Samsung is no stranger to producing high-quality devices for consumers, but those things usually come at an equally high cost, unless you’re referring to the Samsung Galaxy A36 5G , a phone that attempts to somewhat redefine what it means to be a flagship by offering flagship features in the mid-range price category. There was a time when you would need to spend more than $600-$700 to get a phone that offered flagship-level features. However, advancements from Samsung and other brands have made this obsolete, and it’s now much easier to get a phone that offers this kind of experience for much less.
The Galaxy A36 5G is a perfect example of that, boasting great battery life, a big screen, a decent camera, and a bunch of other stuff that users will be pleased to have at the sub $400 mark. After having spent some time with the Galaxy A36 5G, I’ve come to appreciate the kind of experience you can now have for a lot less money, and that’s a good thing, since there is a large portion of the smartphone market that goes for devices in this price range. It’s also one of the Best Budget Android Phones of 2025 . So, with that said, let’s dive into this review and see how the Galaxy A36 5G stacks up.
At a retail price of $399.99, the Samsung Galaxy A36 5G provides a decent user experience in most areas, often making it clear that this is what a budget phone should be like. Those benefits are even more noticeable if you can find the phone on sale.
Pros
- Decent image quality from camera
- Pretty affordable at $399.99, while also being on sale often
- Better than expected performance
- Battery life is good
- The build quality feels solid
Cons
Charging time is a little slower than expected
Some images can come out with inaccurate colors
Fingerprint sensor is quite slow
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Specs
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Build Quality and Design
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Display
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Performance
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Battery Life and Charging
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Software
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Camera
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A36 5G?
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Specs
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Specs
| Display | 6.7″, 1080 x 2340 Super AMOLED 120Hz |
|---|---|
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 |
| RAM/Storage | 6GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB |
| Cameras | 50MP f/1.8 Primary, 8MP f/2.2 Ultrawide, 5MP Macro |
| Battery | 5,000mAh |
| Charging | 45W wired, no wireless charging |
| Colors | Awesome Black, Awesome Lavender |
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Build Quality and Design
Samsung doesn’t radically change the design of all its devices with every single iteration, and that’s just fine when they already look decent from a design perspective. There’s something to be said for innovating when it comes to design, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should, especially when the design already works. The design of the Galaxy A36 5G is stylish yet elegant, as most of Samsung’s devices tend to be.
In fact, the Galaxy A36 5G looks pretty similar to at least a few of Samsung’s other phones. This is because Samsung has a particular design language that it uses for its phones. This includes rounded corners and flat sides, and a familiar three-camera system for the main camera setup on the back. There’s actually not much to distinguish this phone from the Galaxy A35 5G, save for the camera bump that surrounds all three rear camera sensors, and the bezels, which appear slightly slimmer. All things considered, the design is good. It might bother some that it’s not particularly unique from several of Samsung’s other phones, given that this is a design Samsung has used for a few years. However, it looks good, and it’s comfortable to hold, so at the end of the day, a change isn’t needed, even if it might be preferred.
The solid build quality you’ve come to expect from Samsung
When it comes to build quality, Samsung doesn’t appear to have cut any corners here with the Galaxy A36 5G. It feels well-built and somewhat sturdy despite having a plastic frame. In all honesty, the frame feels a little like metal, almost deceptively so, which probably contributes to the phone feeling like a well-built device. It also features a glass back that’s protected by Gorilla Glass Victus+. While this isn’t going to make it damage-proof, it is going to help considerably with preventing damage from drops, dings, and the like.
The display features the same protection, so you won’t have to worry as much about the screen getting messed up either. Though you should still take preventative measures to avoid damaging the screen, even if this is a device you can get for $400 or less. Other than the three camera sensors on the back, the power button and volume buttons are both on the right side, with two small microphones on top, a single speaker, and the USB-C charging port on the bottom alongside the SIM card tray.
There’s also an LED flash under the glass next to the rear cameras, and an under-display front camera along the center-top edge of the display. Samsung sent us the Awesome Black color of this device, which looks great, but it is a fingerprint magnet, given that the back is covered in glass. So just be aware of that if you don’t like smudges. When it comes down to it, this is a well-built phone that I quite like the design of. It’s simple and yet looks and feels premium. You won’t usually get that with devices in this price range. Not often, at least.
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Display
When it comes to displays, this is most certainly not one you’re going to look at and go “wow, that’s an amazing display.” However, there is some nuance here that I think deserves to be highlighted. First, though, let’s talk about the specifics of the display specs to help with some context. This is a 6.7-inch AMOLED display, with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, a peak brightness of 1,900 nits, and an HBM brightness of 1,200 nits. It also has a resolution of 1,080 x 2,340.
With that out of the way, I have a love-hate relationship with this display. It’s not as crisp, bright, or responsive as I’d like it to be. However, I think it’s important to point out that this is a phone that at full price costs $400, and in many cases these days it’s less than $350. Heck, at the time of writing this review, the unlocked model in Awesome Black (the one we reviewed) was available for $247.
Keeping that in mind, this is so, so much better than the displays you would see at this price range between 5 and 10 years ago. I think there’s something to be said for the fact that while this isn’t a flagship-level display, it’s still pretty decent compared to the displays on phones in this range just a few years back, and it’s likely going to look just fine for anyone who usually shops for phones at this price.
For the price, the colors and the brightness are fine, but not as good as they could be, while other phones in the same price range offer slightly better specs in this area. I think that overall, this is a decent display for this phone if you tend to buy phones that are $400 or less. It has some thick bezels, and the response time is a little slow, but that’s not all due to the display. Some of that is simply due to the performance of the chipset. At the end of the day, this is a decent enough display, and it’s certainly usable.
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Performance
Performance-wise, the Galaxy A36 5G is not bad, but it’s surprisingly lower than I would have expected for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chipset that’s inside. It has its moments where the experience of using it was pleasant, and I didn’t have much of an issue with latency or hitching or anything like that. Other times, it would feel much more sluggish than I would have expected. However, these scenarios were very few and far between. They happened enough that I felt it was worth mentioning, but not enough to where I would reconsider buying this phone if I were in the market for a phone under $400.
Quite honestly, I was most surprised by the performance in games like Genshin Impact. While I’m used to cranking up the graphics to maximum in demanding mobile games like this one and still getting a buttery smooth framerate, I knew I wasn’t going to get that same experience here. However, it was closer to that than I thought it would be. I did leave the graphics settings at maximum for our thermal testing, where we leave the phone for an hour running a high-end game like Genshin Impact with max settings. In general use, though, I turned the graphics down a bit to get a smoother frame rate, and it was much more manageable with visuals still looking quite nice. I think if there’s a mobile gamer out there who doesn’t have a lot to spend on a phone, you could do far worse than the Galaxy A36 5G.
Day-to-day performance in more basic use, like browsing, launching apps like Discord or Reddit, and watching videos on YouTube, was mostly fine. The only part of the performance that I actively dislike is the fingerprint sensor. It’s quite slow. Much slower than I’m used to. In fact, it wasn’t that much faster than just typing in the PIN I had set up. That’s not great, in my opinion.
Benchmarks
In addition to testing out performance in more real-world situations, we also run our phones through a series of benchmarks. Like with any other phone, this consists of Geekbench 6, 3DMark Wildlife Extreme, and AnTuTu. The scores are probably about what you would expect from a phone that costs around $400 or less. Though you might be a little bit surprised as well.
| Device | Geekbench 6 Single-Core | Geekbench 6 Multi-Core | Geekbench 6 GPU |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung Galaxy A36 5G | 996 | 2,470 | 2,215 |
| Moto G 2026 | 696 | 1,991 | 1,448 |
| Google Pixel 9a | 1,705 | 4,416 | 7,721 |
| Honor Magic8 Lite | 1,096 | 3,104 | 2,901 |
For instance, the Geekbench scores were considerably higher than the scores for the Moto G 2026, which is a similarly-priced phone, but lower than the Honor Magic8 Lite and Google Pixel 9a , two other devices that cost around the same price. For the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme test, scores were pretty close to the Honor Magic8 Lite, but again considerably lower than the Google Pixel 9a. We just started doing AnTuTu quite recently, so we don’t really have enough phones in this price range that have been tested yet to show the comparisons. Having said that, we did still want to mention what it was for this device. The AnTuTu score for the Galaxy A36 5G was 763,429.
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Battery Life and Charging
Battery life is not the most important thing to all users, but it is a trait you don’t want to completely dismiss, because poor battery life will only result in you having a dead phone before the day is done. And you definitely don’t want that. Luckily, you shouldn’t have that problem with the Galaxy A36 5G. With a 5,000mAh battery inside, I was sitting at close to 35% or slightly more by the end of the day when I was ready to lie down and go to bed. At that point, I would plug the phone in, and it would be ready to go for the following day.
When the phone eventually needs to be recharged, it supports charging at up to 45W, although it’s worth noting that Samsung doesn’t package a 45W adapter with the phone. You’ll need to get that separately if you want the best possible charging speeds. The Galaxy A36 5G also doesn’t support wireless charging, so plugging it in with a USB-C cable is the only way to juice it up when needed. Although I would end up at about 35% by the end of the day, I was using the phone a bit more than I normally use my phone in a day. With that in mind, the average user will likely have no trouble getting closer to two days out of it before needing a recharge. At the very least, a day and a half.
Benchmarks
We also run our phones through charging and battery life benchmarks to see how long they’ll last in more of a controlled test. For this, I made sure the phone was at 100%, and then I loaded up a 24-hour YouTube video and unplugged the phone. Then I let it run until the battery is at 1%. While doing this, the Galaxy A36 5G lasted for a total of 16 hours, 50 minutes, and 15 seconds before it hit 1%. All things considered, not terrible, but less than I would have expected for a phone that has a 5,000mAh battery inside. For comparison, the Moto G Play 2026 has a 5,200mAh battery inside and itlasted for over 21 hours.
When it comes to charging, remember that this phone maxes out at 45W. Since the phone doesn’t come with a power adapter in the box, I simply plugged the phone in using a 65W charger I have, this way it gets the maximum charging speed. After doing this, the Galaxy A36 5G took 1 hour and 15 minutes to charge up to 100%. Again, not terrible, but I thought it would have been a little faster. I think this is more than suitable for a lot of users, though.
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Software
Since this is a Samsung phone, it’s running on Samsung’s One UI software and luckily, the Galaxy A36 5G I was reviewing ended up receiving the One UI 8.0 update during my review process. So I was able to test it a little before and after this version update. This brought the Galaxy A36 5G up to Android 16, which it didn’t have when I first got it. And I have to say, I enjoy it more with the One UI 8.0 software. However, not that much better. I’m simply more of a fan of the way the software looks and feels on a Pixel device.
This isn’t to say the software on this phone is bad; it’s simply not to my taste. But, it does run smoothly most of the time, save for those few occasions where even just pulling down the notification and quick settings panels felt sluggish. Like most phones these days, unfortunately, there’s a little bit of Samsung bloatware pre-installed, but it’s not as bad as some phones I’ve used in the past. So there is that.
You can also uninstall most of the bloat if you don’t want it on the device, which is what I did. Design-wise, it doesn’t really look like there’s any Material 3 Expressive styling used for the UI, so make of that what you will. If you like the Material 3 Expressive style, then you might not like the UI on this phone. If you really don’t care about that, then you’ll probably find this to be just fine.
App pages also scroll side to side instead of up and down, which is typical of Samsung devices. So, if you’re used to this design for the app drawer, then you’ll be happy to know it has changed. What I do like about this phone’s software is that Samsung has committed to 6 years of software updates for this phone. Just shy of the 7 years that its flagships are getting now. And that’s pretty good. Overall, the software is fine, and I didn’t really have any major issues with it. Though using this phone has reminded me why I don’t usually go for Samsung phones, it’s because I prefer Google’s version of Android over Samsung’s.
Samsung Galaxy A36 5G Review: Camera
Now for the camera. For a phone that costs $400 at full price, but is often less, you might expect the camera to produce some pretty mediocre photos, and I think many of them actually came out a lot better than I was expecting. You have a 50MP main camera sensor on the back that is accompanied by an 8MP ultrawide camera and a 5MP macro camera. Together, the three of them are capable of loading up your gallery with some decent-quality pictures. It doesn’t excel everywhere, however.
I think the general quality of the image is quite good for a phone under $400. However, there were times that colors were often more washed out than they should have been or things just looked like a completely different color than they were in real life. There is one image where I took just a simple picture of a painted brick wall. In real life, this brick wall is kind of a deep rusty reddish orange with some brown tones in it. However, in the image the phone took, it looks like a light tan or brown. The color is completely off. I noticed this happening with a few things I took pictures of. Though most of the images came out with accurate enough colors that I had nothing to complain about.
Other areas of the camera impressed me, like the macro shots. Some of the close-ups I got, I did not expect to end up looking as good as they did. Like the macro shots of the wool fibers and the metal logo on my cap. Portrait mode shots also had a tendency to come out pretty good in most respects, andthe same goes for regular shots. Most of the images I took were with the image quality set at 50MP, though you can dump it down to 12MP if you want to, for whatever reason.
I don’t think the camera is going to win any awards, but the image quality produced is definitely better than I expected from a phone at this price. It’s worth noting that you definitely want to play to the phone’s strengths. For example, low-light image quality isn’t great. It doesn’t do as good a job as some other phones. If there’s enough lighting, however, the images come out a lot more detailed. Overall, the camera is perfectly suitable for all of your picture needs. If you care quite a bit about image quality, though, you probably want to spend the extra money to get into a higher-quality device.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A36 5G?
This really depends on how much money you’re willing to spend on your next device. If you have a hard cap on the expense and aren’t willing to spend more than $400, you can’t go wrong with this device. You might be able to find something better, but the choices will be few and far between down at this range. The Galaxy A36 5G can usually be found on sale; it has a pretty decent camera and battery for the price, and it performs well enough.
Sure, it could stand a few small upgrades, like a faster fingerprint sensor and maybe a brighter display. That being said, I think Samsung delivered a respectable device that is worth the money it’s asking.
You should buy the Samsung Galaxy A36 5G if:
- You’re looking for an affordable phone that still delivers decent performance and a good camera
- You want decent battery life
- You don’t want to spend more than a few hundred dollars
You shouldn’t buy the Samsung Galaxy A36 5G if:
- You want something even less expensive
- You’re looking for something with exceptional performance and best-in-class camera quality
- You want something with longer battery life
