Many Android phones fall in the middle price range these days. But we only recommend a few as being worth your time and money. The word “Pixel” is in most of those names. But now there is also the Samsung Galaxy A54 for people who want a Samsung because it works well. It has a good battery and has had software support for years.
Is it better than the Pixel 6a and Pixel 7a, which cost less than £500? You might be better off with one of those if photos and a clean Android experience are important to you. But the A54 has a longer battery life, more storage space, and a faster refresh rate.
The screen really stands out—it’s big, bright, and responsive. Making it perfect for watching the newest Ahsoka episodes while you’re on the go. It’s even more amazing when you think about how cheap it is compared to Samsung’s top-of-the-line S23 series.
Samsung Galaxy A54 Box Content
- The Galaxy A54
- A USB-C cable
- A SIM Tray ejector
- User Manual
- Safety guide
Samsung Galaxy A54 Full Specification
| LAUNCH | |
| Announced | March 15, 2023 |
| First Release | March 24, 2023 |
| NETWORK | GSM / HSPA / LTE / 5G |
| BODY | |
| Dimensions | 158.2 x 76.7 x 8.2 mm |
| Weight | 202 g |
| Build | Glass front (Gorilla Glass 5) Glass back (Gorilla Glass 5) Plastic frame |
| SIM | Single SIM (Nano-SIM, eSIM) Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by) |
| DISPLAY | |
| Type | Super AMOLED |
| Size | 6.4 inches, 100.5 cm2 (~82.9% screen-to-body ratio) |
| Resolution | 1080 x 2340 pixels |
| Protection | Corning Gorilla Glass 5 |
| PLATFORM | |
| Operating System | Android 13, One UI 5.1 |
| Chipset | Exynos 1380 (5 nm) |
| CPU | Octa-core |
| GPU | Mali-G68 MP5 |
| MEMORY | |
| Card Slot | microSDXC |
| Internal | 128GB/ 4GB RAM 128GB/ 6GB RAM 128GB/ 8GB RAM 256GB/ 6GB RAM 256GB/ 8GB RAM |
| MAIN CAMERA | |
| Triple | 50 MP, f/1.8, (wide) 12 MP, f/2.2, 123˚ (ultrawide) 5 MP, f/2.4, (macro) |
| Features | LED flash, panorama, HDR |
| Video | 4K@30fps 1080p@30/60fps 720p@480fps |
| SELFIE CAMERA | |
| Single | 32 MP, f/2.2, 26mm (wide) |
| Features | HDR, panorama |
| Video | 4K@30fps, 1080p@30/60fps |
| SOUND | |
| Loudspeaker | Yes, with stereo speakers |
| 3.5mm jack | No |
| COMMS | |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct |
| Bluetooth | 5.3, A2DP, LE |
| Positioning | GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS |
| NFC | Yes |
| Radio | No |
| USB | USB Type-C 2.0, OTG |
| FEATURES | |
| Sensors | Fingerprint (under display, optical), accelerometer, gyro |
| BATTERY | |
| Type | Li-Po 5000 mAh, non-removable |
| Charging | 25W wired |
| MISC | |
| Colors | Lime, Graphite, Violet, White |
| Models | SM-A546V, SM-A546U |
| TEST | |
| Display | Contrast ratio: Infinite (nominal) |
| Camera | Photo / Video |
| Loudspeaker | -26.6 LUFS (Good) |
| Battery life | Endurance rating 119h |
Also Read: Oppo Reno8 T 5G Review: The Portrait Expert
Samsung Galaxy A54 5G Price and availability
Samsung only sells the Galaxy A54 5G with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage in the United States, where it costs $450. The A54 is on sale at all three big airlines, and that’s likely to stay the case all year.
Instead of three, like last year, there are now two colors: Awesome Black and Awesome Violet. If you want Awesome Lime or Awesome White, you’ll have to buy them through a site like Amazon. The US version is unlocked to work on all three major providers. But models that were brought in may not be as compatible. Make sure you check this again!
Samsung Galaxy A54 5G Design
Even though the A54’s design isn’t very inspiring, there is some charm in how simple it looks. The back panel is a single bright color (ours is white. But it also comes in black, green, and violet), and the cameras stick out in three neat circles instead of being in a clear module like on older Samsung phones (including the A53). At first view, it looks like the top-of-the-line S23.
It’s easier to hold than the Google Pixel phones because the edges around the front are slightly raised, and the sides are made of hard plastic. The edges around the screen are wider than on the top-of-the-line S-series phones. But they don’t get in the way when you’re using it. But the Galaxy A54 doesn’t feel particularly high-end, and it doesn’t feel cheap and made of plastic either. Some users may find the body of the phone big. But we think that the extra thickness makes it feel more solid.
Samsung Galaxy A54 5G Display
- 6.4-inch AMOLED display – 1080 x 2340 resolution – 120Hz refresh
- 1000 nits brightness – HDR10+ support
- One UI 5.1 based on Android 13
The A54 clearly has big plans, and the display is the most noticeable part of the phone. Samsung has made the screen brighter and given us a big, bright, and colorful screen that takes up a lot of room on the front of the phone. In almost any light, it shines because it’s rich.
The picture is so bright and has a wide enough dynamic range that HDR10+ material can be shown on it. The screen is very sharp, with over 400ppi of pixels per inch on a full HD+ 1080 x 2340 resolution. At arm’s length, it means that the features are clear and sharp. It’s possible to see the tiniest bit of roughness when compared to a Quad HD+ screen. But it’s not really that obvious.
Because of these factors and its huge size of 6.4 inches, it’s a great screen for playing games and watching videos. The screen is bright enough that you can mostly see it outside during the day. The colors are strong enough that movies and TV shows really “pop” on them.
Even though it’s a small thing, our only real gripe is that the colors are sometimes a little too saturated. Oranges and reds can get a little too bright and lose clarity, even when it’s set to the more muted “natural” mode.
It can also update at a very high rate of up to 120Hz. But because it’s a mid-range device, it doesn’t have the super-responsive adaptive features that would let it change this based on the material being shown. It mostly jumps between 60Hz and 120Hz instead, but we’ll talk more about efficiency in a moment.
Samsung Galaxy A54 5G Software and Performance
The A54 is always fast, so you won’t have any trouble zipping through TikTok or doom-scrolling on Twitter/X. During the week we used it, we didn’t run into any unexpected crashes or lag, and games like Call of Duty: Mobile and Super Mario Run worked fine.
We like how easy it is to use the phone, and we love that you can add more games, photos, videos, or apps by inserting a microSD card of up to 1TB into the SIM slot. You won’t be able to do that on any Pixel, iPhone, or top Samsung phone.
Still, the phone comes with a lot of useless apps, so you’ll need to spend a few minutes getting rid of them when you first set it up. There are already apps like Disney+ and TikTok on your phone. You can choose if you want to use them or not. It’s not too much like some cheap phones, and thank goodness it doesn’t have Facebook or odd games.
We like that the One UI 5.1 skin on top of Android 13 is light and can be changed. The menu on the right side of the screen that you can open with a swipe left is also great. It’s possible to add eight of your favorite apps. It’s useful for quickly getting to your favorites once you get used to it.
It says that it will serve the A54 with up to four generations of OS updates (up to Android 17) and security updates for five years (up to 2028). Plus, it has 5G, which isn’t a big deal right now but we expect more of these superfast networks to come online in the next few years, making internet speeds and files faster.
Gaming Performance
The Samsung Galaxy A54 5G’s mid-range ARM Mali-G68 MP5 SoC gives it more than enough power to run most games. As shown by a few of the games we tested, it’s also good enough for games with a lot of graphics, though sometimes the features and frame rates will be lower than they would be on a smartphone.
The shooter PUBG can only be played at 30 frames per second at best in HD settings. This is the case even when the features are turned down. It’s possible to play Diablo Immortal at higher frame rates, but not at the highest options for detail. Even though our test settings had low graphic features, we still saw some dropped frames.
Genshin Impact was almost too much for the Galaxy A54 to handle. It’s not fun to play with the graphics settings on medium or high, and even with the graphics settings on low, the frame rate would sometimes slow. But Game Launcher and Booster, two useful apps from the Galaxy S23, are now on board.
The A54 is still fun to use when not playing demanding games, thanks mostly to the great screen and good dual speakers.
Dual Speakers for the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G
Temperature
The Galaxy A54’s surface temperatures stay nice and cool when it’s not being used, but they rise noticeably when it’s being used and can hit up to 37.6 °C. This is surprisingly high for a mid-range SoC, but it’s not a problem at all.
Throttling didn’t happen in either of the 3DMark Wild Life stress tests. It means that heat is being drained properly inside the computer. This seems to be different from the Pixel 6a, which may have better specs and is still noticeably faster under load even though it loses a lot of speed.
Speakers
The two speakers on the Samsung Galaxy A54 are pretty good. But they don’t sound as good as any Galaxy S phone. There isn’t enough precision in either the highs or the lows. Even when turned down a bit, they sound hollow and echoey.
The USB-C port lets you connect wired headphones or speakers from outside the device. With Bluetooth 5.3, you can connect wirelessly, but it only has the SBC, AAC, aptX, LDAC, and SSC audio codecs. Dual audio means sending music to two Bluetooth receivers at the same time. This can only be done with SBC.
Samsung Galaxy A54 5G Camera
The Galaxy A54 is better than I thought it would be for a budget phone, but the camera makes it look a lot less impressive. The camera on the back of the phone is 50 megapixels F/1.8 and has optical stabilization, just like the S23 and S23 Plus.
It’s great to have stabilization in the middle range because it lets the camera use slower shutter speeds in low light to get better pictures. The A54 also has a 32-megapixel selfie camera that isn’t great, a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera that works fine, and a 5-megapixel closeup camera that isn’t very useful.
When there is enough light, pictures taken with the main camera look fine. But that’s true of almost all smartphones made after 2018. That being said, Samsung’s processing leans toward bright colors that some people might not like, but it’s not bad enough to ruin your photos. You can also take video clips in up to 4K/30p quality. For extra stability, there’s a helpful mode that you’ll need to record at 1080/30p to use.
But the A54’s camera system doesn’t work well when I put it through tougher tests. Portrait mode doesn’t hold a subject as well as the S23 Plus does in middling lighting, and it’s not even close to as good at isolating the subject.
night mode
If your subject isn’t moving, you can use the night mode, which works well in very low light, instead of portrait mode. Having trouble if your subject is moving, though. It’s hard for the camera to keep shutter speeds above 1/20th of a second, which is too slow if your subject is, like, living. That means you can’t take clear pictures of your kids or pets running around the house, which is kind of a problem for most phone cameras.
But! The Pixel 6A does much better in the same situations. It’s more likely to stay at about 1/120th of a second, which gives you a much better chance of stopping motion. Even when both cameras take a sharp picture, the 6A’s picture has a lot more small specifics. It’s easy to tell the difference without having to zoom in. With its Tensor chipset, the 6A doesn’t even have the newest Pixel camera hardware. It just has a lot of smart picture processing that the A54 can’t match.
Camera Comparison
You can use a simple equation to find out if the Galaxy A54 is the best phone in this price band. There are more niceties on the Samsung than on the Pixel 6A, so choose that one instead. Plus, the screen is bigger and the top refresh rate is fast.
The back glass panel looks nice too. You should get the Pixel 6A if picture quality is more important to you than getting the most screen for your money. If not, you should wait a few weeks and get the Pixel 7A.
Even though it came out almost a year ago, it’s still the best intermediate camera and the best in low light. And you can still afford to spend more on phones like the S23 Plus because they have better cameras and look better, but not as many as you might think.
The A54 has a lot of good points otherwise. The screen is great for this price range, it works reliably every day, and it comes with a strong support policy and an IP67 rating, so it should last a long time. Even with the Pixel 7A’s improvements, the A54 is still a better choice than Google’s midrange if photo quality isn’t the most important thing to you. It’s even a little fancy.
Samsung Galaxy A54 5G Battery Life
The Galaxy A54’s 5,000mAh battery is the same size as last year’s, but it works a little better. With the A54, I was able to get 6 to 6.5 hours of screen-on time every time. It was great that the A54 could last all day with just light use; I left the screen brightness at about 90% and didn’t do much else to save power.
Since charging speeds are limited to 25W, you can’t quickly top off. It took me just under two hours to charge from 20% to 100%. Even though the A54 now has a glass back, it still doesn’t support wireless charging.
Also Read: Oppo A58 Review: Full Specifications & Price in Bangladesh 2023
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G?
The A54 could be a great choice for people on a budget because it has good speed, a fun design, bright cameras, and isn’t too expensive. It has a brighter screen, more storage space, and longer software support than Google’s Pixel 6A, but the Pixel 6A is better in almost every other way. It’s cheaper, the pictures are better, and the software is easier to use. The Pixel 6A is the one I would choose.
Competition
At this point, the Google Pixel 6a is still the Galaxy A54 5G’s main rival. For less money, OnePlus has some great Nord phones, but the Pixel 6a might be the standard for phones under $500.
Google and Samsung have different ideas about what a mid-range phone should have. Samsung thinks that the A54 should have a great screen, a high-quality build, flexible storage, and the best software experience in its class.
Google, on the other hand, thinks we should have the best camera in this group and the raw performance of a flagship phone. There will be people who like the Pixel UI, but I think it looks like the winner of a design contest in fifth grade. (“Yes, I know that’s a matter of opinion.”) In the end, the features that mean most to you will determine your choice. However, I like that there are such good devices available for less than $500.
Also, the new Google Pixel 7a is worth noting. There are reports that the Pixel 7a will have a Tensor 2 chipset, a 90Hz screen, and wireless charging. This means that it should be a strong competitor to the A54.
Samsung Galaxy A54 5G Verdict
Our top pick for an Android phone under £500 is the A54. The Pixels are so good that we don’t suggest many phones of that price. We love the clear and bright screen, the fact that the storage can be expanded, the long battery life, and the fact that the software has been supported for many years.
There are some things that the Galaxy flagships don’t do perfectly. Even though the camera isn’t as quick as we’d have liked and the design is pretty basic, the phone is a great deal, especially as a cheaper choice to the S-series. This is the best Android phone for people who already have a lot of Samsung gear and don’t want to switch.
