fbpx

Samsung Galaxy M12 Hands-on

One of Samsung’s newest affordable smartphones, the Galaxy M12, is now available for purchase. For under PHP 8K, you’re getting a smartphone with a large 6.5-inch screen, an Exynos 850 SoC, quad-rear cameras, and a large 5,000mAh battery. Check out our initial thoughts below.

Samsung didn’t release the price of the Galaxy M12 when we received the unit. We initially thought that it’s a mid-range device priced at least PHP 10K, primarily because it’s a large phone with a vibrant screen and a solid build even though it’s mostly plastic.

The front houses the 6.5-inch screen with HD+ resolution or equal to 270ppi. Even though the resolution is low compared to today’s standards, it’s still a decent resolution that looks okay for most uses like games and videos. The screen is bright, has accurate colors, and a decent resolution. The bezels are thick at the top and bottom, though. Above the screen is a notch for the 8MP selfie camera and the earpiece.

On the left is the card slot for two nano-sized SIM cards and a microSD card.

On the right are the volume buttons and power/lock key that also functions as a fingerprint scanner. The keys are plastic but clicky and solid. The latter is easy to reach, while the former might require you to reposition your hands for better access since they’re placed near the top of the frame.

Up top is the secondary microphone, while down at the bottom, we have the 3.5mm headphone jack, main microphone, UBS-C port, and loudspeaker.

Flip it on its back and you will find the quad-rear cameras consisting of the 48MP main, 5MP ultra-wide, 2MP macro, and 2MP depth sensor. Also found here is the LED flash.

From this side, you will see a metallic finish with vertical micro patterns. These add a contemporary design to an otherwise boring back panel and provides some texture to make it grippy. As for colors, the Galaxy M12 comes in Black, Light Blue, and Green.

At 164mm, it’s a pretty tall device, but at 75.9mm it’s still relatively narrow. It also has seamless curves on the sides for an easy grip. However, it’s quite chunky at 9.7mm and hefty at 221g, but you can attribute that to the large screen and 5,000mAh battery.

Powering the Galaxy M12 is a Samsung Exynos 850 SoC, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. For software, it runs on One UI 3.1 based on Android 11. We’d like to do some initial benchmarks, unfortunately, we were told that the unit we got is an engineering sample, so we can’t do a full review on this yet.

The Samsung Galaxy M12 is priced at PHP 7,490 (available at Lazada with a 6.6 flash sale price of PHP 5,990). It’s affordable, yes, but almost near the price of more powerful smartphones with 5G connectivity.

Samsung Galaxy M12 specs:
6.5-inch HD+ (1600 x 720) PLS IPS LCD screen
Samsung Exynos 850 2.0GHz octa-core processor
4GB RAM
64GB storage
expandable up to 1TB microSD
Quad rear cameras:
• 48MP F2.0 (main)
• 5MP F2.2 (ultra-wide)
• 2MP F2.4 (macro)
• 2MP F2.4 (depth)
8MP front camera
Dual-SIM (nano)
4G LTE
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, Beideou, Galileo
3.5mm audio jack
USB Type-C
One UI 3.1 (Android 11)
5,000mAh battery w/ 15W fast charge
164 x 75.9 x 9.7mm
221g
Black, Blue, Green

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 983 other subscribers

Leave a Reply
JOIN OUR TELEGRAM DISCUSSION

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *