After being in the shadows of its high-end siblings for so long, the Samsung Galaxy A series has received a full revamp last year which resulted in a much better looking and more capable devices. For this year, it seems that the company continues to work upon the foundation provided by the revamp, judging from my brief hands-on experience with the new Galaxy A51.
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For starters, the rhythmical pattern and prism effect on the back of Galaxy A51 seems to be inspired directly by the design on Galaxy A50s. However, the pattern implementation on the new model is slightly more subtle and has less reflective surface than its predecessor.
In terms of physical design, the Galaxy A51 also looks quite identical to Galaxy A50s with its curved back and polished metal frame. The phone also felt quite light when I held in my hands but to my surprise, the Galaxy A51 is actually heavier than its predecessor according to the specs sheet.
Another factor that differentiate the Galaxy A51 to its 2019’s predecessor is its array of rear cameras. This time around, the phone features a quad camera setup – one more than Galaxy A50s – that is housed in a rectangular-shaped module.
While the main and depth cameras of Galaxy A51 still come with 48MP and 5MP sensors, Samsung is equipped the phone with a higher resolution 12MP sensor for its ultra-wide camera. The Galaxy A51 also features an additional 5MP macro camera which is an interesting choice but requires a very steady hand to operate.
Just like its higher-end sibling the Galaxy A71, Samsung has also implemented the Infinity-O screen design on the Galaxy A51 which has previously appeared on the Galaxy Note10 series. Even though the punch-hole size on Galaxy A51 seems smaller than the Galaxy A71, both of these devices carry 32MP selfie camera.
Since the device that I tried for a brief time here is a pre-release unit, it is rather premature to provide a verdict regarding Galaxy A51’s camera performance. Nevertheless, you can have a glimpse of them through the photo samples that were snapped during my brief time with the unit:
More samples can be seen in this Flickr album.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy A51 also features a 6.5-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED display that has a bright and punchy output. You can even increase its punchiness further by enabling the Vivid option in its settings.
When it comes to firepower, the Galaxy A51 is running on the same processor on the Galaxy A50s which is Samsung’s own Exynos Octa 9611 chip. According to Samsung Malaysia’s website, we are supposed to receive the variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB internal storage which should be good enough for most users.
From what I can gather through my brief time with the Galaxy A51, Samsung seems to have retained many of the good stuff from the Galaxy A50s for the new phone. At the same time, there are also some enhancement being made into its design and camera to differentiate the Galaxy A51 than its predecessor.
If the rumour of its RM 1,299 price tag is accurate, then calling the Galaxy A51 as an improved version of Galaxy A50s sounds like a fair description to me. But of course, let’s see what Samsung Malaysia has to announce regarding its brand-new Galaxy A 2020 very soon.
Samsung Galaxy A51 loan pre-release unit courtesy of Samsung Malaysia.
