I do not wish to oversell it—it is not a flagship telephone. Yes, you’ll nonetheless see stutters right here and there if you change between apps. Maybe you will must pressure shut an app infrequently. But for probably the most half, I’ve had a totally good expertise utilizing the A14 5G not just for catching up on Reddit and Twitter, but in addition to answer emails on the fly, monitor work duties, and even make calls.
That brings me to the battery. My sister lives in India, so we do not get an opportunity to catch up typically. The different day, I spent 4 hours on a video name and the battery dropped solely to 50 p.c—I used to be anticipating it to be decrease! On that very same day, I used the telephone’s GPS as I drove to a canine park in Manhattan, and snapped plenty of images of my scrumptious fried rooster sandwich at an area Irish eatery referred to as Bua. By bedtime (which is, er, previous midnight for me), the telephone was at 11 p.c with a improbable 9 hours of screen-on time. This was an unnaturally busy day. On days once I do not spend hours on video calls, I had 30 p.c left after two full days on a single cost. It’s pretty not having to recharge each evening.
That brings me to the 50-megapixel main digital camera. It snaps images fairly shortly, and there is even a Night mode you should utilize to take decently vivid and sharp pictures in low gentle (not like the Moto G Play). Naturally, your nighttime images can be a little bit blurry from time to time. There’s a little bit an excessive amount of processing at occasions, smoothening out sure options on faces and different particulars, plus some colours might be exaggerated. Still, I’ve nonetheless been fairly pleased with many of the outcomes for a $200 telephone. That consists of selfies I snapped with the 13-megapixel entrance digital camera (which additionally helps Night mode). There’s a macro digital camera if that is your fancy, and it really works OK for excessive close-up photographs, however solely in case you have a very good quantity of sunshine.
A Star Is Born
The solely main gripe I’ve with this telephone in day-to-day use is the mono speaker. It simply would not get too loud, would not sound nice, and it is easy to dam in panorama mode if you’re enjoying video video games. The simple answer is to only use headphones—wi-fi or wired as a result of, sure, there’s a headphone jack.
There’s even a microSD card slot to broaden on the 64 GB of inner storage (which is greater than what you will discover on equally priced friends), plus the flexibility to make contactless funds with the near-field communication (NFC) sensor so you may go away the pockets at house. I virtually completely pay with my telephone lately when I’m out and about, so this can be a large win for me.
The Galaxy A14 5G additionally helps … 5G, because the identify implies, which is yet one more rarity at this value as most sub-$200 telephones depend on 4G LTE. It’s supported by each main US service, from AT&T and T-Mobile to Verizon. Best of all, Samsung is promising two Android OS updates, which signifies that because it’s already working the newest Android 13, it will nonetheless obtain Android 15 in 2024. It can even get 4 years of safety updates, which is virtually remarkable for a telephone so low cost.
It’s near-impossible to not marvel on the worth of the Galaxy A14. It does virtually all the things so effectively for therefore little, and that is exactly what we needs to be asking extra of from our devices.
