Galaxy A series of smartphones have always held the mantra of success in the premium mid-range segment as we saw some A series smartphones doing very well. Last year, Samsung came up with the Galaxy A52 (Review) which was a good offering with all the bells and whistles, and later Samsung launched the Galaxy A52s (Review) which was a perfect all-rounder smartphone from Samsung.

The Galaxy A52s packs in a powerful Snapdragon 778G chipset, a 120Hz AMOLED display, a 4500mAh battery with 25W fast charging and came with a good quad Camera setup. With the newer Galaxy A53, Samsung has not changed much as you still get the same smartphone like the Galaxy A52s, but here you now get the newer Exynos 1280 SoC compared to the Snapdragon 778G chipset.

So is the Galaxy A53 worth buying and how good of an upgrade is it over the last year's Galaxy A52s? Let's find out in the full review.

The Galaxy A53 sports a similar design as that of the Galaxy A52s and the A52. The back is made up of polycarbonate instead of glass and you get a similar camera module which is rectangular in shape and houses the quad cameras with a LED flashlight. Just like the Galaxy A52s, this one also is raised slightly with the color matching that of the back. 

The blacked-out circles around the four cameras look good. The Galaxy A53 is available in four different colors - Awesome Black, Awesome Blue, Awesome White(all three also found on Galaxy A52s), and a newer Awesome Peach. The back has a matte finish that does not catch any fingerprints and just like the Galaxy A52s, there is an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance.

To the sides, you are getting a polycarbonate frame instead of a metallic one which seems to be slightly disappointing as it is a premium mid-range smartphone. The right side houses the power button and the volume buttons, while the left side remains completely clean as before. At the top, there is a secondary noise-canceling microphone and a dual SIM card slot that is a hybrid slot.

The bottom of the smartphone has a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, and a primary microphone. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack here which is a big miss since the Galaxy A52s had it. The weight of the smartphone is 189grams similar to the Galaxy A52s but now it is slightly slimmer at 8.1mm compared to the 8.4mm thickness of the Galaxy A52s.

The front of the Galaxy A53 has a single-punch hole display with minimum bezels to the sides. The front of the display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Overall, the build and design are not the best in class as you are getting the same familiar design and no glass back but small features like the IP67 rating is a good measure taken care of by Samsung.

The Galaxy A53 sports a similar display as that of the Galaxy A52s i.e. 6.5-inches Full HD+(1080x1920 pixels) Super AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. As this is an AMOLED display, the color reproduction and viewing angles are excellent. Like the Galaxy A52s, here also you are getting a 120Hz refresh rate which makes things smoother whether multitasking or gaming.

Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you are getting a 240Hz touch sampling rate which is not the best in class as other smartphones come with higher 300/360Hz touch sampling rates, but still, you get faster touch responses during gaming on the Galaxy A53. This 120Hz refresh rate is not an adaptive one so you only have two options to choose between higher 120Hz or standard 60Hz.

Switching to standard 60Hz will provide a much better battery life. Since this is an AMOLED display, there is an optical in-display fingerprint scanner that works accurately and fast. The display can now achieve a peak brightness of 800nits which is similar to that of the Galaxy A52s and the display is easily visible under direct sunlight and looks much brighter. 

The display can be set to Vivid and Natural where Vivid produces more saturated colors by covering the DCI-P3 gamut and switching to Gentle results in natural colors which cover the sRGB scale. You can also set the color temperature from a warmer to a cooler tone also. This display has support for Widevine L1 so you can stream HD contents on OTT platforms. 

But for some reason, Youtube cannot run on HDR though the display supports HDR. It is also missing on Netlfix which Samsung might fix in a future software update. Overall, this is a good display for media consumption but the lack of HDR support is a big miss.

The Galaxy A53 is powered by Samsung's own Exynos 1280 chipset which is a newer chipset but seems to be a downgrade compared to the Snapdragon 778G chipset found on the Galaxy A52s. The Exynos 1280 chipset has 2x2.4 GHz Cortex-A78 cores and another 6x2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 cores coupled with a Mali-G68 GPU. This chipset is based on an efficient 5nm process.

As it is built on a 5nm process, it may be power efficient compared to the 6nm process-based Snapdragon 778G. In day-to-day tasks like casual web browsing, multi-tasking between applications, or streaming social media, the smartphone handles all these with ease. But when it comes to gaming, the Exynos 1280 is not well optimized like in BGMI, you can only achieve HD graphics with a High frame rate which is not the best.

However, there were some minor stutters and lags noticed. The Snapdragon 778G chipset could run on HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates. The Galaxy A53 does feel slightly warmer after a longer period of gaming say around 3-4 hours. Playing at the highest graphics settings is not possible as Samsung has not optimized this chipset for gaming and maybe this thing fixes in a future software update. 

In terms of benchmarks, the scores are much lesser compared to that of the Snapdragon 778G but this chipset excels in terms of thermal throttling where the sustained performance was around 80-85 percent which is good. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for 10 bands of 5G and you get good carrier aggregation also. 

The Galaxy A53 is available in two variants - 6/8GB LPDDR4X RAM with 128GB storage which is of UFS 2.2 speeds. There is also a RAM plus feature where you can get an extra 2GB to 8GB RAM (virtual RAM) for enhanced multi-tasking. Overall, the performance does feel slightly inferior to that of the Galaxy A52s.

The Galaxy A53 runs on OneUI 4.1 based on Android 12. OneUI is very well optimized with the 120Hz display and everything feels smooth. There are a lot of customizations present to change icon shape and size, and different styles for the Always-On display, and also Samsung provides a large Theme engine where you can choose from a wider range of themes. 

You get all the features like Link to Windows where you can use your smartphone as an interface on PC and can edit images, make calls, etc., as there is Android 12, Color Palletes are present where the system automatically chooses a particular color depending on the wallpaper an applies it to the quick toggles, dialler, and other UI elements, Edge panels are present to get quick use of your favorite applications.

Samsung Pay is available but you do miss out on Samsung DeX which is present on the S-series of smartphones. Samsung Knox is present which acts as a security layer between hardware and software and there is also a Secure Folder present to store private files, images, etc. However, you do get quite an amount of bloatware that can be uninstalled and also you get a Samsung Browser that does throw in some notifications. 

But when it comes to software updates, Samsung has taken a huge step as now just like the Galaxy S22 series, with the Galaxy A53, Samsung is promising four years of Android OS updates and five years of security patches so you are assured to get Android 16 on the Galaxy A53. Overall, if you do not consider bloatware, the software experience remains excellent.

The Galaxy A53 sports a quad-camera setup which is similar to one found on the Galaxy A52s that includes a 64MP f/1.8 Sony IMX682 sensor for the main camera, and a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, a 5MP f/2.4 macro camera and a 5MP depth sensor for portraits. The front has a 32MP f/2.5 camera.

The images from the main camera come out with good details that look sharper and have a good dynamic range. With the Scene Optimised turned on, the colors do look oversaturated and there is some amount of noise present. Compared to the Galaxy A52s, you do lose out on some details as you have the Snapdragon 778G which had slightly better image processing than the Exynos 1280 chipset.

With the 64MP mode, the details come out much sharper but the images do suffer from overexposure quite a bit and details do crop in a bit. The noise is very low and the colors look natural. At night, the images from the main camera come out with good dynamic range but colors look oversaturated and there is a larger amount of noise but turning on the night mode does lower noise and improves the exposure, dynamic range, etc. 

The 12MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range and details look good though a tad bit softer. There is some amount of distortion around the edges but colors come out natural. However, this ultrawide camera is better than the other 8MP ultrawide cameras. Similar goes for the images shot at the night where the details are good but are softer and here noise is present.

But you also get a dedicated night mode for the ultrawide camera which does improve the exposure a bit and also retains the colors thus improving the noise in the background and also the dynamic range improves slightly. With the 5MP macro camera, the images come out with details that look sharper and have a good dynamic range with less noise.

The 5MP depth sensor is good for portraits as the dynamic range and edge detection come out good. The colors come to be natural without any oversharpening and background blur is also well implemented. The noise is well under control in portraits. 

The front camera is of 32MP resolution and the images come out with sharper details with natural human skin tones in selfies. The noise is very low and the dynamic range is very good. With the Scene Optimizer turned on, the colors did look slightly oversaturated, and with the HDR mode turned on, you do get slightly inconsistent colors. 

The portrait selfies come out with good edge detection and dynamic range but do suffer from slight oversharpening. The main camera can record 4K videos at 30fps and these videos come out with good dynamic range and colors look natural without much oversharpening. The noise is very less due to the presence of OIS but the details look a tad bit softer and autofocus does not work properly most of the time.

Switching to 1080p at 60fps, the videos have a good dynamic range with no noise. The ultrawide camera can also record 4K videos ta 30fps but the details look slightly softer and some distortion is present around the edges. The dynamic range is good but there is a lot of shakiness present. With the Ultra Steady Mode turned on, the videos from the ultrawide camera come out more stable.

The front camera can record 4K videos at 30fps which comes out with good dynamic range and the details come out sharper with very less noise. The skin tones look natural without any oversharpening and since there is EIS present, the videos come out stable without much shakiness. Overall, the cameras are good but the Galaxy A52s is slightly better than the Galaxy A53.

The Galaxy A53 gets a larger 5000mAh battery compared to the 4500mAh battery on the Galaxy A52s. The smartphone easily lasted for one single day with some charge left with heavy usage which included playing games like BGMI for 4-5 hours, streaming social media, and rendering videos for longer hours, all with the display set to 120Hz.  Switching to 60Hz, with heavy usage gives two days of battery life which is very good.

With normal usage, the smartphone could easily last for two and half days both at 60Hz as well as 120Hz. The standard screen-on time is around 7-8 hours which is a good improvement over the 7-7.5 hours of screen-on time on the Galaxy A52s. Such good battery life is managed by the optimization of the OneUI 4.1 and Exynos 1280 chipset which is based on an efficient 5nm process. 

Like the Galaxy A52s, the Galaxy A53 supports 25W fast charging, but this time like the Galaxy S22 series, Samsung has removed the charger inside the box which is slightly disappointing as the Galaxy A52s did ship with a 15W fast charger inside the box. So using the 25W fast charger, the Galaxy A53 can go from 0 to 100 percent within 1 hour 30 minutes which is slightly slower than the competition.

The Galaxy A53 houses a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds very louder and has a great bass level and clarity.  The sound distribution is equally good through the top earpiece and the downward bottom-firing speaker and is slightly better than last year's Galaxy A52s. There is also support for Dolby Atmos. However, you do miss out on the 3.5mm headphone jack which is present on the Galaxy A52s.  

The Galaxy A53 proves to be a good all-rounder which provides a good design, great display for media consumption, good battery life, a good set of cameras, and a great software experience with decent performance. However, there are things where the Galaxy A53 falls short mainly in terms of performance as you are getting an Exynos 1280 chipset which is slightly inferior to the Snapdragon 778G chipset on the Galaxy A52s.

There is no 3.5mm headphone jack and the cameras are also not as good as that of the Galaxy A52s. The build is still polycarbonate as other smartphones come with a premium glass build. You now also do not get a charger inside the box. So clearly, if you compare the Galaxy A53 with the Galaxy A52s, the Galaxy A52s is better in terms of performance, has a charger inside the box, and cameras are slightly better than the Galaxy A53.

Definitely, the Galaxy A52s makes better sense than the Galaxy A53 if you do not consider the battery life and it is now cheaper also. If you are looking for the latest Samsung A-series flagship in the premium mid-range segment, the Galaxy A53 is a great buy.