I do not need to oversell it—it isn’t a flagship telephone. Yes, you’ll nonetheless see stutters right here and there whenever you swap between apps. Maybe you will should pressure shut an app occasionally. But for essentially the most half, I’ve had a very good expertise utilizing the A14 5G not just for catching up on Reddit and Twitter, but in addition to reply to emails on the fly, monitor work duties, and even make calls.
That brings me to the battery. My sister lives in India, so we do not get an opportunity to catch up usually. The different day, I spent 4 hours on a video name and the battery dropped solely to 50 %—I used to be anticipating it to be decrease! On that very same day, I used the telephone’s GPS as I drove to a canine park in Manhattan, and snapped a lot of images of my scrumptious fried rooster sandwich at a neighborhood Irish eatery known as Bua. By bedtime (which is, er, previous midnight for me), the telephone was at 11 % with a incredible 9 hours of screen-on time. This was an unnaturally busy day. On days after I do not spend hours on video calls, I had 30 % left after two full days on a single cost. It’s beautiful not having to recharge each evening.
That brings me to the 50-megapixel major digital camera. It snaps images fairly rapidly, and there is even a Night mode you need to use to take decently brilliant and sharp photographs in low gentle (not like the Moto G Play). Naturally, your nighttime images will probably be a little bit blurry every now and then. There’s a little bit an excessive amount of processing at instances, smoothening out sure options on faces and different particulars, plus some colours may be exaggerated. Still, I’ve nonetheless been fairly proud of a lot of the outcomes for a $200 telephone. That consists of selfies I snapped with the 13-megapixel entrance digital camera (which additionally helps Night mode). There’s a macro digital camera if that is your fancy, and it really works OK for excessive close-up photographs, however solely when you have a superb quantity of sunshine.
A Star Is Born
The solely main gripe I’ve with this telephone in day-to-day use is the mono speaker. It simply would not get too loud, would not sound nice, and it is simple to dam in panorama mode whenever you’re enjoying video video games. The straightforward resolution is to only use headphones—wi-fi or wired as a result of, sure, there’s a headphone jack.
There’s even a microSD card slot to increase on the 64 GB of inside storage (which is greater than what you will discover on equally priced friends), plus the power to make contactless funds with the near-field communication (NFC) sensor so you’ll be able to depart the pockets at dwelling. I virtually completely pay with my telephone as of late when I’m out and about, so this can be a big win for me.
The Galaxy A14 5G additionally helps … 5G, because the title implies, which is one more rarity at this value as most sub-$200 telephones depend on 4G LTE. It’s supported by each main US service, from AT&T and T-Mobile to Verizon. Best of all, Samsung is promising two Android OS updates, which implies that because it’s already working the newest Android 13, it’s going to nonetheless obtain Android 15 in 2024. It may also get 4 years of safety updates, which is virtually extraordinary for a telephone so low cost.
It’s near-impossible to not marvel on the worth of the Galaxy A14. It does virtually the whole lot so nicely for thus little, and that is exactly what we ought to be asking extra of from our devices.
