Contents:
Spigen Rewards. This is an approximate conversion table to help you find your size. If you have already purchased an item by our brand, we recommend you select the same size as indicated on its label. Main Banner Galaxy S20 - Desktop. Galaxy S20 Collection Explore the new Galaxy. Learn More. Main Banner Galaxy S20 - Mobile. Main Banner AirPods Pro. AirPods Pro The ultimate pro tip. Learn More Buy Now. Main Banner iPhone Main Banner Pixel 4. Pixel 4 4 XL Pixel perfect. Learn more Buy Now. The A30s particularly struggled to keep up with us on long straights, but it plotted about as accurate of a route as our Garmin Edge did when we were cycling around things.
Overall, we would only recommend the A30s for simple navigation tasks. Samsung preinstalls its suite of telephony apps on the A30s instead of Google's.
The default phone app operates like many others do, with it loading to a numeric keypad and sorting call history, stored contacts and favourites into tabs. Our review unit has acceptable call quality, with its earpiece able to get loud enough to make and receive calls from noisy environments. Voices always remained intelligible during our test calls, but Samsung has tweaked the earpiece more for higher-pitched voices to our ears.
The A30 has three rear-facing cameras and a single front-facing one. The latter takes vibrant-looking portraits but at the expense of preserving detail. As the selfie to the right demonstrates, the sensor struggles to reproduce fine structures and details, while objects are poorly delineated from each other too. While the default camera app does not include a pro or manual mode for the front-facing camera, there are a host of other options from which to choose. Samsung includes several filters and beautification modes, for example, along with options for adjusting the resolution, HDR, and the intensity of the bokeh effect that the device applies to shots.
The primary rear-facing sensor struggles in the same areas that the front-facing one does. While the 25 MP camera reproduces objects and panoramic scenes well, the edges of objects and textures lack clarity. Colours always look vivid, though. The A30s handles macro photos better, with its 25 MP sensor able to capture more details than when in general shots.
The edges of objects are more distinguishable too, while blurriness only sets in at high zoom levels. On the other hand, the primary camera struggles in low-light conditions, as scene 3 demonstrates below. The sensor captures hardly any details and underexposes the whole scene, while image noise dominates too.
The default camera app includes a pro mode for the rear-facing sensors though, including those we described above. The pro mode contains options for adjusting the ISO, white balance and brightness. The A30s can record videos in up to x, or in x for square videos. The default camera app does not have a slow-motion mode or any equivalents, though. Overall, the image quality of our test videos is on par with that of our test photos.
The primary camera has an image stabiliser to compensate against small camera shakes, but sensors are optically stabilised.
Choose a scene and navigate within the first image. One click changes the position on touchscreens.
It's very unlikely that your phone will be affected by any sort of malware because all Galaxy and Play Store apps are scanned before they're downloaded. This makes it very useful for parents, employers, partners and for people who constantly misplace their devices. However, this is one of the much.
One click on the zoomed-in image opens the original in a new window. The first image shows the scaled photograph of the test device. We also subjected our review unit to further tests under controlled lighting conditions, the results of which you can view below.
Our tests determine that the primary rear-facing sensor reproduces colours more brightly than it should, although it struggles to pick out any at 1 lux. As expected, our test chart also looks overexposed under controlled light conditions, but the A30s preserves fine details and textures. Contrast levels drop off slightly in the lower corners of our test image, but this is often the case even with flagship smartphones. Our test chart is almost unrecognisable at 1 lux too. Samsung includes a modular USB charger, a matching Type-C cable, and a pair of headphones in the box.
There is a tool for opening the card slot too, along with the usual set of warranty guidelines. Samsung sells other accessories like power banks, cables and headphones on its website too. The A30s comes with a month limited manufacturer's warranty. Samsung preinstalls its in-house keyboard on the A30s, as it does for all its smartphones. The app functions like Google Gboard or SwiftKey do, with options for customising its layout or size.
The touchscreen in our review unit reliably reproduced our inputs without delay during our tests, but the display has a slightly resistive finish to it that makes drag-and-drop movements a chore after a while. The accelerometer consistently adjusted the orientation of the screen correctly and quickly throughout our tests too. You can secure the A30s with a password, pattern, PIN or a fingerprint. The latter is registered using a sensor that sits underneath the display, as opposed to a capacitive one to which you may have become accustomed.
While having the sensor underneath the display may seem futuristic, the one in our review unit cannot recognise stored fingerprints as accurately as a traditional capacitive sensor can. The sensor will only accept our thumb if we place it at just the right angle, for instance. The A30s has a 6. While all but one of our comparison devices have p displays compared to the p in the A30s, our review unit achieved the second-highest maximum average brightness of the devices in our comparison table.
The panel can also dim as low as 4.
We also recorded the display flickering at Hz, a frequency that can cause health issues like eyestrain and headaches for those who are sensitive to pulse-width modulation PWM. Hence, we would recommend trying the A30s before buying it if you are PWM sensitive. The display backlight flickers at There should be no flickering or PWM above this brightness setting. The frequency of If PWM was detected, an average of minimum: 5 - maximum: Hz was measured. Expectedly, our review unit demarcates colours well from each other, while blacks look deep and full. However, the display can make colours a bit pale depending on the mode to which it is set.
Samsung leaves the display on Natural by default, which CalMAN confirms has a balanced colour reproduction with only slight variations from the sRGB colour space. On the other hand, while the Vivid mode makes colours look more vivid, it also increases the proportion of blue that the display reproduces. Not only does this skew colour accuracy, but it also gives the panel a blue tint. You can manually alter the white balance to offset this, though. Alternatively, you can choose between warmer or cooler colours if you do not want to set tweak red, yellow and blue levels.
The display glass also catches the light less than comparable smartphones, so you should notice fewer reflections when using the A30s outside on a sunny day. Reflections will obscure the display slightly, though. As the montage below demonstrates, there are no brightness or colour distortions even at acute viewing angles. Hence, the A30s should always remain readable regardless of the angle from which you are looking at it.
The A30s is best suited for those who do not demand much from their smartphones.