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If you want a phone with high-end specs, but without the high-end price, Samsung’s Galaxy A53 has you covered. It’s ‘only’ a mid-range phone, but you’d hardly know it from its classy appearance, four-camera array, and stunning performance.
Read More...Please note: Every care is taken in compiling product details and reviews, but they are provided for broad guidance only. On occasion they may relate to older or more recent models than those offered on Mozillion at any one time.
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£225
- A great mid-range phone
- Massive battery
- Android updates until 2026
Not convinced? Try one of these alternatives to a Samsung Galaxy A53 5G:
Google Pixel 6 - more expensive, but more impressive
A refurbished Google Pixel 4a - older tech, but a great cheaper choice
Refurbished Samsung Galaxy S21 5G - last year’s flagship for only a little more
Samsung’s known for high-end phones that rival Apple’s own, but it also makes some of the best mid-range Android phones you can find. If that’s what you’re after, look no further than the Galaxy A53 - a distinctly cheaper phone that snaps at the heels of the flagships when it comes to both features and performance.
The Samsung Galaxy A53 features a big 6.5” OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. At the rear you’ll find a quad-camera setup, while inside there’s a huge 5,000mAh battery, which Samsung says will keep everything powered for up to two days. As you’d expect, it’s all wrapped up in a sleek body available in four different colours.
The price may be mid-range, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the Samsung Galaxy A53. It’s a great looking device, dominated by a large screen with narrow borders. At the rear, the camera hump is blended into the rear panel, helping to soften the impact of its four large lenses, plus an LED flash.
Typically for a modern phone, the A53’s battery is non-removable, but the sealed body helps Samsung offer waterproofing - even if it is to IP67. This is a slightly lower standard than you’d get on a flagship, but it still means the phone is spill and splash resistant. Pull out the phone’s SIM tray and you’ll find a hybrid slot, allowing you to choose between a second physical SIM or a micro SD card - a handy way to expand the standard 128GB storage.
This phone’s camera is right at the top of what you might expect for this price. Its main rear-facing snapper offers 64 megapixels (MP) and optical image stabilisation - great for blur-free low-light shots. It’s complemented by a 12MP ultra-wide unit, a 5MP macro lens, and a 5MP depth sensor - ideal for accurate focus and creative depth-of-field effects.
There’s a seriously good front-facing camera lurking under the punch-hole in the screen. Offering 32MP, it's over-specified for simple video calls and selfies, enabling you to get front-camera shots to rival the main camera photos from lesser phones.
Samsung hasn’t overlooked video performance - from either camera. Both the front and rear-facing units can shoot 4K or 1,080p video at 30 frames per second (fps). The main camera also offers 1,080p at 60fps. With optical image stabilisation, you can get smooth footage even when you’re moving, without the cropping necessary with lesser, software-stabilised phones. Again, the Galaxy A53’s expandable storage is helpful, allowing keen film-makers to slot in up to a terabyte (1TB) of extra space.
We’re used to mid-range phones with excellent OLED screens, but the Samsung Galaxy A53 takes things up a notch. At 6.5” this display is plenty big enough to give films and games the big screen treatment, with only a small hole-punch camera to spoil the view. Resolution is down from a high-end smartphone, but at 1,080x2,400 pixels it’s still more than enough for high definition content.
Even better, this is one of a growing number of mid-range phones to offer a 120Hz variable refresh rate, enabling smoother visuals and more reactive gaming. It’s a common feature on high-end phones, but still conspicuously absent on the standard iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini. As you’d hope for a quality screen, Samsung has added the protection of Gorilla Glass 5.
If there’s one area where the Galaxy A53 compromises, it’s in the outright power available from its Exynos 1280 chip. It’s a mid-range processor, offering plenty of power for typical users, but likely to disappoint gamers looking for high framerates on big 3D apps. On the plus side, less outright power means lower power use, and a longer battery life. You can also expect long updates with this phone - Samsung promises four years of Android upgrades from the 2022 launch, with a further year of security updates thereafter.
Talking of battery life, the Samsung Galaxy A53 offers it in abundance, thanks to a huge 5,000mAh unit. While we’re yet to test its real-world performance, Samsung says it’ll power you through two whole days of typical use - ideal for travellers, commuters, or just people who forget to plug in.
When you do run out of juice, this phone can fast charge over a USB-C connection at 25W, so even its huge battery should be fully replenished in a couple of hours. There’s no suitable charger in the box, though, and there’s also no wireless charge option, which could be an inconvenience.
You can only buy the Samsung Galaxy A53 in one configuration, combining 128GB of storage with 6GB of RAM. That’s plenty for most users, but as we mentioned, you can upgrade the storage via the microSD card slot. You can get the phone in black or white, in Awesome peach, or a particularly fetching pale Awesome blue.
There aren’t any other options, and you won’t find earphones or a charger in the box - for the fastest charging, make sure you buy one with at least a 25W rating. As you’d expect, there’s a wide-range of accessories and cases available from Samsung and third-party brands.
