's time to get the code generated by your email or SMS, the app will close and you will be left with I want to throw everything against the wall.

In games, the processor and GPU do their job, but again, you can feel chokes due to lack of RAM memory. In these cases, it can perform better by focusing 100% on a single app and having help from the Game Booster. Even so, it surprised me Call of Duty Mobile, managing to run everything in medium quality and with high FPS without crashing. In games like Subway Surfer, the performance was excellent and, incredible as it may seem, in Marvel SNAP, the smartphone was unable to deliver all the effects with quality.

For those who like to see benchmarks, I tested the Galaxy A15 5G No. Geekbench 5 and DxOmark and below you can see the results. It is average and will be able to deliver good graphics performance, but again I will emphasize that all of this will be affected in the version with 4GB of RAM. Choose the 8GB one.

Cameras

The great highlight of Galaxy A15 5G in terms of camera, it is for the main lens 50 SM. It comes standard Wide and with an opening of f / 1,8, that is, it has good quality and guarantees a very interesting light entry. In the photos I took, I noticed that in good light conditions, you can take excellent photos. Already in UltraWide, things get a little worse. She has just 5 SM and loses a lot of details. On the other hand, I noticed that the colors are more saturated on it. Its opening is f / 2.2. Lastly there is a lens Macro, with just 2 SM and this unfortunately is quite disposable. The photos are dark and have a dirty look, making it difficult to look good. Also, the focus is pretty bad.

This combination of rear lenses is quite common in the most basic smartphones, but it is necessary to highlight the good quality of the main lens here. It won't disappoint anyone who likes to take a family photo or post some images on social media. Now if you want something more professional, this is definitely not the model for you. A UltraWide It is much inferior to the main camera, but it is possible to take good landscape photos if the day is very bright and the landscape helps.

In videos, you can record at most 1080p a 30 frames per second, a limitation already expected here. I know that the 720p It's already something more outdated, but nothing 60FPS in it too. O professional video is also not included here, showing that there is a clear difference between the Galaxy A15 5G and the A Galaxy a little more advanced. Check out some photos taken with the rear cameras of the Galaxy A15 5G:

Already selfie camera It really surprised me. She has 13 SM in standard Wide and an opening f / 2.0. The specifications don't show anything much, but in practice I really liked the result. The colors look good and the details too. The only thing I found a little defective was the cutout of the portrait mode, but then I give this model a teaspoon.

In videos, the result is exactly the same as the rear camera. The maximum you will be able to achieve here is 1080p on 30 frames per second. In all these cases, it is an ok result for those who use their smartphone for short videos and don't work with it. Now if you are a person who depends a lot on social media to make a living, these cameras will not help you. Check out:

Battery

It's been a few years since the Samsung got the hang of delivering good performance from its intermediaries. O Galaxy A15 5G It has a 5000 mAh battery that guarantees 1 day of easy use. If you are the type of user who spends the day on the street, using 5G all the time, it will do the job and you will only need a charge at the end of the day.

The same happens if you work from home and only use your smartphone on Wi-Fi. The system and chipset are very well optimized to withstand good hours of use of apps and system functions. Entertainment apps like YouTube and the main streams used about 5 to 7% per hour of battery, an excellent number.

The charger included in the box is 15W, but the device supports charging up to 25W. On the 15W charger, it took about 2 hours and forty minutes to reach 100%. With a 25W charger, this time drops by more or less 1 hour, reaching 1 hour and thirty minutes for a full charge. It's a good difference, showing that it's worth using the more powerful charger in this model.

Audio

O Galaxy A15 5G It is still a simpler model in the A line, despite offering several more advanced specifications. This is clear with the unique sound output — that is, no stereo on this smartphone — but which delivers a good volume and is positioned so that it is not covered with your finger during games.

Another difference in this regard, unfortunately only found on entry-level smartphones, is the 2mm P3,5 port for headphones. Even if you only use Bluetooth headphones, when using an accessory like microphones, for example, this port makes all the difference.

Finally, a simplified version of the Dolby Atmos is present here, but only when using headphones, as the feature depends on stereo sound.

Conclusion

O Galaxy A15 5G is more of an intermediate model of Samsung which proves to be a really cool option for those who don't want to spend so much, but still have great features. The model I received unfortunately has a very poor RAM memory decision, but even with this delay it manages to perform well.

Even so, I recommend that you avoid this “simpler” version of this model as much as possible. Focus 100% on the version with 256GB e 8GB of RAM. With it, you will have much greater relief for multitasking and also for the overall performance of the device.

The cameras are a crazy mix of good and bad things, but both the main camera and the selfie camera can deliver really cool results for everyday life and if you know how to play with them, you can take really good photos. Ultrawide and Macro unfortunately don't perform as well.

O Galaxy A15 5G is now available, in two versions. The first, with 128GB of ROM and 4GB of RAM can be purchased from Magazine Luiza by R$1259,10 at sight. The version of 256GB of ROM and 8GB of RAM is R$1529,10 view, also in Luisa Magazine. This last version is the one I recommend, but still in the Samsung, for a similar price and even cheaper in some cases, you can opt for Galaxy M54 ou Galaxy A54 which are much more interesting in everything and have 8GB of RAM in either version.

Technical sheet

Córdoba	Galaxy A15 5G
Brand	Samsung
Social	GSM/HSPA/LTE/5G
GSM chips	Nano-SIM Card
Dimensions	160.1 x 76.8 x 8.4 mm
Weight	200g
Composition	Plastic on the body; Glass on the front (type of protection not specified)
Resistance	No water and dust resistance
Fabric	Super AMOLED, 90Hz, 800 nits (HBM) 6.5 inch FHD+
Processor	Mediatek Dimensity 6100+ (6nm) Octa-core (2 × 2.2 GHz Cortex-A76 & 6 × 2.0 GHz Cortex-A55)
GPU	Mali-G57 MC2
Frontal camera	13 MP, f / 2.0, (wide)
Rear cameras	50 MP, f/1.8, (wide), AF 5MP, f/2.2, (ultrawide) 2 MP, f / 2.4, (macro) LED flash, panorama, HDR
Institutional	Rear: 1080p@30fps, gyro-EIS; Front: 1080p@30fps
System	Android 14, One UI 6 (with 4 years of update guaranteed)
Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct
RAM and Internal Memory	RAM: 4GB or 8GB ROM: 128GB or 256GB
Memory card	Yes, in hybrid tray
Colors	Dark Blue, Light Blue and Light Green
Price suggested	4GB version: R$1259,10 at sight in Magazine Luisa 8GB version: R$1529,10 view, also in Luisa Magazine

And this was our review of the Galaxy A15 5G. What did you think of him? Do you think it was a mistake to only put 4GB in it? Comment below and don't forget to check out our other articles on the website, such as This list of the best films of the 70s.

reviewed by Glaucon Vital in 28 / 3 / 24.