The Galaxy A16 5G is one of the cheapest smartphones in the South Korean brand’s lineup. The model offers an AMOLED screen, long technical support and decent photo capabilities. But there are also compromises found during testing by Western media.
Appearance, display and battery
As noted in PhoneArena, the phone has become larger than the previous model but does not weigh so much (200 grams). The design code is quite familiar for Samsung budget phones: a rear “traffic light” camera and a teardrop-shaped cutout with wide bezels in the front. The materials are by no means premium – the plastic gloss on the back is willingly covered with prints. Nevertheless, there are no problems with assembly. There is also some protection against moisture and dust (IP54) – A16 splashes are not a problem. The novelty has four colors: dark blue, gray, light green and gold.
As mentioned, the Galaxy A16 5G has a proper light sensor hidden away underneath the display. It does a perfectly adequate job of adjusting the brightness. You probably want to leave it enabled, too, since without auto resolution, the phone managed a mere 413 nits of max brightness in manual mode by maxing out the slider.
Galaxy A16 5G is a side finger scanner, a microSD slot and an NFC module. The scope of delivery contains only the cable. A 6.7-inch AMOLED matrix with FHD+ resolution (2340×1080, 385 ppi) and support for 90 Hz is installed. There is enough clarity and saturation of shades, but the brightness is not particularly high – 824 nits in auto mode. But even so, you can read from the screen on the street on a sunny day. The refresh rate is fixed – 60 or 90 Hz.That’s not super bright, especially by today’s standards, but we found it comfortable enough for outdoor use.
The Galaxy A16 5G is equipped with a 5000 mAh battery that supports 25-watt charging. Battery life is average; It comfortably lasts for more than a full day. In the GSMArena mixed test, the device lasted 12 hours and 8 minutes. The best results were recorded in the gaming and call scenarios. It will be possible to charge the battery completely from scratch in 1 hour 21 minutes.
Productivity and shooting
The gadget is built on a 5nm Exynos 1330 processor along with 4/8 GB of RAM and 128/256 GB of storage (UFS 2.2). The chipset contains two Cortex-A78 cores (2.4 GHz), six A55 cores (2 GHz) and Mali-G68 MP2 graphics. Alas, speed is the main drawback of the device. Freezes are often noticeable in the firmware interface, which is important for the version with 4 GB of RAM. It is possible that the older configuration (8/256 GB) works faster. In benchmarks, the numbers are as follows:
- AnTuTu 10 — 435 895;
- Geekbench 6 — 975 (single-core), 2042 (multi-core);
- 3DMark Wild Life Extreme (2160p) — 360.
The advantage is that the entry-level hardware almost does not throttle. The Galaxy A16 5G comes with the One UI 6.1 shell based on Android 14 OS. Six numbered updates of the system have been announced, which will be useful for long-term operation. The question is how smoothly future versions of the OS will function, if there are already problems with this.
The camera is triple: Samsung S5KJN1 main sensor (50 MP), ultra-wide (5 MP) and macro (2 MP). The front camera received a resolution of 13 megapixels. On all sensors, the maximum video recording resolution is 1080p with a frame rate of 30 fps. The main module produces decent shots with natural color reproduction and good detail. By switching from the standard 12.5MP to the 50MP preset, you can increase clarity.
The only thing missing is the dynamic range — in complex scenes, the sky is illuminated. Wide-angle shots cover more space, but you shouldn’t expect impressive results. Night photos are also not bad – noise is minimal, details are present, only contrast and dimming of light sources are missing.
