So, in short for people who don’t want to read this post – phone is perfect mid-range device, cameras are great in daily shooting situations and in night based times shots are fine. Battery can support it for 2 days with mid to heavy usage patterns. Plus it is pretty much supported device which will get Android 10 with One UI 2.0.
OK, after TL;DR section let’s go to why I chose this device and how it is to use it for a almost a year with various patterns of usage. I used it pretty much heavy in start, lowered usage while on vacation and lately it is on mid usage.
Why I chose this device is one question – I decided to get it because our ISP and Mobile Operator here in Croatia in store where we went didn’t had Samsung Galaxy A50 or Nokia 6.1 Plus in Stock when we decided to move from another ISP to them. That was a bit, well, weird but yet – it was smaller store and that was fine for me. We head to buy 2 devices because we moved 2 phone numbers from another Mobile Operator to this one.
After few days of super heavy usage which included WiFi, Mobile Data, Dark Mode and Bluetooth on all time I saw that phone can survive for almost 2 full work days. That was nice. Later on while in lower time of usage phone survived for almost 3.5 days and then I disabled Bluetooth which I now use only when I want to connect to my Bluetooth Headset (Not so popular brand but it was cheap as f***). Nice one for 3300mAh Battery.
For specs of device I will provide it from GSMArena because device have various combinations of RAM and Storage. Our devices are 4GB RAM and 64GB of Storage version.
Screen is perfect size for my hands. It is perfect size, but well, I tried lately before this “human malware” some newer Samsung Devices from Operators Big Store and those are too big for my hands (note: those devices were Samsung Galaxy S20, Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip and Samsung Galaxy Fold).
Software is perfect, well, for me it is way better then Stock Android with some features like included Screen Recorder, scrolling Screenshot, double security with Knox etc. It is pretty much almost latest version of Android. Now it is on Android 9.0 with Samsung’s OneUI 1.0 with Security Patch for February of 2020. Yup, this device is pretty much up-to-date with Security Patches and with features which are perfect for daily usage I can’t explain anything else. Except that this device will get Android 10 with OneUI 2.0 later in 2020. ( April 2020. is time to get released in Europe), after old flagships get it. That would be great for user who used phones with max 2 update cycles and only got one (khm Huawei and Samsung in old days).
Now, it is big time – Cameras time. How are they in my usage?
Answer to question above is – perfect. I mean, really perfect. Only thing missing for me it is granular Pro Mode which had only Huawei P9 Lite (2016) but otherwise camera is great. Some shots are below in this gallery where all photos are uncompressed. For detailed informations about Photos check them out on updated Gallery via Google Photos.
As for video Quality I will refer to couple of videos linked below. All are in various forms which camera supports like Regular Mode, Time lapse mode and finally in Wide Angle camera mode.
View video examples on YouTube
As a conclusion I will say that this device is perfect for me, it will survive one more year of my usage and finally – it will be replaced with another mid-range device next year from A Series or maybe older flagship (hint: Galaxy S20).
Photos and videos in this review are my property.
Updated as of March 19th 2023 as test YouTube videos are removed from my now old YouTube channel and will be uploaded later on new channel.