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Given that the A53 5G was such a success, it makes sense that the overall design of the A54 5G isn’t all that different, although some small tweaks have been applied here and there. With a premium glass finish, clean camera layout and energising colourways, Galaxy A54 5G wears the Awesome identity on a seamless and graceful frame. That’s because most of said change is happening on the rear of the phone. The most immediately noticeable is that Samsung has ditched the contour camera housing present on last year’s model, instead opting for the same minimalistic design as the flagship Galaxy S23 line. The Samsung Galaxy A54 next to the Galaxy S23

5G will take you further

New design changes aside, it’s very much business as usual for the Galaxy A54, sporting a power button and volume controls on the right, a USB-C port on the bottom and a combined SIM and microSD card tray. The latter is a nice touch, allowing you to expand storage by up to 1TB if required – I wish it was a feature of the flagship S23 range too. At least there are some stunning colour options available to jazz up the simplistic design, coming in particularly vibrant shades of Lime and Violet, along with a more muted Graphite and Silver. The lime green finish is a personal favourite of mine, with a vivid flash of colour that looks gorgeous in real life. Still, results across the board are fairly acceptable for the price tag. What isn’t acceptable, however, is the autofocus performance. The sensor is physically larger than the one used on the A53 5G; now measuring 1/1.56in, the pixels are bigger – up from 0.8µm to 1.0µm. And optical image stabilisation (OIS) has been improved, too.

Gaming performance is on the up as well, although the improvement here isn’t quite as dramatic. In the onscreen portion of the GFXBench Manhattan 3 benchmark, this year’s model achieved an average frame rate of 70fps, compared to just 57fps last year. Yes, the megapixel count has dropped from 64MP to 50MP with the Galaxy A54, but it’s worth noting that it’s a completely new camera with a larger sensor, larger pixel size (0.8um to 1um, or 2um if you pixel-bin) and an enhanced OIS.The camera’s new Auto Night feature is quite handy, too, measuring the amount of light and automatically switching to night mode to improve low-light shots. The results are rather good, too, and while there’s a slight loss in detail, darker areas are boosted nicely and highlights are expertly softened. Battery : Actual battery life varies by network environment, features and apps used, frequency of calls and messages, number of times charged, and many other factors. With VDIS and a wider OIS angle, Galaxy A54 5G helps shoot high-quality videos with ease through automatic reframing and autofocus. *VDIS : Video Digital Image Stabilization.

The 5MP macro lens is the most niche of the collection, and something I don’t think many people will use more than once with a fixed focus that makes it difficult to capture anything of note. The fact that the macro shooting mode is found in the ‘More’ section of the camera app, rather than one of the main shooting modes, says a lot about how Samsung views it.The display is coated in a protective layer of Gorilla Glass 5, as is the rear panel, to prevent scuffs and scratches and, on the weather-proofing front, the Galaxy A54 5G is rated to IP67, certifying it as dustproof and able to withstand being dunked in 1m of water for up to 30 minutes. The A34 5G announced alongside the A54 5G is similar in build but has a matte rear panel, which looks a little more attractive in my eyes, despite being the cheaper phone. The 6.4-inch AMOLED panel sports an ‘Infinity O’ design that, to you and I, simply means it has a single hole-punch camera cutout in the middle of the display. It’s the easiest way to tell the difference between it and the Galaxy A34 with its ‘Infinity U’ design.

That translates to pretty decent image capture in my experience – in well-lit conditions, anyway. Daylight images have plenty of detail and the colours pop, though they’re slightly more vivid than real life in true Samsung fashion. Still, it makes for vibrant shots most of the time, perfect for sharing on social media. Battery life is also a little hit-and-miss. As long as you’re not using the phone too often it should last, but even a 5000mAh battery can’t always provide comfortable all-day battery life if you’re really putting the phone to the test. Combined with slow 25W charging, there’s still a lot to be done here. No need to wait for the perfect shot. Take the photo and edit out unwanted objects, shadows, reflections and more with Object Eraser.User Available Memory : User memory is less than the total memory due to storage of the operating system and software used to operate the device features. Actual user memory will vary depending on the operator and may change after software upgrades are performed.