The market is crowded with inexpensive smartphones from manufacturers like Motorola and Nokia these days, but Samsung traditionally tries to keep things simple, frequently selling only one or two sub-£200 phones at any given moment.
Updates have just been released across the company’s A-series lineup, with the brand-new Galaxy A13 continuing to be one of Samsung’s most affordable smartphones now available on store shelves. This might be a good-value option to its mid-range competitors if money is a little tight.
Review of the Samsung Galaxy A13 Design and essential components
The Galaxy A13’s design is quite subpar by today’s standards to start things off. The Galaxy A12 had an unusual blend of fake flagship looks with a distinctive two-tone design; in contrast, the Galaxy A13 is nothing like that and has a relatively subdued appearance.
It’s totally up to you whether or not you want a simple aesthetic, but I can’t help but believe that Samsung could have done more to make the Galaxy A13 stand out.
Again, the back of the phone is made entirely of plastic (no surprises there), but regrettably, it lacks the more upscale appearance and feel of the previous generation because it is only one color without any distinguishing textures. Sadly, this new design has the additional flaw of being somewhat of a fingerprint magnet, making it nearly impossible to maintain things smudge-free.
However, Samsung at least done a nice job of positioning the cameras on the rear. The phone’s macro camera and LED flash are positioned to the right of the 50MP main camera, which is vertically positioned in the top-left corner beside a 5MP ultrawide and depth-sensing sensor. They are all located separately, and there isn’t a distracting camera block in sight, making it a quite pleasant little setup.
Review of the Samsung Galaxy A13: Display
One of the rare Samsung phones without an OLED screen is the Galaxy A13. The A13’s 6.6-inch screen is a straightforward IPS model with a 2,408 x 1,080 resolution and 400 ppi of pixel density. Although Samsung’s AMOLED technology is flawless, you get a screen that looks fantastic for the price.
The A13’s display isn’t too bad, and I’ve seen worse on recent phones at this budget — here’s looking at you, Nokia G21 — with a sRGB color gamut coverage of 99.1%, a total volume of 129.3%, and an average Delta E (color variance) of 2.09.
In our tests, the phone’s maximum brightness peaked at 483 cd/m2, and the contrast is a respectable 1,082:1. The main drawback is that this operates at a typical 60Hz rate, so if you want silky smooth scrolling, you’ll need to search elsewhere. Although the A13’s US model has a 90Hz display, it only has 720p resolution.
Review of the Samsung Galaxy A13’s functionality and endurance
A cheap phone will never have the most power, but regrettably, this is where the Galaxy A13 really falters. Similar to the S22 series, the US and UK variants have different chipset componentry, with the somewhat older US model (SM-A136U) supporting 5G getting the MediaTek Dimensity 700 and the UK model (SM-A135F) just supporting 4G.
In most cases, this isn’t much of a problem because the flagship Exynos 2200 shares a lot of architectural similarities with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor. However, in this situation, the 2GHz Exynos 850 is drastically outperformed by the 2.2GHz Dimensity 700. The US model of the phones costs $250, or about £191, so there aren’t much price differences between them.
In essence, this means that UK consumers are being shortchanged when it comes to speeds in addition to being unable to purchase the 5G variant. I got a meager 156 for single-core processing on the Geekbench 5 test, and a dismal 587 for multicore. Multiple test runs came to the same outcome, contrary to my initial assumption that something must have gone wrong with the test; as you can see from the graph below, these results are far lower than those of the Galaxy A12.
The 5G model, on the other hand, is far faster and more competitive than its predecessors. A single-core result of about 467 and a multicore result of 1,100 are listed in publicly available Geekbench scores. The UK version would have taken twice as long. Ouch.
Real-world performance is a little better than these numbers imply, but if consistent speeds are what you’re expecting, you’ll still want to avoid the Galaxy A13 due to its lengthy boot times, jerky app transitions, and potentially bad gaming frame rates.
Review of the Samsung Galaxy A13 software
The Galaxy A13 ships with Android 12, the most recent version of Google’s mobile operating system. However, Samsung has added its own One UI 4.1 veneer on top, so this isn’t a completely vanilla experience.
You’ll feel right at home if you’ve already used a Samsung smartphone. Samsung doesn’t frequently make significant changes, but this most recent update includes new personalized widget recommendations in addition to a refreshed privacy dashboard. If an app is using your microphone or camera, a green status indication now appears in the top-right corner, which is a lovely touch.
Review of the Samsung Galaxy A13: Cameras
There are four cameras on the rear of the Samsung Galaxy A13: a 50MP (f/1.8) main camera, a 5MP (f/2.2) ultrawide, two 2MP macro cameras, and a depth-sensing camera. Further complicating matters, the UK’s 8MP front-facing camera has been replaced with a 5MP one, while the US’s 5G variant is missing the ultrawide. Weird.
The Galaxy A13’s cameras manage to pull things back from the brink of total disaster. Again, not every time you press the shutter will result in an Instagram-worthy photo, but I’ve been delighted with a few of the ones I’ve captured over the past week or so.
Verdict on the Samsung Galaxy A13 review
The previous Galaxy A12 has been around for a long, and by today’s standards, it’s definitely a little antiquated. With 2022 upgrades to the cameras, design, and software, the Galaxy A13 was in a great position to finally make a debut on our list of the best affordable smartphones despite not initially receiving a recommendation in our review.
However, Samsung really stumbled with this. Its choice of one of the least powerful mobile chipsets we’ve tested in a long time is perplexing, and the absence of 5G connection is a glaring oversight. We are receiving the short end of the stick, and neither the additional ultrawide camera nor the 1080p screen can disguise this.
