Samsung Galaxy A12 SIM Free Android Smartphone Blue (UK Version)

Product Information

As you might guess from the narrow aperture and the low price of entry, photography on the Galaxy A12 is a mixed bag. In bright conditions, photos are quite good, with a decent composition and enough detail to be worthwhile. Yes, you can certainly do better by spending more money, but the pictures are clear enough for sharing, and you can get good results in the right conditions.

Basically, the delay between pressing the shutter button and a picture being taken means that anything that’s prone to any kind of sudden movements – think birds, babies, cats or dogs – will almost inevitably be a blurry mess by the time the phone finishes capturing the image. It’s here in spades. Right out of the box, the phone feels sluggish with stuttery animations and apps that take a couple of seconds to open. Granted, it does catch up with itself after a period of use, but it’s certainly not ideal for multitasking, despite the relatively generous 4GB of RAM it’s endowed with.The Galaxy A12 comes with a 6.5in PLS display (basically Samsung’s IPS-like panel) with a resolution of 720 x 1,600, giving you approximately 264 pixels per inch. And while this may be some way short of Full HD experiences that you can get for the price, even with the large panel it looks perfectly sharp in day-to-day use.

Frankly, I don’t think I’m alone in preferring phones with just one really good camera like the Pixel 4a, rather than needing to keep up with the Joneses with barely used peripheral lenses. But regardless, the Samsung Galaxy A12 has four: a 48MP (f/2.0) main camera, supported by a 5MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide lens and two 2MP (f/2.4) snappers for depth-sensing and macro photography. The other camera modes are fine as far as they go, but aren’t the kind of thing you’ll turn to often. Still, should you ever want to take a close-up shot of a 5p piece as I did below, you’ll get decent results. It’s not all bad in the performance charts, though: the one area where the hardware really shines is in efficiency, with the 5,000mAh battery managing a whopping 25hrs 58mins in our looped video battery test.Bought 2 years ago, it is still a smartphone that can keep up with the current models. It doesn't always have to be the latest and most expensive smartphone. I do not miss any function. The battery lasts all day (5000 mAh). It has enough memory (64 gb) for numerous apps. I have installed a lot of apps and it still works smoothly and relatively fast (4 RAM memory). If it slows down, you should run the memory cleanup and optimisation under Device Maintenance. Very good photos for the price (with 4 lenses, main camera with 48MP). With the macro camera you can shoot detailed photos. For example, I was able to photograph a bumblebee in flight to the flower and it looks like a professional. The selfie camera with 8MP is okay. The display is big enough at 6.5 inches, so I often stream videos and movies on it. Only that the display is broken after 1 fall despite armor film, annoys me (also with previous Samsung phones). The 8MP (f/2.2) front-facing camera is good enough for selfies and video calls. By default, it has ‘beautification’ options enabled (centre) which are more subtle than some, but can be turned off completely (left) or maxed out (right). As ever, max out at your own risk, because to me the results look anything but natural. These gut impressions are confirmed by the benchmarks. As you can see in the graph below, Geekbench 5 has it performing quite a bit worse than all the rivals I highlighted in the beginning, but it’s an especially poor performer compared to the three Chinese branded handsets – two of which use a superior MediaTek chip. Display Size: Measured diagonally, the screen size is 6.5" in the full rectangle and 6.4" accounting for the rounded corners. Actual viewable area is less due to the rounded corners and the camera cutout. Much of that is down to the outstanding things other manufacturers are doing on a budget, but Samsung’s entry-level handsets have been able to hold their own in the past. It’s hard not to pin the disappointment entirely on the MediaTek Helios MT6765. Exynos and Qualcomm handsets never felt this sluggish.