Samsung Galaxy A12

Announced late last year and available since January, the Galaxy A12 is not the absolute most affordable phone Samsung sells – the Galaxy M02 gets that title. Samsung’s naming is a bit iffy in the lower tier and it can get confusing what’s what between the A and M series but the A12 sits just below the M12, and above the M02s. Not all of these models are available globally so you may or may not be able to snatch the most affordable Samsung in your particular neck of the woods.

The Galaxy A12 we have here is equipped with a 6.5-inch display and the consequences of the budget constraints are easy to spot. It’s one of few LCDs in the OLED-dominated Galaxy lineup, and the 720p resolution is also on the low side of average for the diagonal. It’s a fairly standard combo of size, technology and resolution for the segment, so the A12 isn’t ill-equipped, in fact.

The Mediatek Helio P35 is doing the math inside the A12 and that too isn’t a particularly exciting bit of hardware on its own. Again, however, it’s perfectly adequate for the price point – you’re getting an octa-core CPU and the chip is built on a 12nm fabrication process, so it should be decently powerful and frugal at the same time.

The quad camera setup on the back actually makes a strong case for the Galaxy A12 in its market context. While the usefulness of the two 2MP modules is debatable (one for depth data, the other for ‘macro’), the 48MP main camera and a 5MP ultrawide make for nice tandem that’s hard to find. An 8MP selfie camera completes the picture in the imaging department.

One last important bit – the Galaxy A12 is powered by a 5,000mAh battery and that’s a lot of battery for a 12nm entry-level chipset and a 720p display, 6.5-inch as it may be. We’re expecting solid numbers for battery life.