When I chose the 16 Plus for my 30-day iPhone challenge, people were like, "Oh,
you should have gone with the Pro." But then I was like, "This didn't matter at
all." Then I took it one step further and I went with the Pixel 9a for my new
daily driver and I still can't really tell the difference. So, here is the
next natural progression. Why am I even bothering with flagship or mid-tier
phones when I could pick up a budget device like this new Samsung A36 for
just $400? What am I actually giving up by
going with this thing? Because I can tell you from my first impression, not much. I mean, I guess I
gave up a box. Samsung didn't drop one off with our sample phone, but other
than that, it feels pretty good. We've got what? Plastic frame.
Wa! Shut up. That is really convincing. Okay, so
it's got a metal feeling frame. It uses Corning Gorilla Glass on the back,
Victus glass on the front. So, these are fairly premium materials. It's got a
triple camera setup with a 50 megapixel main shooter, an 8 megapixel ultrawide,
and a 5 megapixel macro. And the selfie
camera is 12 megapixels. And like, what is there to not like about it? Okay,
over on the right, we got a lock button that Oh man, I'd actually like to see
this on more phones, like, you know, more expensive ones. It's got a little
raised bump on the side so that you can landmark a little bit more easily. Dude,
I've accidentally called the police twice on my Pixel 9a because I was
trying to turn up the volume during a call and I had the like five taps for
911. That was one of my problems. What else we got? Okay, noise cancelling
microphone up there on the top. Whole lot of nothing over here on the side.
Um, I actually strongly disagree with Lisa's concern about the down and lock
for screenshot. I actually find this to be awesome cuz there's nothing else to
accidentally mash on the other side. Uh down at the bottom, we've got our
speaker, USBC, and let's find out what's inside here. Precision screwdriver.
ltstore.com. And boop. I was kind of
hoping for micro SD expansion cuz I know a lot of the more budgetoriented phones
have that. Unfortunately, no. Just a single SIM tray. Well, that's a downer.
Also, that USB port, only USB 2. Though,
it does support 45watt quick charging, which is good because the phone doesn't
support wireless charging of any sort. That's right, my friends. There are some
downsides. And a big one is, of course, the processor. It uses a Snapdragon 6
Gen 3. What the hell is that? I have no idea. But in a nutshell, it has anywhere
from half to a third of the gaming
performance that you would get out of a couple generation old flagship. As for
non-gaming, it's more like half of the performance of a couple year old
flagship. What that actually means for daily use, I got to be honest with you,
it seems like probably not that much. Like I did get a little bit of lag when
I was dragging over the news feed, but
like I don't know, man. I don't know what to tell you other than about our
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desk using our link in the description. Let's take a closer look at the screen
because you guys probably already noticed even on camera how smooth this
thing looks. That's because this 6.7 in 1080p class display is running at 120 Hz
with variable refresh rate support. That is huge for both battery life and for
the general responsive feelingness of
the device. It is worth noting though that our battery life results were okay,
but not super impressive. about on par with our two generational flagship, the
S23, but not on par with a newer, more
power sippy, budgetoriented device. What also isn't on par with budgeetori
oriented devices, was the brightness of this display. While it didn't impress us
that much in SDR, especially with auto brightness disabled, in HDR, we managed
to not only meet Samsung's claimed 1900
nits peak brightness, but we exceeded it. So, I would expect to have a very
excellent HDR video viewing experience on this phone. Um, okay, I found another
little compromise. The haptics aren't great. That does tend to happen with
more budgetoriented devices. Personally, I turn them off when I type anyway, so
it doesn't matter to me, but your mileage may vary. Let's see how the HDR
viewing experience holds up in the real world. Yep, that's an HDR OLED. All
right, look at those highlights. I mean, if you're not watching on an HDR
display, you're probably going to miss out a little bit. Man, I'm looking at my notes trying to find downsides. Man,
it's hard. Like, this great display has
a built-in fingerprint sensor. Like, remember when that was space age
technology and you could get it on, you know, weird random Chinese phones and
then it made its way to flagships? Well, now for $400. Boom. Undercreen
fingerprint sensor. That is absolutely flipping incredible. I mean, it's not
the fastest increen fingerprint sensor, but dang it, it's there. It's also IP67
water resistant. Like, that's freaking cool. Oh, how's the camera? I wonder if
the camera's any good. Please tell me it has double take. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Double click to camera. Oh my gosh. The
preview is a little laggy. You see that? You see that? Yeah.
She's a little laggy. She's a little laggy. Okay. So, it turns out that budget phones are budget phones. Oh my
god. Look at this guy. He closed his eyes for a picture. Also, this looks
like ass. This looks like a This looks like an AI conversion to watercolor
painting. Do you see this? That's art.
Here's Sam seeing that Wancho is
late. Whoa, dude. The selfie camera
looks great, dude. Dude, look at that.
They spent all the money on the selfie camera. Look at this. Look at this
sharpness. Super natural skin tones. And like this face that captures how I felt
seeing how good this selfie camera looks. What the? It's got to be the low
light cuz there's no way the rear camera is worse. Yeah, rear camera looks good
when there's ample light and when it's pointed at such a handsome gentleman.
That's a terrible picture. That's unfortunate. Okay, how's the video
though? How much you want to bet this is this just chugs. Oh my god. Okay. No,
it's getting a little better for a bit there. I couldn't see Bell. It's a low
light, not a highlight. Yeah. Yeah. I want to hear these speakers. There's got
to be a compromise on the speakers. There's no way it has an amplified earpiece speaker. So, that used to be
like a premium phone feature. Oh,
dude. Amplified earpiece speaker. They're pretty well
balanced. Okay. So, the last 40% of the volume
slider does basically nothing other than add some distortion, but up to 40% is
pretty good. Good clarity. No bass. Obviously, you're not going to get that. And there's no subwoofer in it, right?
But it's solid. Oh, I see the impact of
the plastic chassis now. There's some flex to it. Bit of flex to it, but I
still think it feels pretty darn good overall. Wait, this thing also gets 6
years of OS updates. Bluetooth 5.4, so
you have compatibility with the latest peripherals. Wi-Fi 6 only, though, so
you won't get to take advantage of like 6 GHz Wi-Fi spectrum. And it is a 5G
phone. But can I can we like be real talk here? Have you found that just like
turning off 5G on your phone can help with
reception? Yeah, dude. Right. Like the
coverage in my area sucks. Or at least with my carrier. Okay, I did find
another downside. 128 gigs of storage, only 6 gigs of RAM, which on Android can
be a bit of a bigger deal than it is on iOS. And that could mean that by the end
of that 6 year of software updates period, this thing is feeling a little
dated. But overall, I still think it is
mind-blowing from a, you know, premium brand. How much phone you can get for
like 400 bucks these days. Just really makes me feel like the whole high-end
phone rat race has just gotten kind of pointless. And in some ways, the
lower-end phone could even feel like a feature because this thing has like
basic AI features like, you know, circle something and remove it from an image or
whatever. But it has almost none of the AI bloat that I feel like has honestly
just been more annoying than anything else on the Pixel 9a lately. Subscribe
to ShortCircuit. See you later.