Luxury without a high price: that’s how you can sum up the Samsung Galaxy A35. If you want good value for money, you’ve come to the right place.

With the Galaxy A series, Samsung is aiming for a fine line between price, performance and workmanship across the entire product range. This year, the smartphone specialist has taken the biggest step forward with the Samsung Galaxy A35 (379 euros including VAT). The plastic surface is gone: from now on, like all other top devices in the series, you get a glass back.

Samsung’s biggest advantage is its Android update policy. You can expect four major Android OS updates and five years of security updates. No one does better in this price range. The competition, including Xiaomi, Oppo and OnePlus, can’t match this today with barely two major Android OS updates and three years of security updates.

Glass sandwich

As already mentioned, the Samsung Galaxy A35 will have a glass back. This immediately makes the device feel much more premium than its predecessor. Unlike the Samsung Galaxy A55, the frame is not made of aluminum, but of plastic. You miss the “cold” feeling, but in terms of strength, the difference is small.

On the front, there’s a large 6.6-inch OLED screen protected by Gorilla Glass Victus+. This glass is less likely to break if you drop your device. We recommend not testing this in practice. If you want to do that, choose a sturdy case or a rugged phone like the Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro.

Small smartphone enthusiasts see fewer options every year. The screen quality is excellent (OLED, 120 Hz). We measured a maximum brightness of 925 nits, more than enough to see everything in sunlight. For this budget, this is an excellent screen.

Performance

The weak Mediatek chip of its predecessor makes way for Samsung’s own Exynos 1380 chip. This is the same as last year’s Samsung Galaxy A54. It works properly. In our benchmarks, it is not the fastest chip. Still, we cannot find any glitches on the phone. Everything runs smoothly, which is all you want.

We see a bigger difference in 3D performance. Anyone who enjoys playing games on their phone should take this into account.

Camera quality

The rear cameras are hardly different from the predecessor: 8 MP wide-angle lens, 5 MP macro and 50 MP main camera. The latter is new and is delivered by Pixel binning Photos with a resolution of 12.5 MP. The main camera delivers excellent results under ideal conditions. The colors look realistic and the result is not artificially sharpened too much.

You can also force the camera to record in 50MP quality. This takes up more space, but you get a little more finer detail and we notice a greater dynamic range.

The 8 MP wide-angle camera is fine, as is the macro. The results are usable and sometimes even very good, but where possible it is better to use the main camera.

At night, the main camera performs surprisingly well thanks to its large dynamic range in this price class. The colors look beautiful and have a nice saturation. The camera app automatically switches to a night mode when necessary and almost always does this well.

Battery life and charging speed

Although the Samsung Galaxy A35 packs the same Exynos chip as the Galaxy A54, this phone lasts much longer. Samsung has probably made more optimizations in a year and Android 14 might have something to do with it too. In any case, this phone will easily get you through the entire workday and sometimes even until the end of the second workday.

Fast charging is still something that Samsung devices rarely do. Here again we see the same results compared to last year. We don’t know why Samsung doesn’t want to follow the trend of OnePlus, Oppo and Xiaomi.

Getting 50 percent in half an hour is not a “fast charge.” Charging this phone at breakfast is not enough to get you through the day for many. That’s the case with most other brands. That makes it more likely you’ll need to charge overnight, which is never really a good idea.

Diploma

Within its price range, you will find better specifications from competitors such as OnePlus or Xiaomi. Nevertheless, the Samsung Galaxy A35 (379 euros including VAT) can hold its own thanks to the interesting overall package and the decent photo quality. The difference to the Samsung Galaxy A55 is not big. Compare to make the right choice.

On the other hand, the Galaxy A25 isn’t far behind either, and it’s €80 cheaper. Read here if you should go for that option. In our opinion, the Samsung Galaxy A35 is right in the middle between the two. This phone offers the best value for money in this price range, provided you have patience when charging.

The Samsung Galaxy A35 is available in four colors: blue, ice blue, lilac and lime. The basic model (6 GB RAM, 128 GB storage) costs 379 euros including VAT. The version with 256 GB storage costs 70 euros more. Samsung is temporarily offering a discount of 80 euros during the sales period until the end of July 2024. No charger is included in the delivery.

Android update policy: Samsung guarantees that the Galaxy A35 will receive security updates for at least five years and operating system updates for four years. This period begins with the launch of Android 14 on March 11, 2024. The statutory warranty period is two years.