The Galaxy A31 is one of the cheapest smartphones that Samsung is releasing this year. It is a decent device for its price, with one obvious handicap. You can read all about it in this review.
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Check de Samsung Galaxy A31 review
Samsung has already released quite a few smartphones in the A-series this year. Think of the A21s, compact A41, popular A51 and more expensive A71. The A31 is one of the cheaper phones that the South Korean manufacturer will offer in 2020.
Despite its modest price tag, the A31 about a nice OLED screen. Curious what we think of the rest of the device? Then read on quickly.
Plastic housing collects fingerprints
The Galaxy A31 looks like a typical mid-range Samsung phone. As with the A41 and A51, the housing is made of plastic. We think that is a great choice for a relatively cheap device like this. Moreover, the A31 hardly yields and lies well in the hand. However, the back, where Samsung has applied a distinctive pattern, is very sensitive to fingerprints.
The phone is slightly smaller than the Galaxy A21s, but a lot bigger than the A41. The Galaxy A31 measures 159.3 by 73.1 by 8.6 millimeters and has a weight of 185 grams. This makes it a fairly average device by contemporary standards. You never feel like holding a huge smartphone, but the A31 is certainly big enough to handle Netflix to look up. A great format.
The A31 also has bluetooth, nfc for contactless payments and also has an ‘old-fashioned’ headphone jack on board. The loudspeaker can be quite loud, but gives little detail.
Beautiful screen exceeds its price range
Unlike the A21s, the Galaxy A31 does have an OLED screen. With this, the device immediately takes a considerable lead on its cheaper brother. The screen of the A31 is 6.4 inches large and looks beautiful, with deep black values and the high contrast that you can expect from OLED.
The resolution is also fine with 2400 by 1080 pixels. Moreover, as is often the case with Samsung, the colors are nice and bright, making the screen more impressive than that of, for example, the more expensive ones OnePlus North.
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The screen of the A31 is also easy to read in sunlight and has fairly small edges, except for a large ‘chin’ at the bottom. The refresh rate of the screen is 60Hz. That is normal in this price range, although Xiaomi puts a 120Hz screen in the roughly equally expensive one Little X3 NFC. Such a screen looks much smoother, because it is refreshed 120 times per second.
It is also striking that the A31 has an ‘old-fashioned’ drop-shaped notch. The cheaper A21s has a small hole in the corner for the selfie camera. That looks just a bit more modern.
Hardware: too slow for those who can’t wait
In many ways, the Samsung A31 feels like a decent mid-sized car. However, the device gives away its price when it comes to performance. The A31 runs on the MediaTek Helio P65. The chip is assisted by 4GB of RAM and 64 or 128 GB of storage space.
The MediaTek is faster than the Exynos 850 processor in the Galaxy A21s, but you cannot call the A31 very fast. Launching apps often takes some time and if you want to multitask, the device starts to rise considerably. Animations also falter regularly, which gives you the feeling that you have a slow phone in your hands. It is easy to work with, but those who hate waiting should not be at the A31. Who would like to play games on their smartphone, by the way.
The fingerprint scanner of the A31 is located under the screen and is very slow. A scanner on the back or in the on / off button may seem less modern, but often works a lot better and faster.
Great software with guaranteed updates
The Galaxy A31 runs on Android 10, with the One UIskin from Samsung itself. In the past there was sometimes criticism of Samsung’s software differences, but One UI is now mature and works logically.
In addition, Samsung has an excellent update policy. Galaxy A phones will receive a quarterly security update for two years. In this case, you can expect it until the summer of 2022. In addition, the device will most likely receive two Android updates. Thus, the device will be updated to Android 11 in Android 12.
Four cameras on the back
The Samsung Galaxy A31 has four cameras on the back. You can immediately forget one of them. The 5 megapixel depth sensor only assists the primary camera when taking portraits. So you cannot take pictures with it.
The 5 megapixel macro camera works well, but it is of limited use. You can only use it to photograph flowers and plants up close, for example.
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Normal room -
Wide angle lens -
Macro
Then the primary camera, with a resolution of 48 megapixels, and the 8 megapixel wide-angle lens remain. In daylight, both cameras take acceptable pictures, although the photos are sharpened very aggressively at times. Unfortunately, a night mode is missing, so that the quality deteriorates very quickly at dusk.
Also striking is the large color difference between the primary camera and the wide angle. At the same settings, the wide-angle camera produces much more saturated photos than the normal camera. Wide-angle photos also have visibly less detail. This is a bit of a shame, but the wide-angle lens is a very handy feature to have.
A long-term battery
We can be brief about the battery life of the Samsung Galaxy A31: it is excellent. The battery has a capacity of 5000 mAh. Combined with a not too hungry processor, this results in a phone that can easily last a day. Are you a light user? Then two days is certainly possible.
There is a 15 Watt fast charger with the A31. It takes over two hours to fully charge the battery. That is not very fast, but in practice you will almost always charge this smartphone at night due to the good battery life. No problem that it takes a little longer.
Alternatives
The Samsung Galaxy A31 is available for around 225 euros. In that price range, there is currently one phone that makes it very difficult for the competition. We have already mentioned it: the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC.
The Xiaomi may not have an OLED screen, but it does have an excellent LCD screen with a refresh rate of 120Hz. More importantly, the processor in the Poco X3 is much more powerful. The Snapdragon 732 is a great chip that is more suitable for multitasking, for example, than the MediaTek Helio P65.
The Xiaomi cameras are also better and the battery life is at least as good. Keep in mind that the Xiaomi Poco X3 has a screen of 6.67 inches and is therefore a lot bigger than the Samsung A31.
Conclusion Samsung Galaxy A31 review
The Samsung Galaxy A31 does a pretty good job. The smartphone has a beautiful OLED screen, a large battery and we cannot complain about the cameras for this price. Those who think that these are important aspects of a telephone will have a reasonable purchase on the A31.
The main flaw is the processor. If you spend a lot of time on your smartphone, you want a device that won’t keep you waiting. The A31 does. Because there are faster phones in this price range, it is difficult to get really excited about the Samsung Galaxy A31.
Buy a Samsung Galaxy A31?
Are you planning to get the Samsung Galaxy A31? In our price comparison you can check the best deals for a single one Samsung Galaxy A31. The smartphone has a suggested retail price of 299 euros, but you can get it for example Belsimpel already for much less at home.
In conjunction with a sim only-abonnement you also have all the flexibility in terms of providers, number of calling minutes / internet and contract duration. You can also use the Samsung A31 with a subscription bring home.
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