Samsung announced the Galaxy A71 in December 2019 and launched the phone in India in February 2020. This is an addition to the Galaxy A mid-range series of the Korean giant. In this series, there are also the Galaxy A51, Galaxy A21, Galaxy A31, Galaxy A11, and Galaxy A41.

At a price starting from Rs 35,599, the Galaxy A71 is priced higher than its cousins like the A51 (Rs 25,250), the A41 (Rs 22,990), the A31 (Rs 20,999), and the A21 (Rs 18,900).

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 punch-hole design with the front-facing camera placed at the top-center. This screen design is the same as that of the Galaxy A51, but different from the Galaxy A41, Galaxy A31, and Galaxy A21, all of which features a waterdrop-like notch at the top-center position. The Galaxy A11 also has a punch-hole selfie camera but it’s located at the top-left corner of the screen.

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, the phone screen is very similar to that on its predecessor Galaxy A70, meaning you still get the 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.

However, users of this smartphone have encountered one problem, there is a yellow tint on the left side of the display when it’s set to low brightness. It seems that the tint comes and goes randomly and doesn’t appear at high brightness. If you buy this phone, it’s recommended that you turn it on at the store and check for the issue. That way, you can change the phone easily and immediately, but so far, the problem is likely to present on every A71 phone.

When it comes to gaming, testing with PUBG Mobile indicates that the phone screen maintains a constant frame rate of 40 fps though there was a drop to 34 fps at the beginning when it was loading settings and characters.

Chip

The Samsung Galaxy A71 is powered by the Snapdragon 730 from Qualcomm. This is an Octa-core chipset with dual 2.2GHz cores and six 1.8GHz cores. For graphics, the phone comes with the Adreno 618 GPU. To compare, this processor also powers devices like the Mi Note 10, POCO X2, and Mi 9T.

With the Snapdragon 730, the phone gets 7039 points on GeekBench 4.4 for multi-core score, higher than the Mi 9T, and 2536 points for the single-core score, just 1 point lower than the Mi 9T.

In the mid-range segment, this processor belongs to the upper range, comparable with more expensive devices. It provides the smartphone with a smooth performance, you won’t notice any lags when navigating in the phone and apps.

And if you worry about gaming, the good news is there’s nothing to worry about. The Snapdragon 730 handles games pretty well, such as PUBG Mobile. The graphics is smooth and there is hardly any lag in during gameplay.

As gaming tests show, it can maintain a frame rate of 40 fps with few drops at the beginning, but the experience is great once you get into gaming. With a different setting, the game will give you a stable frame rate of 30 fps with zero drops.

Storage

When it comes to RAM and ROM, there are two variants for you to choose from, both of which feature 128GB of internal memory. But the options for RAM includes 6GB and 8GB.

The 6GB RAM is really common among mid-range smartphones these days. With 6GB of RAM, you can already enjoy games happily, plus the help of the processor. However, if you want to improve your gaming experience and multitasking as well, you should opt for 8GB of RAM.

If you spot overheating in the Galaxy A71, it’s likely just because you have been gaming for long hours. If that’s the case, overheating is not unusual. However, it’s worth pointing out again that this phone delivers outstanding gaming performance for the price and specifications, which has been claimed by many tech outlets.

In terms of the overheating issue, if gaming for long hours, you may notice the phone’s temperature rise to 40-41 degrees C with the lowest temperature at 34 degrees C. You will feel the heat mostly at the top of the phone where most of the processing work happens.

To overcome the heating issue on this phone, you can apply a few solutions like with other devices. First, make sure your phone is clear of junks, you should clean the device regularly. You can also use the Low Power Mode to save energy, turn off unused services like Bluetooth and locations. Also, don’t play games under direct sunlight, it will heat up very fast, which is bad.

Battery

Regarding the battery, the Samsung Galaxy A71 packs a 4500mAh battery with support for 25W fast charging. The capacity is the same as its successor Galaxy A70, and much larger than the Galaxy A41 (3500 mAh).

According to GSMArena, the phone can last more than 30 hours on talks over 3G, over 17 hours with playing videos, and 13+ hours with browsing the web. With this capacity and battery life, you should be able to enjoy games all day long.

As mentioned above, you may experience an overheating issue, but more likely with hardware like the CPU and GPU rather than the battery.

Camera

On the back, there is a quad-camera module. This includes a 64MP primary, wide-angle lens, and a 12MP ultra-wide-angle lens that allow you to take photos of large landscapes. There is also a 5MP macro lens for more detail from a distance and a 5MP depth lens for better portraits. The rear cameras offer HDR and panorama modes, and let you record videos at 1080p/960fps, 1080p/30-240fps, and 4K/30fps.

On the front, there is a single 32MP lens. There is also support for HDR mode and video recording at 1080 pixels and 30 fps.