Smartphone major Samsung, which earlier this year shook up the industry with its flagship Galaxy S23 series smartphones, doesn’t want to be a slouch when it comes to its premium mid-range segment. After launching the mid-range Galaxy F14 5G in March, the company launched the Galaxy F54 5G on June 6. The Galaxy F54 5G, which is the fourth device in the series that was launched in 2020, is priced at Rs 27,999. At that price, does the phone deserve your attention? Let’s find out.
Design
Samsung hasn’t taken any surprising route with the design of the phone and sticks to a basic look, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The phone is 8.4 mm thick and weighs 199 gm, which feels light and comfortable to hold. However, the Galaxy F54 5G has a shiny plastic back that is quite slippery, and I will suggest slapping on a case while handling the device.
The phone comes in two colours – Meteor Blue and Stardust Silver – and my review unit was the first, which I liked. The phone comes with a USB-type C port at the bottom with a single speaker, 2 microphones and a hybrid-SIM functionality (2 SIMs or 1 SIM and a memory card). It also packs a power button on the right that doubles up as the physical fingerprint scanner. While the fingerprint scanner works fine, this is a letdown in my opinion, as phones in this price range should offer an in-display fingerprint scanner. The phone also lacks a headphone jack.
Display
The Galaxy F54 5G comes with a 6.7-inch full-HD super AMOLED display with 120 Hz refresh rate, 800 nits brightness and Gorilla Glass 5 protection. Samsung’s expertise in display brilliance is evident here, as the display feels sharp and bright with excellent viewing angles and punchy colours. Samsung claims the display unit used in this phone is thinner and lighter. OTT apps will look vivid on the system, as the phone supports Widevine L1 and is HDR-10+ capable. However, the single-speaker setup doesn’t really provide an immersive experience while watching content.
Performance
Powering the Galaxy F54 5G is a 5nm, octa-core Exynos 1380 processor, and my review unit came with 8GB RAM and 256 GB RAM. There is also an option for boosting RAM via the RAM Plus option, which uses the phone’s storage space to use virtual memory of up to 16 GB.
The Galaxy F54 5G scores 997 points in Geekbench 6’s single-core test and 2,756 points in the multi-core test, while touching 434,877 in the AnTuTu benchmark.
The phone feels snappy in day-to-day usage, including app opening/closing and keeping apps in the background. However, I did notice that the phone gets quite a bit warm during daily tasks, which increases during playing games. Since I was using a pre-release unit, hopefully, this will get fixed with future software updates.
While I am not a gaming nerd, I did play occasional games such as Candy Crush and Temple Run and barring the heating issue, I did not notice any lag. As for heavy games, I played Genshin Impact, BGMI and Call of Duty for some time and barring some frame drops and heating, the device handled them well on medium setting.
A point of gripe for me would be the sound quality here. The single, bottom-firing speaker of the phone is just passable and does the job, but don’t expect the fuller, richer soundscape that could have come with a dual speaker setup. At this price point, Samsung should have included a dual speaker setting.
The phone supports dual-5G with Wi-Fi calling, Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6. I tested the device with Jio, Airtel and Vi SIMs, and network reception and call clarity was excellent.
Camera
For optics, The Samsung Galaxy F54 5G packs a triple-camera setup that follows similar design language used in its flagship Galaxy S23 series, with a premium metal cam decoration and streamlined and linear layout. The back houses a primary 108-MP shooter with f/1.8 aperture, optical image stabilization (OIS) and 1,000 Hz VDIS, along with an 8MP and 2MP macro lens. The front camera is 32MP.
During the media presentation, Samsung highlighted the camera prowess of the smartphone the most, claiming that it uses a larger pixel size of 1.92 μm (micron) that allows more light into the camera lens, generating pictures with better clarity, especially under low-light conditions. It also comes with the Astro Hyperlapse mode, found on the flagship Galaxy S23 series.
And the phone doesn’t disappoint on that front. Keeping the segment of the phone in mind, the 108-MP main camera captures bright and punchy daylight photos with plenty of detail, while those taken under low-light conditions also perform well.
The 32 MP selfie camera handles dynamic range nicely, while skin tones look natural and detailed with good noise reduction. Portrait selfies offer good edge detection and nicely separate the subject from the background. The Galaxy F54 5G also performed well under night selfies, while boosting the colours a bit.
When it comes to video recording, the smartphone can shoot 4K video at 30fps on all three rear cameras and the front camera, a segment-leading feature. Video captured in daylight reproduces good clarity, dynamic range and exposure. Colour accuracy was an area where Samsung did struggle and I noticed a bit of a yellow tinge in my videos. However, the vivid colours will definitely appeal to the social media-friendly youth, which this phone targets to cater to. At night, the exposure captured 4K video at 30fps with good noise reduction and decent details.
While there is a good bit of stabilization in FHD 60fps, the video quality does shake quite a bit in 4K 30fps. Overall, the video camera capabilities on the Galaxy F54 5G don’t disappoint in this price range.
Battery
One of the biggest high points of the Galaxy F54 5G is battery life. Samsung has equipped the phone with a 6,000 mAh battery. Being a 5nm-chip, the Exynos 1380 is power efficient and under heavy usage, the Galaxy F54 5G easily lasts an entire day and those with moderate usage will likely get a day-and-a-half’s juice quite easily. I got around five to seven hours of screen-on time on a single charge, which is more than enough for a whole day of usage.
However, while battery life wasn’t an issue on the smartphone, charging is the real issue. The phone comes with 25-watt fast charging, which took about two hours to charge from 10 percent to 100 percent. Samsung should definitely provide higher charging speeds now, considering competition has long moved beyond these speeds. The box also doesn’t come with any charging adapter and only has a USB-type C cable.
Software
On the software front, the Galaxy F54 5G boots Android 13-based OneUI 5.1 out of the box, with the usual Knox security features, including a secure folder. Samsung promises its usual four years of major OS updates and five years of security updates on the device, which is the best among Android phones. The phone does come with quite a few bloatware which can be uninstalled, thankfully.
One UI 5.1 feels way more refined and well-tested than its predecessor, removing any jitters and delivering smooth animations and excellent transitions between different areas of the UI. However, my review unit was running the February security patch, which was a letdown for me. Hopefully, Samsung will provide monthly security updates once the phone is released.
Verdict
Overall, the Galaxy F54 5G seems a good all-round package with an excellent camera, a vivid display that will attract social-media aficionados, along with a mammoth battery that can last really long. However, heating issues in the phone, single speaker setup and plastic build quality at this price range can be a deal breaker for some.
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