Samsung Galaxy A20 Hands-On, First Impressions

In the span of a few months, Samsung aggressively released a number of smartphones under its A series of smartphones. Currently, there are nine new devices and one of which is the Galaxy A20 that has interesting specs with competitive pricing. Today, I’ll be taking my first look at this phone and tell you how it initially fared. Let’s begin.

The Galaxy A20’s design is pretty similar to its other siblings. It comes with a notched design which Samsung calls it as the Infinity-V display. Its body is made up of a glossy polycarbonate material which the company calls Glastic. It pretty much looks the usual premium Samsung smartphone that you see in the market given that I have the black variant. However, this device comes with two other colors — red and blue.

At the front, we have the 6.4-inch screen which is relatively large as compared with the smartphones available in the market in this price segment. The notch area houses the 8MP camera while right above it is the call speaker. Aside from its size, it is good for watching videos thanks to its Super AMOLED panel which produces darker blacks and richer colors. My only issue is its HD+ resolution which is a bummer given that I’m already used to a 1080p resolution.

Looking to the left will show you the lone tray that houses the Dual-SIM card slots and a dedicated micro SD card slot.

On the right is the typical volume rocker and power button set up. The buttons are clicky while their positioning is just right for my thumbs to reach them.

Up top is the noise-canceling microphone while at the bottom are the 3.5mm audio port, USB Type-C port, main microphone, and loudspeaker. I’m always delighted to see a device with Type-C given that it provides faster file transfer speeds.

Flip on its back and you’ll see the dual 13MP and 5MP cameras with the LED flash sitting right below them. At the middle, you’ll see the oval-shaped fingerprint scanner and the Samsung logo.

The Galaxy A20 is pretty slim and sleek thanks to its 3D Prism design. I’ve held the Galaxy A50 and so far, they don’t really have any significant difference in terms of thickness and weight. You can easily confuse yourself with the two devices, but, the latter’s defining feature is that it doesn’t have a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. Overall it feels premium; however, it is a fingerprint mark and smudge magnet so I have to constantly clean it.

Powering the Galaxy A20 is a Samsung Exynos 7884 which is relatively new and seems like it is somewhat inferior to the company’s Exynos 7885 based on the numbering. It has a Mali-G72 MP2 graphics paired with 3GB of RAM. I’ve yet to know its full performance capability, but so far in the AnTuTu v7 benchmark, it yielded 94,945 which is a less score compared with the Exynos 7904 of the Galaxy M20.

The Samsung Galaxy A20 carries a 4,000mAh battery with a 15W fast charging which is good. For PHP 9,990, this device is a pretty much a good choice in this price segment but it is not enough to compete in terms of overall performance. Stay tuned as I will take it for a full spin in the coming days.

Samsung Galaxy A20 specs:

• 6.4-inch HD+ (1560 x 720) Super AMOLED Infinity-V display, 268ppi
• Samsung Exynos 7884 1.6GHz octa-core CPU
• Mali-G71 MP2 GPU
• 3GB RAM
• 32GB storage
• microSD up to 512GB (dedicated slot)
• 13MP f/1.9 + 5MP f/2.2 dual rear cameras
• 8MP f/2.0 front camera
• Dual-SIM
• 4G LTE
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
• Fingerprint scanner
• USB Type-C
• Android 9 Pie
• 4,000mAh battery w/ 15W Fast Charging