Samsung Galaxy A35 Review
The Samsung Galaxy A35 is a reliable choice at ₹30,999. The phone impressed me with its stellar camera performance, smooth UI, and immersive display. There are a lot of niceties on offer as well such as Gorilla Glass Victus+ display protection, 4 years of OS updates, 4K video recording on the rear and selfie cameras, and a solid build. For those who don’t covet performance over everything else, the Galaxy A35 is one of the best all-rounders you can get your hands on at a relatively pocket-friendly price. However, the lack of HDR support for the display and the absence of a charging brick in the box dock away some of its points. Additionally, the Samsung Galaxy A35 is not suitable for gamers as the chipset doesn’t handle High Graphics gaming too well.
The Samsung Galaxy ‘A’ series is one of the most coveted series of smartphones in the mid-range to high-end segment. This is not surprising given Samsung’s popularity in India and the trust consumers have pertaining to the quality of Samsung phones. The yearly refresh of the A series has hit the market with two fresh offerings – the Samsung Galaxy A55 and the Samsung Galaxy A35. I am reviewing the latter, the Galaxy A35 which is priced starting at ₹30,999. Notably, the Galaxy A35 makes some improvements in the processor and camera departments, however, it goes for the “if it ain’t broke” policy in the display and battery areas. Given that many areas see minimal improvement, is it a worthy upgrade? Also, how will the Samsung Galaxy A35 fare against its fiercest competitors such as the OnePlus Nord CE4 (review) and Redmi Note 13 Pro+ (review)? Let’s delve into that and more in my Samsung Galaxy A35 review.
The Samsung Galaxy A35 is priced starting at ₹30,999 for the 8 GB + 128 GB storage variant. There’s an 8 GB + 256 GB storage configuration as well that is priced at ₹33,999. The phone is available for purchase on Samsung.com, Samsung exclusive and partner stores. It is also available on online platforms.
The Samsung Galaxy A35 is designed like your typical mid-ranger – a plastic frame sandwiched between two glass slabs. However, some subtle design flourishes make it appear more premium than its price. For instance, Samsung has swapped out Gorilla Glass 5 protection in favour of the much more durable Gorilla Glass Victus+ protection on the front. The back panel looks minimalist and classy, aping the look of Samsung’s flagship S24 pretty convincingly.
The triple camera setup is housed in individual rings, much like the Galaxy A55 and Galaxy S24. There’s a nondescript Samsung logo at the bottom that doesn’t pull too much attention. The phone is available in three colourways – Iceblue, Lilac, and Navy. I got the Lilac variant for review and it is a lovely pastel colour that’s rare to find at this price point. The back attracts fingerprints but the sheen of the rear panel takes your attention away from those.
The plastic frame has a nice matte finish that looks deceptively like the aluminium frames on more expensive Samsung phones. The subtle contours and indents in the frame make it comfortable to hold as well. The buttons are incredibly well-built and sufficiently tactile. Moreover, the phone is equipped with a great stereo speaker system, IP67 dust and water resistance, and a speedy in-display fingerprint sensor.
Up front, the Samsung Galaxy A35 sports a 6.6-inch display nestled into somewhat thick bezels. This can be a turn-off for some as competition such as the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ has comparatively slimmer bezels. However, the Galaxy A35 does make a massive improvement. The dated U-shaped notch that plagued the A34 last year has, thankfully, disappeared. That aside, there are no real improvements in the display department.
You’ve got the same 6.6-inch Super AMOLED display with Full HD+ resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate. The rated brightness is unchanged at 1,000 nits (on High Brightness Mode). Once again, there’s no HDR support on the display. This is very disappointing given that the OnePlus Nord CE4 and Redmi Note 13 Pro+ come packing this feature.
Complaints aside, this is still a gorgeous display – one of the best at its price point. It’s crisp, vibrant, and has excellent viewing angles. HD content on YouTube and Netflix looks fantastic with deep blacks and great clarity. Screen legibility in harsh sunlight is satisfactory as well. In my tests, I got a reading of 882 nits under harsh sunlight with Adaptive Brightness active.
If you’re not a gamer, the Samsung Galaxy A35’s performance isn’t going to leave you underwhelmed. It has an upgraded 5 nm Exynos 1380 chipset that outperformed the Dimensity 1080 chipset on its predecessor in pretty much every metric. You also get 8 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and up to 256 GB of UFS 2.2 storage. Unfortunately, the A35’s data transfer speeds are quite lacklustre; pretty much all of its competitors doubled or tripled its read and write speeds.
Nevertheless, the phone is smooth in day-to-day operations. One UI 6.1 is beautifully optimised; animations are ridiculously smooth and there are little to no instances of lag or stutter, even when multitasking. Apps such as YouTube, Netflix, WhatsApp, Instagram, and others run fluidly; and gaming is also not a bad experience. I could play Call of Duty: Mobile on Medium graphics with very few frame skips. However, move on to High Graphics or more heavy-duty games such as Genshin Impact, and you will see this phone falter compared to the likes of the POCO X6 Pro. Additionally, the phone also doesn’t throttle too much as indicated by the CPU Throttling Test.
Real-world experience aside, I ran multiple benchmarks to objectively assert the performance of the Galaxy A35. The results, while not terrible, weren’t up to the standards of competitors. For example, the Galaxy A35 scored 6,09,463 points in AnTuTu v10 which was significantly lower than the POCO X6 Pro (review), Redmi Note 13 Pro+, and OnePlus Nord CE4’s scores. These competing phones also beat the Galaxy A35’s GeekBench Single Core and Multi-Core score, with the exception of the Redmi Note 13 Pro+’s Multi-Core score. However, the A35 bagged an impressive score of 13,207 in PCMark Work.
In gaming benchmarks, the Samsung Galaxy A35’s scores were destroyed by that of the OnePlus Nord CE4, indicating that gaming enthusiasts must look in the other direction. The phone scored only 812 points in 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme which is one of the lowest scores amongst phones above ₹25K in 2024.
The UI experience makes up for it though. OneUI has some bloatware, but the smoothness is almost unparalleled in the mid-range segment (save for NothingOS). You also get excellent update support – four years of OS updates and five years of security updates. This far exceeds others that provide merely two or three years at this price.
While the secondary 8 MP ultrawide camera and tertiary 5 MP macro camera have been ported over from the Samsung Galaxy A35’s predecessor, the company has upgraded the primary shooter. You get a 50 MP primary camera with f/1.8 aperture and OIS support. Samsung has also promised improved imagery with the chipset’s upgraded NPU and ISP. For selfies, you get a modest 13 MP shooter. Both the rear and front cameras can shoot 4K videos at 30 fps. In contrast, its competitors such as the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ and OnePlus Nord CE4 can only shoot 1080p video from their respective selfie cameras.
Photos shot from the primary camera in daylight have good detail and colour reproduction. The photos have a slightly warm hue, which looks pretty decent. The dynamic range is solid; there’s plenty of information in the shadow areas while the highlights are also kept in check. The 8 MP ultrawide camera has similar colour science with good levels of detail. There is some distortion towards the edges though. Daylight videos in 4K are also very impressive for a phone costing ₹30,999.
Close-up photos look great as well. The details are well-preserved and the colours look excellent. The natural depth of field looks natural too.
Portrait photos are excellent on the Samsung Galaxy A35. The edge detection, while not perfect, is one of the best at this price point. Additionally, skin tones look very natural; close to mimicking what we see in real life, which I really appreciate. The texture of the skin is also preserved; there’s no odd smoothening going on here. Selfies also look brilliant, with natural skin tone reproduction.
As for low-light photography, the performance is pretty decent. There is some noise in these pictures, but the colours look natural. Night Mode enhances the detail levels in the pictures. Overall, a solid showing for a phone around the ₹30K price point but the noise levels should be fixed via an OTA update.
Battery life on the Samsung Galaxy A35 is nothing to write home about, but it’s not horrendous either. Competitors such as the OnePlus Nord CE4 and the iQOO Neo 9 Pro have showcased superior endurance. However, for most casual users, you will get a day’s worth of juice with relative ease.
The phone houses a 5,000 mAh cell with support for 25 W wired charging. There’s no charger in the box, which is disappointing as most users may not have a 25 W charger on hand and would have to buy one separately.
The Samsung Galaxy A35 lasted over 14 hours in our 4K video loop test on VLC, which is a decent score but not the best in the mid-range category. An hour’s worth of GPS navigation drained the battery by about 8 per cent. The charging speeds are on the slower side with the phone taking a good 94 minutes to charge from empty to full.
The Samsung Galaxy A35 is a reliable choice at ₹30,999. The phone impressed me with its stellar camera performance, smooth UI, and immersive display. There are a lot of niceties on offer as well such as Gorilla Glass Victus+ display protection, 4 years of OS updates, 4K video recording on the rear and selfie cameras, and a solid build. For those who don’t covet performance over everything else, the Galaxy A35 is one of the best all-rounders you can get your hands on at a relatively pocket-friendly price. However, the lack of HDR support for the display and the absence of a charging brick in the box dock away some of its points. Additionally, the Samsung Galaxy A35 is not suitable for gamers as the chipset doesn’t handle High Graphics gaming too well. As a package though, the Samsung Galaxy A35 is more polished than competitors priced similarly.
