Samsung Galaxy A54

 Review of Samsung Galaxy A54 

 Performance

The Galaxy A54 reminds us a lot of a non-Pro Redmi Note from a few years ago. It just doesn't seem like its chipset was chosen for any reasons having to do with performance, smoothness or the ability to handle a lot of things on regular basis. It feels like Samsung knew it was cheaper to buy these from its own shelves than go to Qualcomm or MediaTek, which is fine in principle, but this chip is much more fitting of a handset which would cost half of what the A54 is even currently going for. At the A54's price, it's its biggest downside and have quite some margin.

Again, this chip would be praiseworthy on a device going for half the A54's price. But in this range, it's just not good enough, especially in late 2023, and especially considering that this is Samsung's best selling model. As for the smoothness rating, this is the least smooth phone. Due to the insane number of mid-range and entry-level phones out there, we are definitely not saying this one is the least smooth of all of those out there in the market. 

Battery charging

Battery life on the A54 has been outstanding. It's the best battery life we've gotten from any phone in recent times. While it's not a lot better than most of the ones we graded 'great', the difference is still pretty obvious. When we did finish our 12-16 hour days off the charger, we were generally left with a generous serving of battery capacity still available. As per this situation, we'd say that the maximum screen on time we could theoretically reach with our use would be at a minimum 8 hours, and 9 hours seems very reachable too. So it's outstanding.

Battery life snapshots

Now, the fact that the battery lasts so much partly alleviates the lack of fast charging. Our use case involves mostly Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, about an hour or so on 5G, Bluetooth and location always on, about an hour or two of listening to music or podcasts via TWS earbuds, around an hour of phone calls also via TWS earbuds, and about 30 minutes of GPS navigation. With more time spent on mobile data, and especially in areas with spotty connectivity, then your screen on time numbers will definitely be lower than normally users have.