complete and fast smartphone is too expensive

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Nice design, but fingerprint sensitive

Samsung releases the A71 in various colors, including blue, silver and black. We have tested the latter and what is immediately striking about this device is the good screen. With a diagonal of 6.7 inches, that can be called large, but the device has narrow screen edges. The small camera hole in the screen does not detract from the design.

The back has a kind of pattern and that is a nice twist. What is less, is the choice for a finish of the back, which is very fingerprint sensitive. You quickly associate that with cheap and that is certainly not the device. The bottom offers space for the single speaker, USB-C port and headphone jack.

The device also has room for two SIM cards and a micro SD memory card, which are nice extras. The on / off button and volume buttons can be found on the right. The device may have a large screen, but due to the small thickness of 7.7 millimeters, the device fits perfectly in the hand. You don’t see a fingerprint scanner, simply because it is processed in the screen. It works pretty well, but it often happened that I still had to scan my thumb a second time.

Amoled screen as we are used to

The screen is 6.7 inches in size, has a resolution of 2400 by 1080 pixels and an amoled panel has been chosen. Samsung has been producing those screens for years and it shows. The colors are very beautiful, the contrast is high and the brightness is also fine. All in all, enjoying the weather is blown during a movie or series. The screen is also fine for reading articles, checking websites or viewing photos.

Just like the new one Samsung Galaxy S20 series we see a small hole in the screen, placed in the middle. That is one of the solutions for the use of front cameras today, and as far as I am concerned, this does not disturb. Personally, I prefer to see the placement in the upper left corner of the screen. I regularly watch a movie and then turn my device to use it horizontally. In that case the camera hole would be at the bottom; just a bit nicer.

Other hardware is fine, but not for this price

The processor is the Snapdragon 730, a great chip in terms of performance. What bothers me is that it can also be found in some devices that cost considerably less. You see the biggest difference with the Xiaomi Mi 9T the current price of which is around 300 euros. The 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage are also not really groundbreaking. In practice, this combination provides a device that can handle everything easily.

Multitasking is no problem and also having multiple tabs open in Chrome is fine. Even a game of Asphalt or Call of Duty: Mobile does not cause any problems, but you cannot play with the best graphic performance. If you settle for all that and do not want the best of the best, then the performances are good.

Android 10 and OneUI 2.0 shell

Samsung delivers the Galaxy A71 directly with Android 10 and that’s nice. With the good update policy of the South Korean manufacturer in mind, we expect that too Android 11 and Android 12 come to this device.

We also see the OneUI 2.0 shell that has been laid over Android. That layer has since been considerably abolished compared to previous variants, but remains not my personal favorite. I still find the settings menu a bit too cluttered, there are several apps pre-installed and the whole feels a bit childish, for example because of the icons.

Fortunately, you can get started with themes or of course icon packs and other launchers. In terms of speed, a clean Android version will do even better, but the whole feels good and that was not always the case with Samsung devices of previous generations.

Five cameras and great pictures

You make selfies from a maximum of 32 megapixels, a nice high resolution to capture everything in detail. Compared to the Galaxy A70, the A71 has an extra camera on the back, which you use for macro photography.

Let’s start with the primary camera with a resolution of 64 megapixels. Pictures you shoot with that have a standard resolution of 16 megapixels. For this, four pixels are fused together into one, which should ensure a better end result. Photos taken with the primary camera look good in terms of details. The contrast is correct, as well as the color reproduction. Functions such as a panorama mode or timelapse are also present.

There is also a wide-angle 12 megapixel lens with which you can capture more of the surroundings. Snapshots look great and we find this one of the nicest additions to smartphones in recent years. In terms of colors, it is striking that fortunately little to no difference can be seen with the primary camera, and that is sometimes different. Below an example of a photo made with the primary camera and one with the wide-angle lens.