Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) Review - Premium Design, Stellar Battery Performance

Samsung has added another member of their mid-range family last May, the Galaxy A6 (2018). 

Samsung Galaxy 16 (2018)

As a quick recap, the Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) can be the possible successor of the highly popular Galaxy J7 Pro last year.

After almost 2 weeks of using the A6 (2018) as one of our everyday smartphones, here's our full review!

For our review part 1: Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) First Impressions

Display Quality

Wide screen!

Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) features a 5.6-inch Super AMOLED display. It has smaller bezels on the side. It has a wide screen that makes a nice viewing display when binge-watching my favorite K-drama and playing games. 

It has 1480 x 720 resolution with Infinity display at 294 pixels per inch. The smartphone can go bright enough even you're using it under direct sunlight. 

The Galaxy A6 (2018)'s screen has 5 points of multi touch.

But we wish that Samsung A6 has FHD+ screen display since most smartphones on its price range are using that kind of display. 

Audio Quality

The only speaker of the Galaxy A6 (2018) uniquely placed on the upper right side of the phone is surprisingly loud enough.

Interesting and loud speaker!

Even if you crank the volume to the highest level, the sound distortions are minimal and it still produces crisp details. The benefit of the speaker placed on the right side of the phone is that you can play games or binge-watch on a landscape orientation of the phone without blocking the speaker.

Battery Life

The Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) continues to surprise us because its 3,000mAh battery recorded 13 hours and 38 minutes long on our battery benchmark test! WOW!

Strong battery performance

The same smartphones or even those with higher battery capacities only recorded less than 12 hours.

WOW for battery performance!

In real usage, the battery benchmark score proved to be true. The Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018)'s single charge can last you a whole day. The usage includes surfing the web over WiFi and LTE, Spotify, calls, texts, and some casual gaming. 

Charging time is under 2 hours. 

Camera

16MP rear camera!

Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) is equipped with 16MP f/1.7 rear camera

The rear camera has PDAF and LED flash coupled with it. The camera features are AR Sticker, Auto, and Bixby Vision. Samsung also added a "floating camera button" where the user can slide it around the screen for easy capturing of photos.

The Galaxy A6 (2018) can capture nice photos under daylight, indoor, and even some lowlight scenes with the help of the LED flash.

However, do not expect it to be great at night always even if it has a bright f/1.7 aperture sensor.

There are times that our lowlight shots are soft in details and not that well exposed.

Overall, the single back camera of this phone is decent.

Rear Camera Samples

Daylight

Indoor

Close-up

Lowlight

For selfies, it also has a 16MP f/1.9 sensor. It has the selfie focus, AR stickers, Bixby vision, skin tone adjustment setting, slim face, and large eyes setting features.

16MP Selfie camera!

It can capture nice selfies under daylight and indoors but as for the lowlight, it captures a grainy photo but is still respectable and decent.

I also like that it has a dedicated flash unlike other selfies camera phones.

Related: Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) First Camera Samples

Selfie Camera Samples

Daylight Indoor selfie

Indoor selfie

Stickers!

Lowlight selfie

The Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) has 720p at 30 fps video quality with an acceptable stabilization and nice details using the main camera.

Performance

Benchmark scores!

The Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) with 1.6GHz 64-bit Exynos 7870 octa-core processor, 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal memory.

Using the Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) is decently snappy. It can handle multitasking but expect a bit of lags most especially when playing games. We ran the PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, yes, we were able to load and play these games but on low settings. 

Mobile Legends

The smartphone's thermal management is surprisingly nice! I binge-watched the A Korean Odyssey for five straight hours on the Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) and it did not get hot!

On the software side, it is equipped with Android 8.0 Oreo with Samsung experience 9.0. Compared with the older Samsung devices, its UI is noticeably cleaner. It has less bloats as well. It isn't as feature-rich versus other Chinese skins though.

Its face unlock and fingerprint scanner are also snappy enough. It is nice to note that Samsung did not ditch the fingerprint scanner despite having the face unlock.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) has strong GSM signal for SIMs, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS. It also has LED notification, and OTG.

Pros - Wide screen, nice cameras, loud speaker, stellar battery,  fingerprint + face unlock
Cons - not on USB Type-C, retained CPU, no water and dust resistance

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018) is a smartphones with premium design and stellar battery performance.

It has a wide display, stellar battery, unique and loud speaker, and a decent overall performance. But we expected more out of the Samsung Galaxy A6 (2018).

We wish that in the next smartphones of Samsung at this price point, they'll be able to equip it with FHD+ screen and new hardware.

Fortunately, Samsung recently dropped its price from PHP 16,490 to just PHP 13,490.

Build/Design - 4

Display - 3.5

Audio - 4.5

Battery - 4.5

Camera - 4

Performance - 3.5

Average - 4/5