Review: Samsung Galaxy A16 5G - Good smartphone under 300 euro

For particularly cheaper phones, Android acts as something of a guarantee for basic functionality. Whether it's a luxury phone in the 2000 euro class or, as here, a smartphone for about a tenth of the price. The model I'm testing costs about 250 euro and has 128 GB of storage and a memory card, which is more than enough and makes the 100 euro more expensive model of the A16 with double the storage seem unnecessarily expensive.

Of course, there is a difference between expensive and cheap, but just like more expensive phones, the Samsung Galaxy A16 has the capability for everything you need in everyday life. I'm talking about Bank-ID, GPS navigation with Google Maps, chat and social media, camera, and Netflix. Google's services like Gmail and Chrome, but also Samsung's, so you can pay in-store by tapping the phone and Samsung Wallet or get the photo gallery auto-synced to Microsoft's cloud service Onedrive. Samsung is one of the manufacturers that adds the most value with its One UI interface and own services, and even though the most advanced features, like Galaxy AI, are not included here, the advantages are clear. Most notably, Samsung's promise to provide six years of Android system updates for this phone. Samsung also guarantees security updates until October 2030, and all this is far more than what is usual for cheaper phones like this. The effect is that the phone can function significantly better than other similar phones and without, for example, essential apps like Bank ID stopping working. It is the lack of system updates and security fixes that could potentially prevent BankID from being supported in the long run.

Also network technology for the future

The fact that Samsung promises a long lifespan for the phone is reinforced by the fact that it supports both 5G and 4G. I am testing the 5G version here, and there is also a variant with 4G that costs a few hundred kronor less. Since the 2G and 3G networks are currently being shut down, support for 4G and 5G networks is central for a phone you plan to use for some time to come, and you can do that with the Galaxy A16.

I won't claim that the Samsung Galaxy A16 feels more luxurious than what I expect from the price tag. The phone and its interface are absolutely not fast, but the functionality is still stable. The screen can be seen as one of the major advantages on the hardware side, and an OLED screen means you get a good viewing angle and image with fine color reproduction. Such a screen also has the potential to be energy-efficient, and over 13 hours of streamed movie viewing at maximum brightness in our battery test is nothing to be ashamed of.

The screen is good considering the phone's price tag, but my first impression is that I become slightly skeptical. The default wallpaper is blurry and does not highlight the screen's strengths. Here we get an increased refresh rate on the screen at 90 instead of 60 frames per second, and even though the phone's limited performance still slows things down, the high refresh rate makes a difference. The screen obviously doesn't get faster by changing the wallpaper from the blurry one to one with sharper details, but I get a significantly better impression of the screen's color reproduction and detail richness with an image that actually takes advantage of it.

Three cameras, one worthy of the name

The camera setup can on paper look almost flagship-like with three cameras on the back where the main camera is 50 megapixels. As long as we stay in daylight, they provide good image quality, and portraits actually get a pretty nice blurred background. However, you should forget about getting closer with zoom or taking pictures in poorer light, even if there is a night mode. Here, shortcomings in sharpness and color richness quickly become apparent, even indoors in slightly dimmer lighting, which we can have during winter, the image quality suffers, and it can feel like there's somewhat of a haze between you and the subject. The three cameras are the main lens, wide-angle, and macro, and the last two are a meager five and two megapixels, respectively, and thus have very limited use.

I think the cameras serve basic purposes, but you shouldn't have too high expectations. In terms of performance, the phone is more limited. It can handle websites, emails, and everyday tasks, but for example, many of Samsung's own product pages for mobile phones make the browser stutter significantly. Even some of the major Swedish news sites with many ads, animations, and autoplay videos can be a challenge. More demanding downloaded games are out of the question; they can be run passably but take ages to start. Simple puzzle games or Wordfeud, for example, work fine.

Samsung Galaxy A16 5G is thus a phone that gives you a lot of value for money without too extreme demands. You get a phone that will last a long time and handle what everyday life requires of a mobile, no more, no less. But thanks to the update promise for a longer time than all other phones on the market in this price range.

Questions and Answers

How valuable are the system updates?

They increase the chances that you will actually have practical use of the phone for a longer time. The updates in Android are quite modest from year to year nowadays, more important are the updates Samsung themselves add in their own interface, and even more important, system updates and security updates ensure that security-rated apps like BankID will work in the future.

If I am interested in gaming?

...then this is not the right phone for you. Even demanding web pages can be troublesome for the Galaxy A16.

So what is practically the difference between this and a phone that costs ten times as much?

I am actually amazed at how much a phone like this, for around 2500 kronor, can handle. You don't get the same performance at all as in a flagship, not as fast and bright or high-resolution screen, and the cameras are not in the same class, but most things still work well enough. If we talk about performance, this phone mostly feels a bit slow, and you have to wait a second when switching between functions, but on the other hand, today's flagships have so much performance that it's hard as a user to really utilize a fraction of it.

An alternative

A prominent budget smartphone is the CMF Phone 1 with similar specs, but not as many updates promised.

Camera example:

Acceptable pictures when you are out in daylight, but in darkness or when you need to zoom, the image quality and detail quickly suffer.