Samsung Galaxy A72 Review – A Premium Phone With Mid-Range Features

Samsung has been releasing smartphones here and there across markets. Its latest entrant (at the time of writing this) is the Samsung Galaxy A72. It comes with some upgrades over Galaxy A71 and has a price tag starting at Rs 31,999/- which does open up the opportunity to discuss whether it is worth paying or not.

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Well, with IP67, an 8MP telephoto sensor, a Snapdragon 720G processor, stereo speakers, and a larger battery, I would say that the Samsung Galaxy A72 (4G) is worth a shot. However, read through this entire hands-on review to know more. Also, there’s a separate Samsung Galaxy A72 5G global version available too so don’t be confused.

Samsung Galaxy A72 (8GB+128GB) variant is available at Rs 34,999/- on Amazon India where you get a tonne of deals and discounts. On the Samsung India website, avail the 8+128GB variant at Rs 30,999/- while the higher 8+256GB variant is available at Rs 33,999/- including Rs 1,000/- off on Samsung Shop App purchase for the first time users. There’s a 3,000/- instant cashback on using HDFC cards. Available colour options are Awesome Violet, Awesome White, Awesome Blue, and Awesome Black.

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Before we talk in detail about the Samsung Galaxy A72 let’s see what the on-paper specs look like?

• Display: 16.95 centimetres (6.7-inch) FHD+ Super AMOLED Plus- Infinity O display,90hz refresh rate
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G
• Storage: 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB
• Software: One UI 3.1 based on Android 11
• Rear cameras: 64MP (main) + 12MP (ultra-wide) + 8MP (telephoto) +5MP (macro)
• Selfie Camera: 32MP
• Battery: 5000 mAh, 25W fast charging
• Weight: 203g
• Dimensions: ‎0.8 x 7.7 x 16.5 cm

In my opinion, Samsung has an upper hand when it comes to the design of any smartphone. Samsung Galaxy A72 takes some cues from the Galaxy Note 20 series as well as reprised its A-series heritage with a beautiful design on-board.

It’s all about the back though. Samsung has gone for four pastel colour options that look soothing. I had Awesome Blue and Awesome White colour review units for testing and turns out I have a preference towards the latter.

Samsung Galaxy A72 has a plastic frame and back panel. Irrespective of how premium it looks, it isn’t that premium once you hold the phone. The quad-camera setup is reminiscent of the Note20 series although there’s a massive difference here. Instead of simply popping up a bit above the back panel, Galaxy A72 has a smooth slope from the rectangular camera bump to the back panel and it nicely blends into the latter. It is smooth on touch and looks good, to be honest.

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There’s a Samsung branding and a few logos at the bottom which I think shouldn’t be there but let’s give it a pass.

Talking about the front which has a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on top, the bezels around the display are neither too thick nor too small. It is in a goldilocks zone of the bezels and that’s impressive.

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There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom next to the Type-C 2.0 port, and a bottom-firing loudspeaker. Perhaps the Galaxy A72 has a stereo speaker setup where the earpiece doubles as a secondary channel to pull off the momentous task. Usually, many smartphones have bland tops but with Galaxy A72, there’s a secondary mic and a Dual SIM Card tray with a hybrid attachment on it.

Then you get an uninterrupted left side while the right side gets a power button and a volume rocker placed just about the right height and with a quality tactile response.

Samsung Galaxy A72 has a giant 6.7-inch Super AMOLED panel with a 1080×2400 pixels resolution. It has a 20:9 aspect ratio with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on top for protection. Next up, the display has a 90Hz refresh rate which is 50 per cent higher, and 800 nits of peak brightness. Now, these are the specifications on the paper, here’s how the display fares in practical use.

Samsung smartphones usually get beautiful displays and Galaxy A72 is no exception to this rule. In fact, I found that A72 is using faster high-refresh-rate panels along with Galaxy A52 that was launched together. The display is huge with a tiny punch-hole at the centre which I don’t think will be a distraction.

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The phone is advertised to reach 800 nits on auto max mode and to be honest, it reached 825 nits which are truly impressive. This means you can take your phone outside on a bright sunny day, take pictures, or vibe with your homies on a video call and more without squeezing your eyes and trying to find a shade to view the screen.

Galaxy A72 comes with two colour profiles as usual i.e. natural and vivid and the latter does bring out the pop in colours and since you are using an “AMOLED” panel, I don’t think so you should go for a lifeless colour profile. There’s an Eye Comfort Shield that actively adjusts the colours of the display throughout the day so that it is not uncomfortable for your eyes.

There’s a 90Hz refresh rate and I can’t forget to review it. Turns out although the 90Hz refresh rate is higher, it has become entry-level since higher 120Hz and more HRR are coming on smartphones. The phone doesn’t have a smart switch between 60Hz and 90Hz which means you can either select the lower or higher refresh rate manually.

The display vibes at 60Hz in most apps including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, the full Google Apps suite, and more. On the other hand, videos are limited to 60Hz only and unlike others, you are required to clock back to 60Hz manually to save battery life. Finally, the phone doesn’t support HDR so it has only FHD support onboard.

Samsung Galaxy A72 sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G SoC which is better than many Helio and Dimensity processors at this price tag. The chipset is built on an 8nm node and has eight cores as usual. This includes two 2.3GHz Kryo 465 Gold and six 1.8GHz Kryo 465 Silver cores. There’s an Adreno 618 GPU that handles all the graphics requirements. The device has 6/8GB of RAM and 128/256GB of storage configurations as well.

The Galaxy A72 and Snapdragon 720G combo at Rs 34,999/- appears a bit expensive because even its smaller sibling A52 uses the same chipset. In fact, this price tag can give you phones with Snapdragon 690G, SD765G, Dimensity 800U, Dimensity 1000+ chipsets, and even the latest Snapdragon 870 5G (Poco F3) falls in the same price tag. Thus, Galaxy A72 doesn’t have any excuses to make for its lack of optimum performance, to be honest.

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Looking at the benchmarking scores, the device scored 1,627 points on Geekbench 5’s multi-core test while the single-core test recorded 537 points. To put things into perspective, scores of Realme 8 Pro, Samsung Galaxy M51, Realme X7 Pro, OnePlus Nord, Realme Narzo 30 Pro 5G, Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro Max (to name a few) succeed the scores by a tonne which creates a lot of distinction in the same price segment with a lot of competitors.

Anyways, coming back to the actual performance, SD720G will still hold a lot as it doesn’t slow down any sign of slowing down when subject to multitasking (at least initially). Benchmarking scores on AnTuTu wasn’t that impressive either and I am quite positive that Samsung could have used a slightly powerful processor instead since you are really paying a premium here.

I played a few games on Samsung Galaxy A72 and since it uses a Snapdragon processor, it took many hits with demanding titles like Genshin Impact that had a playable frame rate. Turns out you could get a bit of stutter when subjected to these games but it should work just fine.

Samsung Galaxy A72 is huge in terms of its display size which means reaching all the corners may not be ideal. However, with OneUI 3.1 on-board, one-handed usage becomes a lot easier thanks to its emphasis on the same. It isn’t a massive overhaul over OneUI 2.5 or 3.0 but it does leave its mark on the device.

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Some of its features include an updated night mode, Director’s View, Eye comfort shield, Private Share, multi-mic recording among others. Since Galaxy A72 falls in the midrange category, it should also get three years of major Android OS upgrades which is a big thing on Android devices. There are refined multimedia controls, smart pop-up view, Bubbles, Music Share, and more on-board.

There are some major improvements in the optics department of Galaxy A72 when compared to Galaxy A71 which is technically M32’s predecessor. There’s still a quad-camera setup with a primary 64MP camera with OIS, PDAF, f/1.8; a secondary telephoto 8MP camera with PDAF, OIS, and 3x optical zoom; a 12MP ultrawide snapper with 123-degree FoV; and a 5MP macro sensor with f/2.4 aperture. Here, the telephoto sensor is newly added when compared to the A71. On the front, there’s the same 32MP selfie shooter with an f/2.2 aperture onboard.

If you look closely, this is the same camera setup as the Galaxy A52 except for the 8MP telephoto sensor with OIS and cuts back on a 5MP depth sensor.

Talking about the photo quality, I had no issues clicking vibrant and vivid photos in the daytime and the shots had good details, decent dynamic range and everything looked natural. Turn on the ultrawide snapper and you get a much wider field of view to play with capturing objects that weren’t accessible on a standard wide-angle sensor. However, the edges appeared a bit stretched which is commonly referred to as edge distortion and it is usual for ultrawide snappers. Finally, the 5MP macro sensor is just okay and you can capture macro shots but don’t have high hopes with it.

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The telephoto sensor which differentiates the Galaxy A72 from A52 captures average photos in daylight. I didn’t see much clarity in the shots even at native zoom level irrespective of being advertised as a telephoto sensor. Zoom in the shots and you can software images as you go further and this isn’t something I would technically expect with a Rs 35,000/- smartphone.

Flip the daytime to nighttime and you get a completely different story. If it’s under a well-lit area, your shots will be average. However, in low light, Galaxy A72 resorts to shots with longer exposure and that is where you get jitteriness and shakiness if you aren’t holding the phone still. Technically, there’s not much difference between shots captured with regular and night mode.

Flip to the ultra-wide-angle camera for night mode and you get a much detailed image. There’s no night mode on the telephoto sensor which means you are literally using the regular telephoto sensor in a low-light setting.

Finally, it’s the selfie shooter and with 32MP at your disposal, I don’t think you would be disappointed during the day and even at night in low light conditions. The selfies were decent with pleasing details and that’s without any night mode since it doesn’t make much difference.

Finally, you can shoot videos at 4K@30fps using the rear and the front camera. However, 4K resolution gets EIS that does make the videos a bit stabilized but not much.

Samsung Galaxy A72 packs in a hefty 5,000 mAh battery. It is way more than average and 500 mAh more than A52 released together. The phone offers 117 hours of endurance test and 16 hours & 28 minutes on HD video loop test. Unfortunately, it is an hour less than the record made by Galaxy A52 (17 hours & 28 minutes). Its 90Hz mode is smooth although power-consumptive while the 60Hz mode will surely upgrade its power efficiency by a few hours if not more.

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Galaxy A72 comes bundled with a 25W power adapter which is the maximum any Galaxy smartphone offers and turns out it takes around 1:15 hours to juice it up from 0 to 100 per cent. This is definitely not the fastest wired charging available at this price tag but it is acceptable. Charging the phone doesn’t turn up its temperature and the phone charges at a normal face that will further enhance the battery’s longevity.

Samsung Galaxy A72 has a hybrid stereo speaker setup. Here, there’s a single bottom-firing loudspeaker and an earpiece that doubles as a secondary channel. Overall, the stereo speakers are pretty loud with a loudness score of -264 LUFS which leaves it in a position ahead of many of its competitors. Toggle the Dolby Atmos and you get a little boost to the overall sound quality although it goes to -28 LUFS on the loudness score.

Dolby Atmos has a few audio options, be it Dolby Atmos for music, video, movies, or gaming that slightly alters the sound quality depending upon the media played. Then you have an advanced equalizer and Adapt sound system on-board that lets you toggle the sound quality manually and set it as preferences.

There’s a whole string of connectivity features on A72 which is a proper high-calibre midrange smartphone. It is equipped with GPS, Bluetooth v5.0, Wi-Fi 802.11ax with dual-band support as well as a USB Type-C 2.0 port for data charging and charging. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack too and there’s no difference between the A72 (that I am reviewing here) and the A71 in terms of connectivity.

I noticed no issues when making calls to and fro using the Samsung Galaxy A72. Signal and network reception was good even after I took my phone in the basement. I have been using Jio 4G and Airtel 4G on Galaxy A72 and both worked totally fine.  It supports LTE carrier aggregation as well.

When it comes to security, you get the usual stuff i.e. the Pattern and the PIN. Then you have an under-the-display fingerprint reader which isn’t ultrasonic though but it does its job. It is a bit sluggish and authentication is not 100 per cent accurate but it lets you tap and unlock the phone in a jiffy. There’s a Face Unlock on-board as well that works best during daytime although nighttime authentication or during low-light can take a hit at times.

Pros

• 6.7-inch AMOLED display with 90Hz refresh rate
• IP67 dust and water resistance
• 64MP Quad-rear camera setup
• 32MP selfie camera
• 5000 mAh battery

Cons

• Mid-range processor
• No wireless charging feature
• Only 15W charger in the box
• No 5G connectivity