Samsung Galaxy A14 5G Review: A Phenomenal $200 Phone Leave a comment
I do not need to oversell it—it isn’t a flagship cellphone. Yes, you’ll nonetheless see stutters right here and there once you swap between apps. Maybe you will need to power shut an app every now and then. But for probably the most half, I’ve had a totally good expertise utilizing the A14 5G not just for catching up on Reddit and Twitter, but in addition to answer emails on the fly, monitor work duties, and even make calls.
That brings me to the battery. My sister lives in India, so we do not get an opportunity to catch up usually. The different day, I spent 4 hours on a video name and the battery dropped solely to 50 %—I used to be anticipating it to be decrease! On that very same day, I used the cellphone’s GPS as I drove to a canine park in Manhattan, and snapped plenty of photographs of my scrumptious fried hen sandwich at an area Irish eatery referred to as Bua. By bedtime (which is, er, previous midnight for me), the cellphone was at 11 % with a unbelievable 9 hours of screen-on time. This was an unnaturally busy day. On days once I do not spend hours on video calls, I had 30 % left after two full days on a single cost. It’s beautiful not having to recharge each night time.
That brings me to the 50-megapixel major digicam. It snaps photographs fairly rapidly, and there is even a Night mode you need to use to take decently vibrant and sharp pictures in low mild (not like the Moto G Play). Naturally, your nighttime photographs will likely be a little bit blurry at times. There’s a little bit an excessive amount of processing at instances, smoothening out sure options on faces and different particulars, plus some colours may be exaggerated. Still, I’ve nonetheless been fairly proud of a lot of the outcomes for a $200 cellphone. That contains selfies I snapped with the 13-megapixel entrance digicam (which additionally helps Night mode). There’s a macro digicam if that is your fancy, and it really works OK for excessive close-up pictures, however solely in case you have an excellent quantity of sunshine.
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The solely main gripe I’ve with this cellphone in day-to-day use is the mono speaker. It simply does not get too loud, does not sound nice, and it is simple to dam in panorama mode once you’re enjoying video video games. The straightforward answer is to only use headphones—wi-fi or wired as a result of, sure, there’s a headphone jack.
There’s even a microSD card slot to increase on the 64 GB of inside storage (which is greater than what you will discover on equally priced friends), plus the power to make contactless funds with the near-field communication (NFC) sensor so you may go away the pockets at residence. I nearly solely pay with my cellphone lately when I’m out and about, so this can be a big win for me.
The Galaxy A14 5G additionally helps … 5G, because the identify implies, which is yet one more rarity at this value as most sub-$200 telephones depend on 4G LTE. It’s supported by each main US service, from AT&T and T-Mobile to Verizon. Best of all, Samsung is promising two Android OS updates, which implies that because it’s already working the most recent Android 13, it’s going to nonetheless obtain Android 15 in 2024. It can even get 4 years of safety updates, which is virtually extraordinary for a cellphone so low-cost.
It’s near-impossible to not marvel on the worth of the Galaxy A14. It does nearly every little thing so nicely for thus little, and that is exactly what we ought to be asking extra of from our devices.
