SAMSUNG Galaxy A36

Bought this phone as a backup for a recent trip. Didn’t want to risk my main phone getting stolen or confiscated because reasons. I’ll just cover the main points that some people might care about..

Camera:
Since I was bringing an actual camera, I didn’t care too much about the camera performance in the Galaxy A36. I had low expectations from such a budget phone. However, the camera performed surprisingly well. It does struggle during indoor low light situations. But pictures taken at night surrounded by city lights looked great. The reason is that the camera does a lot of internal processing and adjusts the brightness/contrast/etc for you. On the flagship Galaxy phones, you can actually control the amount of auto post processing or turn it off. But on the A36, it applies the maximum processing and you can’t change it. Video performance is very good. However, you’re limited in changing some settings. Maximum resolution is 4K but you’re stuck at 30 FPS and can’t be changed to a higher or lower frame rate. Also you can’t use the wide lens. So if you’re taking video, you may need take a few steps back to get the entire scene.

Processor:
Despite the lower CPU and RAM specs, it performed well. I mostly used Google Maps to help me get around town and it did not stutter. Also used IG and Lightroom for image editing without any issues. I don’t game at all on my phones, but I would not recommend gaming on this due to the lower specs. Probably livestreaming is not a great idea either.

Screen:
Screen is bright and clear. I don’t watch movies on my phone, so I can’t comment on that. But it’s fine for web surfing and social media. I did notice some lag or sensitivity issues though. If you’re a fast typer on the screen, this might be an issue for you.

Glitches:
Only glitch I’ve experienced was with the orientation sensor. When I launch the camera and rotate the phone to landscape, the camera is stuck in portrait. I have to tap or shake the phone few times and then it finally rotates. Same thing when using maps/navigation. The dashboard on my rental car tilts forward. So the phone screen “flipped” the app upside down. When I picked the phone up to get the right orientation, it took a full minute. Maybe I got a dud unit.

Talk:
I didn’t use this phone at all for voice calls. So I can’t comment on the sound quality.

Build Quality:
It’s plastic. I wish more phones were made of plastic. Glass back phones look pretty but they also add weight and fragility. The A36 is very light and easy to hold.

Overall:
Not a bad phone for the price range. Probably not fair to compare it to the main Galaxy S phones, but if I had to do it again, I’d probably get a used Galaxy S23. Since this is just a backup phone for me, I’ll likely hold on to it.

I’m far from a phone enthusiast. My phones have all been relatively mid range Moto G phones over the years and I’ve been reasonably happy with them. My Moto G Stylus (2022) was working fine after almost three years, but was done with security updates and started exhibiting some quirky behaviors like extremely long restarts, a finicky fingerprint reader, and a bit of slow down overall. Given that electronics are about to skyrocket in price, I figured rather than waiting until it was completely unusable, I’d be proactive in getting a new phone until (hopefully) all this instability calms down.

My wife’s Moto G Power from 2020 was in rough shape, so I looked at the new mid range Moto G line and was somewhat unimpressed, especially at the continued lack of longer support. When I stumbled upon the A36 for the same price as the Moto G Stylus 5G from the previous year, I figured I’d give it a shot. With a decent SOC, camera, etc. and six years of OS and security updates from Samsung being promised, it seemed like it was time to move away from Moto. We both have Samsung tablets we’ve been happy with, so I wasn’t concerned about One UI being much different from the more vanilla Android the Moto phones have. She loved her A36 so much right out of the box, I figured I’d get one too. Once I had (painlessly) moved everything over from my old phone using the transfer app, I was equally happy.

The fast charging is awesome. The battery hasn’t even dipped below 50% for my average day, and I now get 5G with my carrier, which has some speed perks with it. This thing also syncs up much quicker with our wireless Android Auto. I use an adapter with my Honda–ironically the Moto one–and my wife’s newer Subaru has wireless natively, but was hit or miss and ran so slow with her old Moto, but no more!

She opted for the purple color, which is nice, and I just went for black because I’m boring. They’re nice looking phones. The sound is loud and clear and I have no complaints, though I have probably heard better. In general, this is a solid mid-range phone that will hopefully last me the full six years it has for support. I’ve already recommended it to my my brother who still uses a flip phone but can’t stand how terrible it is since he had to switch with the 3G shutdown. For those that don’t need latest and greatest, this is a solid pick.