Samsung Galaxy A33 5G hands-on: A good screen makes entry-level phones look more premium

When purchasing electronic products, the simplest and most rude way is to choose the most powerful flagship model of the contemporary era. There is no doubt that the performance and user experience are the best. However, in fact not everyone has such a budget, and now the so-called flagship models are getting more and more expensive, and it is not easy to start. Therefore, many brands, especially the mid-range models of mobile phone manufacturers, are actually the mainstays that most people will buy.

However, the appearance of the Samsung Galaxy A33 5G has aroused the editor’s interest. From the specifications, design, and experience, the 3,000-dollar model “looks” better than the high-end mobile phones priced several times.

In the past, the 3,000-yuan mobile phones had no texture at all, a strong plastic feeling, but the Galaxy A33 5G will not be like this. The all-black version of the A33 that Samsung borrowed has the same matte-tone back cover and middle frame to add a sense of unity, and the built-in 5,000mAh battery also brings a certain amount of weight, so that the phone will not be cheap when you hold it in your hand. However, the result of imitating high-end mobile phones in this way is to extend the design without 3.5mm headphone jack to relatively low-priced models. Friends who need wired headphones have to find cheaper and lower-end ones. But in exchange, the A33 has the name of the cheapest IP67 waterproof and dustproof mobile phone from Samsung, and with Corning’s 5th generation Gorilla Glass, the durability of this cheap mobile phone can be higher than that of other competitors.

The design of the front screen may be a bit of a drama, because the A33 uses a bangs-shaped screen design instead of a punch-hole screen. However, although the 6.4-inch screen is not a full screen, the borders on both sides are also thin, that is, the chin will be more obvious. Benefiting from the use of AMOLED panels, the fingerprint reader is also optical, making the entire user experience close to that of high-end models.

A design that is even better than the flagship Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is that the SIM slot on the middle frame is placed on the top of the phone, and it is not placed with the microphone at all, which completely eliminates the accidental “into the wrong hole” when the user is stupid. opportunity. That is to say, the past Samsung models did not have such a problem, I don’t know what the designer suddenly thought of this year.

When low-end mobile phones in the past were the most annoying, the screen was blurry and stuck, and the long loading time would break the line of reason. However, the screen of the Galaxy A33 5G is a 6.4-inch FHD+ AMOLED panel that supports a 90Hz refresh rate. It can provide a display that is bright enough, rich in color, and smooth in animation, which is the biggest reason why a 3,000-yuan mobile phone can also have a high-end mobile phone experience.

It’s a pity that this AMOLED panel failed to give the A33 HDR display, so watching Netflix and Disney+ has nothing to do with it. For audio-visual entertainment-related enhancements, only the Dolby Atmos sound effects supported by the A33 can provide a better on-the-spot experience through dual stereo speakers. Therefore, the principle of getting what you pay for is still there, but the example of the A33 means that the gap between the two is not as big as everyone thinks today.

Everyone should be very concerned about the performance of the Galaxy A33, the Exynos 1280 chip produced by Samsung itself. Although in PC Mark, this chip can get a score similar to Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’s 11,235, but when it comes to Geekbench 5, you can see a clear difference, with a single-core score of 743 and a multi-core score of 1,839. The biggest difference is the 3D Mark score. In the Wild Life Extreme, which really challenges the flagship model, its GPU scored only 634 points; Wild Life has 2,262 points.

It is a pity that the Galaxy A33 5G does not support Wi-Fi 6, so the connection speed and stability will be weaker than those with support, especially in families with multiple devices. Taking a practical example, it is impossible for the Galaxy A33 to play the burn-in “Genshin Impact”, unless everyone can endure the slag picture quality, requiring stable network connection of “League of Legends” and “Wild Brawl”. Just a moment. So don’t expect a 3,000-yuan mobile phone, which can really match the performance of flagship mobile phones.

In the published article, it is mentioned that the A33 can use the RAM Plus function to allow the system to use the idle storage space as virtual memory. With the native 8GB RAM, four options of 2GB, 4GB, 6GB, and 8GB can be borrowed, up to a maximum of 16GB RAM. However, the borrowed RAM will not see a difference in scores in the performance test, and it will not help when playing high-demand game masterpieces, so I believe that some users who do not regularly clear the app cache can be more effective. Operate your phone with peace of mind.

After some trial play, the editor’s comments on the Galaxy A33 are based on the entry-level model priced at HK$2,998, to see how a mobile phone with poor specifications can “cheat” everyone through a beautiful screen. I mistakenly think that it can be compared with mobile phones of four or five thousand yuan. Of course, when you run the performance test carefully and enter a high-demand game, the distance of the price difference can be seen immediately. However, what the A33 can do is to let everyone play it with a beautiful facade, especially when trying it out in the store to leave a good impression. The shortcomings in the future will depend on whether you have the luck to “expose” them. Otherwise, the A33 can still satisfy the general work as a smartphone.