A couple of months ago I reviewed my new daily driver, a Samsung A30s. It has been an interesting journey, the first few weeks were mostly adjusting to One UI. I may have underestimated the jump because I found myself on occasion swiping up expecting the iOS control centre to pop up, but that went away eventually.
The phone overall has been good, some things exceeded my expectations, aspects of it that were disappointing and there is one thing that I am willing to overlook.
The good
Camera
I’m not the most proficient shutter bug, but I have really enjoyed exploring the camera. The picture quality still blows me away, especially the wide angle mode.
For a midrange phone, I think this is really good. I never thought that I would take my phone out to take photos as much as I have with the A30s.
Battery
My usage is admittedly not that heavy, but on days where I spend a good chunk of time on it, I usually only have to charge it once. Speaking of charging, the fast charge is a feature I never paid too much mind to. I always try to remember to plug it in before I go to sleep, but one morning I woke up and I had forgotten to put the phone on the charger the night before. I plugged it in and it took just under of a couple of hours for a full charge.
Processing power
I haven’t had an occasion yet where the phone has been laggy. Scrolling and app response times have been good. I also haven’t had any problems with video and audio playback.
The Bad
Play Store app downloads and updates
App updates have stalled at least 3 times. I also couldn’t download new apps in the periods when app updates weren’t downloading. Samsung has a number of fixes on their website but none of them worked for me. It took many YouTube videos to find the fix. The one that worked was reverting to an older version of the Play Store.
The thing I am willing to overlook
The A30s has on two occasions gone black and then displayed the Samsung logo. The first time this happened I thought maybe it was rebooting for some reason but after 10 minutes of the logo, I got a little concerned.
Thankfully the fix to this was pretty easy, long-pressing the volume down and power button till the phone reboots properly, cleared it.
Overall I’d give the A30s a 7/10. Besides the two issues, I don’t really have too much to complain about. It does everything else really well.
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