Samsung released the Galaxy A53 model back in late March 2022, and it wasn’t long until people started to compare it with its older cousin, the A52s phone that came out in September 2021. The older model is still a bit superior thanks to its better processor and the existence of a headphones jack, in case you care about that enough.
After using the Samsung Galaxy A53 for almost a month and a half since I bought it to be my personal smartphone for the next few years, I believe I am justified to write an objective review. First of all, I must say that I’m not the type of person who’s necessarily looking for the best features when it comes to smartphones. I also don’t prefer gaming on these kinds of devices, as I prefer to run my virtual and immersive worlds on much bigger displays. No offense, but I believe that is the way they were meant to be played. I only prefer classical games on my smartphone, such as chess or trivia.
Surely there are tons of other smartphones out there that can be used for high-end gaming, and furthermore, you can always connect a gamepad and a monitor to your phone to have a console-like experience. But this article is not about additional attachments. And second, Galaxy A53 can also do a pretty good job when it comes to running high-end games such as Call of Duty: Mobile, PUBG, and so on.
CPU performance
The Exynos 1280 chipset of my Galaxy A53 behaves pretty well whether I have been searching through the menu, my photos and videos, running apps, or even running some games such as Asphalt or Call of Duty as a test. Some lags have occurred from time to time after a few weeks of usage, but nothing to make me pull my hair out. And no, I’m quite sure that there isn’t such a smartphone out there that is completely lagless, regardless of what some people want or prefer to believe.
Running a Geekbench 5 test today, I saw that my Samsung Galaxy A53 was able to score 739 single-core points and 2000 points for the multi-core score. It could have certainly been better, but for this phone’s range of price, I believe that those are some reasonable scores.
Cameras
With a 64MP main camera on the rear and a 32MP front camera, the Samsung Galaxy A53 surely sounds good. But you know what they say that you cannot judge a book by its cover.
I like the phone’s cameras, don’t get me wrong, especially considering that we’re only talking about a midrange phone. But after taking hundreds of photos, I realized that the colors are a little bit ‘exaggerated’ compared to how they look in the real world, but that might just be more like a personal caprice rather than an objective standpoint. I prefer cameras that take pictures just the way they look in reality, without any kind of strategy of making them look any ‘decorated.’ I want to see people look like they really are, not like dolls.
On the other hand, I’ve seen many more phones that exaggerate photos a lot more than Samsung Galaxy A53 does, which means that, at least by comparison, the South Korean giant’s midrange phone is still performing well.
Display
The display of the Samsung Galaxy A53 is practically everything that a user can want. It’s a Super AMOLED that measures 6.5 inches, has a refresh rate of 120Hz, and a luminosity of 800 nits. Furthermore, it’s protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5, just in case you have a weird passion for scratching phone displays. Let’s not also forget that the phone also features IP67-rated water protection, which confirms that it’s a pretty durable device.
In other words, the display of my personal Samsung Galaxy A53 looks and behaves very well. I admit I haven’t put it to any scratching test, but otherwise, I cannot have any complaints.
Overall, buying a Samsung Galaxy A53 was a pretty good decision for me. As I said previously, I’m not necessarily looking for the best features when it comes to my personal smartphone, and I don’t prefer gaming on these devices. You definitely shouldn’t buy this phone if you necessarily want to see a headphones jack on it. That’s right; it doesn’t exist anymore. You must opt for wireless headphones or not at all. The phone currently costs around $300, which is pretty reasonable in my book.