Introduction
Samsung Galaxy F62 is the second smartphone under the F-series banner and just a few days after the almighty Samsung Galaxy S21 series launched. It packs in a flagship Exynos 9825 SoC although it is taken from Galaxy Note 10 released in 2019. It is a perfect mid-ranger with a beefy battery under the hood, a flamboyant camera rig, and more. Well, the specifications on paper for any device can be misleading and Galaxy F62 isn’t immune to it as well.
Read More: Samsung Galaxy F62 vs Galaxy M51 Full Comparison
Thus, we have driven a review on the device after using it for a while to separate its online specifications persona from the actual usage.
Price in India, Variants, Availability
Samsung is selling the Galaxy F62 at a price tag of INR 23,999/- for its 6GB plus 128GB variant while the higher 8GB plus 128GB variant is up for grab at INR 25,999/-. Enjoy a tonne of deals and discounts such as an INR 2,500/- cashback on using ICICI Bank CC, DC, and EMI. Avail up to INR 7,800/- less with Flipkart Smart Upgrade Plan or avail of any of the 6-7 other offers available on Flipkart India. You can also purchase it from Samsung India or any major retailer out there.
Box Contents
The box packaging looks quite appealing with the Galaxy F62 printed on the front of a white box. The box contents of Samsung Galaxy F62 include:
- Galaxy F62 handset
- USB-C to USB-C cable
- 25W Fast Charger
- Quick guide
Specs at a glance
Let me talk about the on-paper specifications of the Samsung Galaxy F62 first:
- Display: 17.02 cm (6.7 inch) Full HD+ sAMOLED Display
- Chipset: Exynos 9825
- RAM & ROM: 6GB/8GB, 128GB
- Software: Samsung OneUI 3.1 based on Android 10
- Rear camera: 64MP + 12MP + 5MP + 5MP
- Selfie camera: 32MP
- Battery: 7000 mAh
- Weight: 218g
- Dimensions: 163.90 x 76.30 x 9.50
With key specs discussed, let’s jump right into the review of the Samsung Galaxy F62 and see how it performs to be a perfect mid-ranger.
Design and Build - Little Boxy But Too Heavy
There’s something impressive here when it comes to the design aspect of the device. The Galaxy F62 has a vivid display at the front with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protecting it. The display is Infinity-O which means it has a punch-hole snapper at the front and that’s pretty much everything you get at the front. There are no other distractions.
Turn the phone backside and you will see a good Galaxy M51-lookalike back panel. It has a Glasstic which is plastic but with a gloss of a glass. In simple words, it is a glossy polycarbonate back and what I mean by glossy is that it is almost reflective. You get slim stripes from the top to bottom that look pretty high-quality. But then again, it is a magnet to marks and smudges so if you aren’t using a phone case or cover, you will see a tonne of marks just after a day or two of usage. I personally felt the Galaxy F62 with a slightly boxy design might feel too heavy in hands for regular usage and with an added cover, it may feel almost like a brick.
The back panel has a quad-camera setup housed in a 2×2 square camera setup that makes up a 9.5mm thickness. Even after housing a 7000 mAh battery, the device feels balanced although you can’t deny that it is quite heavy at 218 grams but it is manageable. You get a sweet-looking Samsung branding at the bottom.
Talking about the peripherals, the device has a 3.5mm headphone jack, a Type-C port, a bottom-firing loudspeaker, and a secondary mic at the bottom while the top houses a triple-slot SIM tray for two nano SIMs and a microSD card slot. There’s a power button that doubles as a side-mounted fingerprint scanner and a volume rocker on the right side.
Display - Best in the Series
Samsung Galaxy F62 arrives with a giant 6.7-inch Super AMOLED Plus panel with 1080×2400 pixels resolution taking up 86.7 per cent of the screen-to-body ratio. The device has a 393 PPI density and has a 20:9 aspect ratio to enjoy.
Samsung does offer the best of displays with its smartphones and the Galaxy F62 is no exception. The display tech is Super AMOLED Plus and has an FHD+ resolution as mentioned above. The display gives out rich contrast, deeper blacks, and punchy colours that you can view. Galaxy F62 offers varied colour tones that users can adjust from natural to vivid and others depending upon what colour temperature they are comfortable using.
The device comes with Widevine L1 support so streaming HD content on the phone is a piece of cake. It can also view HDR content although this isn’t widely supported so you might not be able to tap into HDR across all platforms. There’s an Always-on Display with a tonne of themes that you can get from the Samsung Theme Store.
You get a peak brightness of 420 nits which although isn’t very good, is enough to view the display even in broad sunlight so that’s not a problem. But there are a few caveats here. The display is tagged with a max 60Hz of refresh rate which is standard. But considering that smartphones with AMOLED displays are now getting higher refresh rates at a similar or even less price point, Samsung Galaxy F62 does tend to fall behind. It is probably the only reason where the Galaxy F62 display failed to impress me.
Performance - Old is Gold
Talking about the powertrain that supplies the momentum to the device, it has an Exynos 9825 SoC clocked at a max 2.73GHz with 2 cores while 2 cores are clocked at 2.40GHz, and finally, 4 power-efficient cores are clocked at 1.95GHz in a tri-cluster arrangement. The device gets Mali-G76 MP12 GPU to handle all its graphics processing.
One of the major USPs of Galaxy F62 is its chipset. It is a flagship chipset from Note 10 in a mid-range smartphone and thus, doesn’t fail to disappoint the masses. We did use the phone for a while and guess what, it is snappy. Samsung is marketing it as a gaming processor and guess what, it is certainly proving its calibre.
When tested with Call of Duty: Mobile or Asphalt 9 which are both graphics-intensive games, we didn’t see much of a frame drop. When tested on GFXBench, we found out that it had 58fps with 81 per cent stability while the OnePlus Nord managed to pull off a sweet 60fps at 100 per cent stability. This means it lags a bit behind the Snapdragon 765G SoC although it is still a good old gaming processor.
Overall, the device does work pretty stutter-free if you are using it as a daily driver for all your tasks, multitasking, and so on. You would see a bit of stutter launching apps when booting the device but that’s not something new so you don’t have to worry about it. The performance is consistently average so if you are interested in buying a Samsung smartphone with a hefty battery with a slightly older flagship SoC, try Galaxy F62.
Software
It runs on the latest Android 11-powered OneUI 3.1 out-of-the-box that also comes with a promise that Samsung will ship more major Android OS upgrades than usual. It is a bundle of features including Google Discover, Zoom Lock for the camera, an upgraded user interface that emphasizes one-handed usage and preloaded with a few bloatware such as Netflix. You could get a few ads here and there if you sign up using a Samsung account but the rest is pretty great about OneUI 3.1. It is so great that OxygenOS 11 uses a similar fashion to its One-handed feature.
Cameras - Impressive Beyond Words
Samsung Galaxy F62 comes loaded with a quad-camera setup housing a primary 64MP sensor with f/1.8 aperture, PDAF; a secondary 12MP ultrawide sensor with a field of view of 123-degrees and f/2.2 aperture. A 5MP macro and a 2MP depth sensor take the helm completing the camera rig on the device. A 32MP wide-angle snapper takes the best shot at photos on the front with an aperture of f/2.2.
Let’s talk about cameras mounted on Galaxy F62 on a practical use case. When shooting photos in the daytime, I didn’t face any issues focusing on objects from both main and ultrawide snapper and I saw good colour reproduction as well as it retains a lot of details. The HDR balances exposure as well while the Scene Optimiser quickly scans through the scene to find out the best settings and all that goes under the hood without you knowing it. You will have to bear with some distortion with the ultrawide camera which is common although software can rectify if it stays on Galaxy F62 although as a minor distortion.
The close-up shots on Galaxy F62 are amazing as well with a great amount of details and a natural background blur. Here, the 2MP depth sensor takes the depth-related data and then the software uses data from both the main and depth sensor to produce a portrait shot. Talking about close-ups, you would get the same results with the macro camera as well during daytime although nighttime shots are average.
Talking about the nighttime camera, the night mode when engaged is good in performance if the object is in focus. The night mode tends to capture more details from a darker section of the image that combines to create a sharper and brighter image.
You can shoot videos on Galaxy F62 at up to 4K resolution and yes, both the primary and ultra-wide snapper onboard the device is stabilized although it is software-based and not OIS. You can shoot videos at 30fps as there’s no option to get a *0fps video even with a flagship-grade chipset on-board so that’s a caveat among the many.
The front camera on-board the Samsung Galaxy F62 is amazing as well if you are using it in a daytime setting. All the details are preserved and it even applies to the background blur with the images. You can even snag 4K videos using the front camera although don’t expect it to be stabilized. We did feel that the front snapper shoots photos with some artificial skin tones so that might set you off in some cases although many would love it if they don’t want to overexpose the skin texture.
Monstrous Battery
The Galaxy F62 is a powerhouse with a massive 7,000 mAh battery under the hood. It comes with 25W fast charging tech which is the same as Galaxy S21 Ultra since the max cap by Samsung is 25W. There’s reverse charging feature as well. When using a phone with a mammoth battery, you get the opportunity to use the phone without any battery anxiety. It easily lasts for 2 days even on heavy usage lasting 35 hours on an HD video loop test. It is certainly one of the best phones if you are looking for a battery as its USP. But hey, there’s a catch. It has a 25W charging speed so it takes a good 3 hours to juice up the battery to its capacity so good luck with it.
Audio, Connectivity, Biometrics
Unfortunately, you don’t get a stereo speaker setup here which we think would have been a great addition. It instead usings a standalone bottom-firing speaker which is loud. You can even use your headphones for a great listening experience since Galaxy F62 has Dolby Atmos available for both wired and wireless headphones.
Samsung Galaxy F62 is a premium mid-range smartphone that packs in connectivity features like Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with dual-band, Bluetooth v5.0 with LE and A2DP, along with A-GPS, BDS, Galileo, and Glonass GPS navigation systems. The device has NFC enabled as well. You get a USB Type-C 2.0 port for data transfer and charging. It has FM radio as well and yes, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack as well.
There’s a capacitive side-mounted fingerprint scanner that takes care of authentication using your fingerprint. It worked fine for me so don’t expect it to be lightning-fast but it is quite good. There’s a face recognition feature available at your disposal too apart from PIN and pattern lock so you get plenty of options to lock and unlock the phone.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Super AMOLED display with increased resolution
- Samsung Exynos 9825 chipset
- Humongous 7000 mAh battery with 25W fast charging
- 8GB RAM + 128GB internal storage
- 64MP Quad-rear camera setup
- 32MP selfie camera
- Android 11 and ONE UI 3.1
Cons
- Display with a normal refresh rate
- No dust and water protection
- It is a bulky device
After going through almost all the aspects of the Samsung Galaxy F62, we now know that the device has both pros and cons that users will have to appreciate and compromise based on their phone usage profile. There is a flagship-grade chipset and it cannot be denied since it is more powerful than many other mid-range chipsets. It offers more on the table than Galaxy M51 with which it shares a few things including the design, display, and others. Its battery life is insane and it is a no-brainer if you want a Samsung phone with a giant battery under Rs 25K price tag given the fact that even flagship smartphones from the company reach a mark of 5,000 mAh or a bit more and that’s all.
But since it falls in a sweet spot of price tag, many devices fall in the same price category. This includes OnePlus Nord, Xiaomi Mi 10i, Realme X7 5G to name a few. You can compare this to draw out a conclusion on whether you want a Samsung Galaxy F62 or either of the devices mentioned above.
