Samsung announced the Galaxy A70 on March 26, 2019, adding a new device to its Galaxy A series. The phone was launched in India on May 1 of the same year. Galaxy A is Samsung’s mid-range smartphone series, introducing devices at lower prices than its high-end and flagship models. This series also includes the Galaxy A50, Galaxy A40, Galaxy A30, Galaxy 20, and Galaxy A10.

At the price starting from Rs 27,990, the Galaxy A70 is more expensive than some of its cousins that were released earlier, such as the A50 (Rs 24,000), the A40 (Rs 19,500), the Galaxy A30 (Rs 18,000), the A20 (Rs 11,490), and the A10 (Rs 8,700).

Display

This smartphone features a Super AMOLED Plus capacitive touchscreen that measures 6.7 inches. It also has a screen resolution of 1080x2400 pixels and a pixel density of 393 ppi.

The display has a top-notch design with the front-facing camera placed at the top-center. This screen design is the same as that of the Galaxy A50, Galaxy A40, and Galaxy A30. The waterdrop notch is also common among mid-range smartphones of other brands like Xiaomi.  

AMOLED, or active-matrix organic light-emitting diode, is an OLED screen technology. OLED refers to a screen technology that uses thin films with organic compounds to form the electroluminescent material while active-matrix describes the tech behind pixel addressing. Over that past 13 years, AMOLED has become more and more popular in making smartphone displays, in addition to TVs, digital cameras, and media players. The reason is that it allows for large screens, high resolutions, low production costs, and lower energy consumption.

Meanwhile, Super AMOLED is Samsung’s marketing term for its own AMOLED display tech, which involves the integration of touch screen digitizer: a layer detects touch inside the screen instead of on top and can’t be separated from the screen. Samsung says that Super AMOLED reflects 20% of the amount of sunlight reflected on AMOLED.

All in all, you get vibrant colors, great viewing angles, and excellent visibility under sunlight. And with a screen-to-body ratio, you have a long screen that lets you use it with one hand easily despite the overall big size.

It’s undeniable that this is one of the nicest displays on a smartphone of 2020 and even the best for the price.

There is one issue with this screen, though, it doesn’t work sometimes and turns completely black. The problem is also known as the Black Screen of Death issue. When this happens, your phone won’t likely receive messages, calls, or notifications.

To overcome this problem, you can try soft resetting the phone, starting it in Safe Mode, wiping the cache partition, or performing a factory reset.

Testing with PUBG Mobile shows that this display can handle graphics quite well. Overall, it allows for the highest settings and maintains a 60fps frame rate. However, at the beginning of the game, the frame rate can drop to as low as 44 fps but very briefly and gets back to around 60 fps immediately.

Chip

The Galaxy A70 is powered by the Snapdragon 675. This is an octa-core processor with dual 2.0GHz cores and six 1.7GHz cores. On GeekBench 4.1, it got 2391 and 6584 points for single-core and multi-core scores, respectively, just a bit lower than the Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro. On AnTuTu 7, this chipset got 167750 points, higher than the Oppo F11 Pro and the Huawei P30 Lite.

Qualcomm released this chipset late last year with improvements dedicated to a better gaming experience. For example, it offers a 30% increase in game launch speed compared with its successor Snapdragon 670. Also, in comparison with the Snapdragon 670, this processor releases music 20% faster, loads social apps 15% faster, and loads webpages 35% better.

This chip was designed to optimize gameplay, especially for titles like PUBG Mobile and CrossFire Mobile. Indeed, this chip helps a mid-range phone handle games much better than you may expect. Though there are still frame drops here and there, the overall experience is surprisingly good and this is really a reliable gaming device for a limited budget.

Storage

When it comes to RAM and ROM, here are the options you have with the Galaxy A70. You can choose either 6GB RAM and 128GB of internal storage or 8GB RAM and 128GB of onboard memory. However, in India, only the 6GB RAM version is available, so if you want to opt for the 8GB RAM for more gaming power, you can consider buying it from international stores.

It’s worth noting that this phone has a plastic back cover, meaning it will release less heat when you play games than a metal back cover, hence reduces the hot feeling on your hand during long gaming hours. However, that also means the heat is trapped inside the device more, which results in frame drops. To avoid this, you can play games in cool environments like a room with an air-conditioner, avoid direct sunlight, or use fans.

Battery

Regarding the battery, the Galaxy A70 packs a 4500mAh Li-Po non-removable battery with support for 25W fast charging. Testing shows that it can last more than 17 hours of playing videos, over 13 hours of web browsing over Wi-Fi, and a whopping 36 hours of talk time over 3G connectivity.

With this capacity, the handset allows for heavy use all day long, meaning you can play games without worrying it will die in the middle of a battle. And if the battery drains, you can always resort to the fast charging option, which essentially juices up 42% in just 30 minutes.

Cameras

As a mid-range smartphone, the camera module on the Galaxy A70 is, of course, not as impressive as that on high-end devices.

On the rear, there are triple cameras, including a 32MP primary wide-angle lens, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens, and a 5MP depth lens. You have the basic modes panorama and HDR along with the ability to record videos at 1080p with 30/240 fps or 4K with 30 fps. On the front, there is a single 32MP selfie lens with support for HDR mode and video recording at 1080p and 30fps.