Today we have a new budget phone from Samsung, the 4G version of the Galaxy A15. These low-end Samsung phones just keep getting better. I'm Will for GSM Arena and let's find out what the Galaxy A15 4G is all about in our full review.
The Galaxy A15 brings the most significant upgrade for the A10 series we've seen in a while, an AMOLED screen rather than LCD. Each year, Samsung trickles down more features to its lower-tier devices, and as a result, the Galaxy A15 is actually the same package as last year's Galaxy A24. The design is by the book for a budget Samsung phone, with the separate camera rings and flat plastic back.
The back is glossy and attracts smudges pretty easily. The plastic frame has a matte finish and juts out around the power button and volume key. Overall, the phone feels comfy in hand.
One thing you're missing here is IP rated ingress protection that's still reserved for more expensive A series phones. Back to the display though, like I mentioned, now you get a 6.5 inch AMOLED with a 1080p resolution and a fast 90Hz refresh rate. The new screen is sharp and contrasty, and while there are no color options to choose from, The presentation is quite natural, but the thick bezels and lack of HDR video support do remind you that the A15 is a budget device. As far as brightness goes, we measured a maximum of 370 nits with the manual slider, and this boosted to over 800 nits in auto mode when exposed to bright light. Not bad.
And the screen refresh rate helps to smooth out motions like swiping on the screen. It's not adaptive though, and won't dial down when idling to save energy. The A15 has a headphone jack, and a single bottom firing speaker for audio. The speaker scored a very good mark on our loudness test, but the audio quality is subpar, with average sounding vocals and hardly any bass. I'm wide awake, but you're a little night there.
The Galaxy A15 has its fingerprint reader built into the power key. It's fast and very reliable. You can get the phone with 128 or 256GB of storage on board, and that is expandable through microSD. And the interface of the A15 is Samsung's One UI 6, running on Android 14. Despite the phone's budget nature, you get the full suite of functions here, minus the always-on display, DeX, and the Studio Video Editor.
We have a dedicated video about One UI 6 in the works, and we'll leave a link here when it's ready if you'd like to learn more about it. And for software support, the A15 4G is eligible for 3 major Android updates and 4 years of security patches. Under the hood of the Galaxy A15 4G is a MediaTek Helio G99 chipset. It's the same chipset found within last year's Galaxy A24. It doesn't support 5G connectivity of course, but aims to provide solid enough performance for the budget.
In benchmark tests, the A15 4G won't wow anyone. It's really at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to chipsets we'd call usable these days. But the Helio G99 is still quite alright for running the interface and everyday tasks smoothly enough. The phone has a 5000 mAh battery, and the battery life here is excellent.
The A15 earned an active use score of 15 hours and 28 minutes, and did especially well when it came to web browsing and gaming. The A15's 25W charging is a nice upgrade over the 15W of last year, but the phone doesn't come with a charger included. With a proper adapter, we were able to charge the phone from 0 to 47% in half an hour, and a full charge took 81 minutes.
Now we have the cameras. The Galaxy A15 brings a familiar setup, with a 50MP main cam, a 5MP ultra-wide, and a 2MP macro camera. The main camera produces decent 12.5MP photos.
They are average in detail, but there's a lively color rendition, low noise, and wide dynamic range as well. There is a 2x toggle for digital zoom, but the photos are very soft with poor detail. Low light photos from the main camera are okay for the price segment, but objectively they are soft and blotchy, and you can see noise despite the heavy-handed noise suppression.
The main camera supports a night mode, and with it on, the photos come out a bit cleaner, but they are not much better. The A15 4G supports just 1080p video recording, and there's no electronic stabilization. The videos from the main camera are okay though. They have lively colors and wide dynamic range.
We only wish there wasn't so much sharpening going on. The 5MP ultra-wide photos are okay at first glance. You get lively colors and a wide dynamic range. But zoom in and it becomes apparent that there's not much detail in these shots.
The ultra-wide photos taken at night are barely usable. They're soft and overrun by noise, with desaturated colors and smudged detail. There's no night mode available for this camera. Videos taken with the Ultra Wide are surveillance camera quality. The extra wide field of view is pretty much their only redeeming feature.
Close-ups from the macro camera are poor in quality too, with low detail and narrow dynamic range. So there you have it, the Galaxy A15 4G. It's a solid package for the price, with a smooth AMOLED display, excellent battery life, and solid enough cameras.
There are of course downsides here as well. No ingress protection, a so-so speaker and chipset. and poor low light camera performance.
But shortcomings are expected for a budget phone, and the A15 is easy to recommend if you're looking for something in this price range and you don't need 5G. Thanks for watching guys! Xiaomi's Poco M6 Pro is one alternative you could check out on our channel, and the Samsung Galaxy A25 is also a nice upgrade. Let us know what you think, and I'll see you on the next one.