There is a suitable Samsung phone for almost every budget. If you want a new Samsung Galaxy phone without paying the top price for it, then the Galaxy A36 may be in your sights. DroidApp tests the mid-end smartphone in our Samsung Galaxy A36 review.
Samsung Galaxy A36
Samsung has a range of devices in different price ranges with its Galaxy A series. In the 30-series, the range was recently expanded with the Samsung Galaxy A36. In recent weeks, we put this new mid-end smartphone through its paces. What does the Galaxy A36 offer and what do you get for around 300 euros? You can read it in the Samsung Galaxy A36 review.
Unboxing
The sales package of a new smartphone; it used to be something you could spend some time with, but nowadays you only find the essentials in the package. This is no different with the Samsung Galaxy A36. We see some paperwork, a SIM needle and a USB-C cable. You have to get the adapter yourself. Samsung also does not stick a screen protector on the screen in advance; something many other brands still do.
A quick look at the setup process. For review samples, I usually back up via Google. This always goes well, but Samsung makes it harder than ever with the Galaxy A36. Samsung keeps pushing you to do all this via Smart Switch; Samsung's tool. After many attempts, I finally manage to restore a Google backup in a way that is still unclear to me, so I am not obliged to use Smart Switch. In the process, Samsung makes a lot of attempts to foist a Samsung account on you, even though you don't always need one. When setting up the phone, I am further annoyed by the fact that without being able to uncheck it, the phone cheerfully informs you that the Amazon Shopping app is being installed.
Design and interface
Measuring 162.9 x 78.2 x 7.4 millimetres, the device may be a mid-end smartphone, but one with a rather hefty size. As a result, Samsung's smartphone is not easy for everyone to operate with one hand. Indeed, the A36 is larger than its high-end brother, the Galaxy S25 Ultra. That does make it a fine device if you like a big screen.
The device is neatly finished and on the right side are the keys. These are again placed in the so-called Key Island. We have been familiar with this design style since the previous generation A-series. The keys then lie on a kind of island. In our opinion, it is mostly a design piece, rather than actually adding anything functional. At the bottom is the slot for the SIM card and the USB-C port. Samsung provides the Galaxy A36 with the triple-camera on the back, which we will of course come back to later in the review.
The Galaxy A36's fingerprint scanner is located inside the screen. As with its predecessor, it is not always as fast, as you would like. It also doesn't always seem accurate, sometimes requiring you to double scan your finger. The slow fingerprint scanner was also a downside of the Galaxy A35.
Interface
The Samsung Galaxy A36 has a clear app menu. In the custom order you scroll through this horizontally, in alphabetical order you do so vertically. Of course, the various options Google adds to Android are also available on the Galaxy A36. This means you can access notifications and quick settings from the corners, you can create large folders and, of course, there is room for your widgets. If you are already used to a Samsung, many things will look familiar to you.
Communication and multimedia
Calling, texting (or rather WhatsAppen) and browsing the internet; it's all possible with the Samsung Galaxy A36. The phone delivers fine performance in these. You surf the web via both WiFi and the mobile (5G) network. You can use the Samsung Internet browser for this, or get started with Google Chrome, whichever you prefer. In Samsung's own browser, you'll find several more AI tools, although these only work when you're logged in with a Samsung account. The Galaxy A36 has dual-sim support, and you can also use eSIM.
Music lovers can enjoy music through the Galaxy A36's speakers. These leave a good impression, exactly as you would expect from a device around this price. The volume can be loud, without any annoying distortion. The display is of fine quality and is easy to read even on sunny days.
Camera
There are three lenses in the Galaxy A36's slightly protruding camera module. These are a 50-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel wide-angle lens and another 5-megapixel macro lens. So a telephoto lens is missing on the A36, but that is not very strange in this segment. However, the camera app does offer the option to use 2x zoom. Due to the lack of a telephoto lens then, this is not an optical zoom, but more of a cut-out of the 'normal' mode. The camera app is clear to use and actually self-explanatory. At the bottom of the screen, you can switch between different modes, such as portrait mode or the video camera.
What about the photo quality of the device itself? We took a whole slew of photos with the Samsung Galaxy A36. Overall, the phone scores pretty well with taking photos. The Samsung delivers pretty solid images. In most photos, we see a good balance of exposures with a wide dynamic range, but sometimes the phone does go wrong, as we see in several photos of the forest. Images can then sometimes suddenly lack depth and look somewhat bland. This while the cameras usually capture the images just fine. Even in the evening, the photo quality is fine.
We took the photo above with the Samsung Galaxy A36. If you want to see more pictures, click here for the digital photo album, where we have collected the many photos for you. There you can also view them in high resolution.
Video camera
With the Samsung Galaxy A36, you can film in 4K at 30fps, or in Full-HD at 60fps. In terms of video quality, it's all not very exciting with this phone. You can watch the video we shot with the device below.
Performance and battery life
We find on board the Samsung Galaxy A36 the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chipset. Together with 6GB of working memory, this makes for a device that keeps up with its tasks just fine. We didn't notice any annoying lags or hiccups. In terms of storage, you have a choice of 128GB or 256GB. Whereas in previous models you could still expand the memory with a memory card, this is no longer possible with the A36.
Battery
Under the bonnet of the Samsung Galaxy A36 lies a 5000 mAh battery. With average usage, we note a screen time of around 4-5 hours with this. The smartphone lasts longer than a day without much problem. Charging is done with a power of up to 45W, making it significantly faster than before.
Update policy
Samsung has put a lot of effort into a good update policy in recent years, and with it the manufacturer manages to keep most of its competitors well at bay. Even this mid-end smartphone can count on no less than six Android updates and six years of security updates. That means the device will get its patches through 2031. Considering the phone is currently running on Android 15, the Galaxy A36 will be updated up to and including Android 21. Excellent!
Review
Samsung has released a device with the Galaxy A36 that again delivers fine performance, exactly what you should expect for the price of the phone. A pity is that you can no longer expand the memory with a memory card. The camera delivers decent images for housework, the screen is of high quality and the update policy is very generous. Battery life will be more than fine for the average user, and nice is that you can recharge it a bit faster too.
At launch, the phone had a rather hefty recommended retail price of 379 euros. Meanwhile, the price has dropped considerably and you can score the device for under 300 euros. Remarkably, this makes it almost the same price as its predecessor; the Galaxy A35, which you can get for about the same money. There are no big changes; although it is notable that Samsung no longer offers the possibility to expand the memory with the new model. If you have no problems with that, we would go for the Galaxy A36. Then you will immediately have longer updates as well. In fact, the update policy is more generous than that of the A35, which gets four years of updates.
The Samsung Galaxy A36 is available for under 300 euros. You can go to Samsung itself, Coolblue, Mobiel, Belsimpel, Bol.com and MediaMarkt.
