SAMSUNG GALAXY A90 5G

As the affordable 5G race heats up, Samsung storms ahead with this really wellrounded handset

A 5G phone for under $700? With Samsung level build quality and features? You’re not dreaming

$689 samsung.com/au

The selling point of this phone might be to get 5G for a mid-range price, but while it doesn’t quite have the specs to match Samsung’s flagships, the A90 5G is still a very capable phone in its own right – it’s not just 5G connectivity that it’s got going for it.

A good place to start is the bright and crisp 6.7-inch AMOLED screen, which is just as impressive as you would expect from Samsung. You get a decent triple-lens rear camera, and plenty of internal storage (128GB), plus the option to expand storage via memory card.

Samsung makes some very smartly designed phones, and the A90 5G continues the trend. The only complaint you might have about this new handset is that it’s too big – this isn’t a phone for people with small hands. The resolution is 1080x2400 pixels, one of the very few mid-range specs in what is otherwise a premium-level phone. There’s a small teardrop notch at the top of the display, and the bezels are pleasingly thin. We also like the single strip of camera lenses on the back of the device. The fingerprint sensor is under the screen.

It’s worth mentioning the colours that the Galaxy A90 5G is available in: as well as the black that our review unit came in, there’s also a white option with a rainbow-ish tinge – it’s a really nice look and probably the one we prefer. We like the split-texture on the back, too.

The Snapdragon 855 chip running the phone was last year’s flagship, and combined with 6GB or 8GB of RAM, you’re going to get many years of service out of this phone. It sped through everything we threw at it, from games to photo editors, very smoothly indeed. Battery life was also impressive – we always had plenty left at the end of the day.

The triple-lens 48MP+8MP+5MP rear camera impresses too, though there’s no telephoto zoom here. It’s a little behind more expensive phones (especially in low light), but you’ll still get bright, detailed snaps almost all of the time.

And yes, there’s that 5G support which is just as fast as you’d hope, when you’re in the right spot. If you’re right in the middle of a city that already has coverage, the A90 5G offers excellent value for money for taking advantage of those super-high speeds. But if you won’t be in a 5G area as much, we’d be inclined to look at the OnePlus 7T for the same money, or even the upcoming Samsung S10 Lite.