Galaxy A33 5G review - PhoneArena

Galaxy A33 5G Design and Display

Galaxy A33 5G Design

A clean look that is nearly identical to the A53

The design of the Galaxy A33 is about what you would expect from a Samsung mid-range phone nowadays, although there are some interesting choices that have been made.

First of all, the back panel is made of matte plastic. It does a pretty good job at avoiding fingerprints, so if you are brave enough to hold it without a case, the new blue and peach colors pop beautifully.

Going around the sides, you will find the power button and volume rocker, the SIM card tray/expandable storage combo and microphone hole on the top. On the bottom of the Galaxy A33 are the speaker grill, USB-C port, and a second microphone.

If you feel like there is something missing here, your gut is correct — there is no 3.5mm headphone jack anymore. A moment of silence, for yet another one bites the dust...

Samsung has, however, brought an IP67 rating to the Galaxy A33, making it dust and water resistant, and an even more appealing choice for potential buyers. One thing that is borrowed from the higher-priced A53 is the Gorilla Glass 5 protecting the display.

Galaxy A33 5G What's in the box

The phone ships with a thin box and that thinness is due to the fact that you don't get a charger included. That is the current reality, what you do get in the box is a USB-C to USB-C cable, a SIM tool, some user manuals and that's about it.

Galaxy A33 5G Display

Just like its predecessor, the Galaxy A33 5G is keeping its tear-drop shaped display, or as Samsung calls it — Infinity-U. This time around, however, it has an FHD+ resolution and it measures 6.4 inches.

Last year Samsung launched two versions of the A32 — a regular A32 and an A32 5G. The latter was equipped with a 90Hz refresh rate display while the former had only 60Hz. This year, the Galaxy A33 has a 90Hz refresh rate.

The display itself had good viewing angles, the colors look vibrant, and Samsung claims as much as 800 nits of maximum brightness.

In terms of biometrics, there is an optical fingerprint reader below the above-mentioned screen. Yes, having an ultrasonic sensor on such a device would have been quite the treat, but it is not that surprising that Samsung has opted for the more affordable option. And it works quite well in our experience.

If you are more of a "face-unlock" kind of person, then you can do that too with the Galaxy A33 5G.

Performance and Software

The Exynos 1280 chip inside is decent, but not flagship level

Much of the improvements in the Galaxy A33 5G stem from its new chipset — the Exynos 1280, which is the first SoC built on the 5nm process to be placed in a Galaxy A3x series. The processor inside features eight cores: 2 x 2.4 GHz and 6 x 2.0 GHz.

The new GPU, on the other hand, shows 50% increase in performance compared to the A32, while Samsung claims that the APU is a whopping 400% better, making AI performance significantly improved over the previous generation.

We have run our suite of benchmarks, so you can see exactly what has changed in the performance numbers below:

In terms of storage, the Galaxy A33 5G comes in one simple configuration — 128GB with 6GB of RAM. Thankfully, there is also the option to expand that storage via a microSD card up to 1TB.

As for the software, the Galaxy A33 launches with Samsung's latest software — One UI 4.1, straight out of the box.

Camera

Two of the four cameras really count, the main and the ultrawide, but you also have a macro and depth sensors

Now, at a first glance the camera system on the Galaxy A33 5G does not seem that much different, or at all even, from that of its predecessor. Look in a bit closer, however, and you will find some key differences.

First and foremost, optical image stabilization (OIS) makes an entrance in the A3x series. The main snapper on the A33 5G's back is the one equipped with this feature.

It allows for the Galaxy A33 to utilize Samsung's night mode, since the main camera can now shoot long-exposure images and gather more light.

Additionally, the Exynos 1280 inside and the better AI performance it brings result in improved camera features such as portrait mode on both the back and front-facing cameras. The blur is adjustable and there is portrait lighting as well.

The new chipset also helps out while you are digitally zooming in on the shot, with Samsung calling this AI zooming.

In comparison with the generation older A32 5G, the quality has not changed all that much. The A33 boosts the typical vibrant Samsung colors to 11 with more saturation, so the sky is deeper shade of blue and grass is even greener. It all looks too good to be true, and sometimes that can be too much. Still, you do get sharper detail which everyone can appreciate.

While you can spot differences in the main camera, and the selfies have improved a tiny bit, it seems that the ultra-wide camera on the A33 looks nearly identical to the previous gen version.

Video quality has traditionally been the one area where budget phones make some big compromises compared to flagships, and the Galaxy A33 5G unfortunately does make quite a few compromises as well.

You can record at 4K UHD video resolution, but you don't get proper video stabilization which makes the footage quite jerky and not very usable, plus you cannot use the ultra-wide camera in 4K mode.

Then, you have 1080p FHD video recording, and since that option does use the default software video stabilization, the footage is actually cropped in quite a bit more than in 4K mode. In FHD mode you can use the main and the ultra-wide cameras, but while you do get gradual zoom, the switch to the ultra wide camera just jumps from 1X directly to 0.5X.

In 1080p mode, you also have the Super Steady option (the wavy hand icon in the camera menu), which traditionally uses the ultra-wide camera. It is a bit steadier than the default stabilization, but since you are using the ultra-wide camera, the quality is worse with more grain and noticeably less detail, so we wouldn't recommend it for most of your footage.

Galaxy A33 5G Audio Quality

As mentioned earlier, sadly, the Galaxy A33 5G does not come with a 3.5mm audio jack, or any other kind of jack for that matter. Samsung has decided to opt it out of its two mid-range phones this year.

Thankfully, there are stereo speakers to maybe, possibly compensate for that tragic loss. They are now louder than before, and the quality went above expectations, even if it wasn't quite stellar. You get a pleasing clarity out of this loudspeaker, and some depth to the sound, but if you crank up the volume to the max you will hear it distort. However, at 2 or 3 levels below the maximum sound output, you get very pleasing audio output.

Battery Life and Charging

Just like the Galaxy A32, the Galaxy A33 has a maximum wired charging speed of 25W, with no support for wireless charging. Unlike the predecessor, though, it comes with no included charging brick in the box, so you would have to get that yourself. The battery itself is 5000mAh in capacity.We ran our three independent battery tests (we use the same brightness and equal conditions and perform the test over a Wi-Fi connection), and we got the following results out of the Galaxy A33.

PhoneArena Battery Test Results

Summary and Final Verdict

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