Samsung Galaxy A72 Review - Android

Last year’s Samsung Galaxy A71 certainly attracted a lot of attention, and it was by far one of the best mid-range smartphones that the...

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Last year’s Samsung Galaxy A71 certainly attracted a lot of attention, and it was by far one of the best mid-range smartphones that the brand released. Now that we got our hands on the upgraded Galaxy A72, we sure have high expectations. But with the Samsung Galaxy A50 5G around, did Samsung play it safe this time? Let’s find out.

Design and Construction

Similar to its sibling the Galaxy A52, the Samsung Galaxy A72 sports a playful minimalistic matte pastel style that honestly reminds me of Legos. I don’t know if there’s a direct reference to Lego as its color variants all have the word “awesome” in them (insert The Lego Movie Everything is Awesome song).

The one we have is obviously in Awesome Blue, and there’s also Awesome Black, Awesome White, and Awesome Violet that looks aesthetically pleasing. It has a plastic build, which is fine since it still looks robust and it’s already hefty enough weighing 203g. This is really for those who are into large phones.

Its quadruple rear camera setup is situated inside a rectangular module that seamlessly blends in with the overall simple rear design. Although, it still has a small bump that you can minimize by fitting the included jelly case. There’s also a subtle Samsung branding at the bottom part of the rear.

Upfront, the A72 has a large Super AMOLED Plus display with slim bezels, a hole-punch module for its front camera, and an in-display fingerprint scanner.

There’s nothing on the left side, but on the right are all the buttons: the power button and the volume rocker that are all easy to reach. However, people with smaller hands might find it a hassle to press one-handed.

Up top is a microphone together with the hybrid SIM tray for either 2 nano-SIM cards or 1 nano SIM plus a microSD card for up to 1TB.

Heading over to the bottom, we get a 3.5mm headphone jack, a noise-canceling microphone, the USB Type-C port, and a downward-firing stereo speaker.

Overall the A72’s design looks absolutely fun and clean. I like that it doesn’t attract many fingerprint smudges, and did I mention that it’s IP67 water and dust resistance too? Well, yes it is, and it’s something that we’ve been wanting to have in mid-range phones now.

Although take note that it’s not completely waterproof. This means that it can handle being submerged up to 1m for 30 minutes. So it’s safe to say you can take this to the shower with you.

Display and Media

Basically, the Galaxy A72 has a similar screen to last year’s A71, except now it features a 90Hz refresh rate option. We get a massive 6.7-inch Infinity-O Super AMOLED Plus display, coupled with Corning Gorilla Glass for protection.

It has a resolution of 2340 x 1080px and a pixel density of 394ppi, giving us vibrant colors, deep blacks, and nice viewing angles. Of course, we get a smooth scrolling experience with the 90Hz refresh rate that you can easily switch to the 60Hz automatic refresh rate if you want to save more battery life. The screen can also go up to a total brightness of a surprising 800nits, something that we mostly see in flagship devices.

Audio-wise, its down-firing stereo speaker and earpiece produce averagely good quality. It can fill a room and can get loud enough without getting too distorted when the volume is set to maximum. Mids and highs are present, but the lows are pretty much absent. Either way, you can always take advantage of its headphone port and Dolby Atmos customization features for better audio quality.

Cameras

Focusing on cameras now, at the back we get a quad-cam setup composed of a 64MP main, a 12MP ultrawide, an 8MP telephoto lens, and the smallest one being the 5MP Macro shooter right above the LED Flash. For selfies, we get the same 32MP front camera as the A71.

Quality-wise, the rear camera takes decent photos with sharp details and good colors. However, it can be inconsistent sometimes with the color reproduction as seen in these photos of some mangoes. The scene optimizer was turned off here and I only tilted the phone a little lower, and the colors changed immediately.

Thankfully, this isn’t always the case since we still often get vibrant shots. We always like having an ultra-wide mode, and for the A72’s case, it looks good with some slight fisheye effect at times and the colors tend to appear a little darker than the primary camera. You can also zoom in from 3x to 10x, 20x, and up to 30x with okay quality with a lot of contrast.

Portrait mode on the other hand works very well with on-point subject-background separation that can be adjusted in post. You can also try the Food Mode that’s dedicated to food photography, and it gives off a nice depth effect with subjects placed in the middle of the frame.