[뉴스줌인] What is the purchase value of Galaxy A42, an entry-level 5G phone with 400,000 won?

[IT동아 김영우 기자] Over dozens of press releases come to the IT Dong-A editorial department in a single day. Most of the news is about the launch of a new product or service. Among them, IT Dong-a selects and writes a few of them that may be helpful to readers. However, in the original press release sent by a company, many technical terms or proprietary terms used only by the company are included. For readers who are not familiar with these terms, IT Dong-A has prepared’News Zoom-in’, a planning article that explains the press release.

Source: Samsung Electronics (March 07, 2021)
Title: Samsung Electronics launches’Galaxy A42 5G’ on the 12th

Summary: Samsung Electronics is releasing a 400,000 won 5G smartphone’Galaxy A42 5G’ on the 12th. It is equipped with a 5,000mAh large-capacity battery on a 6.6-inch (167.7mm) large screen, a rear quad camera, and supports 15W fast charging. The Galaxy A42 5G is released for self-sufficiency and mobile communication 3, with a factory price of 449,900 won, and comes in three colors: Prism Dot Black, Prism Dot White, and Prism Dot Gray.

Commentary: 5G, which was applied only to premium products, has recently been expanding into low-end products. The Galaxy A42 5G is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G processor, 4GB of system memory (LPDDR4X RAM), and 128GB of storage space (UFS 2.1). It does not fall short of the latest premium smartphones, but the performance of the previous Galaxy S8~9 class can be expected.

In particular, it is noteworthy that it has secured a large storage space of 128GB, although it is a low-end product, and that it has applied UFS standard memory that can read and write data at a higher speed than the eMMC standard mainly used in low-end smartphones.

When it comes to the screen, heebi is mixed. It is good to apply a 6.6 inch large screen, but the resolution (precision) of the screen is low at 720p (HD level), so it is not suitable for viewing various contents in high definition. Among Samsung Electronics’ low-end smartphones (Galaxy A31, A40, etc.) that were released before, there were not a few products with a 1080p (full HD level) screen, but it is regrettable that the latest products have lowered quality.

There are four rear cameras, the main camera (48 million pixels), which is commonly used, an ultra-wide-angle camera (8 million pixels) for shooting a wide range, and a depth camera (5 million pixels) used for out-of-focus shooting, and a close-up camera. It was composed of a macro camera (5 million pixels) for shooting. It is somewhat regrettable that there is no telephoto camera for long distance shooting. The front camera has one of the 20 megapixel configuration.

The battery capacity is generous with 5,000mAh, so you can expect a long use time without frequent charging. Instead, keep in mind that the body weight is 193g, which is a bit heavy. This is similar to the weight of the Galaxy Note 20 (192g).

The Galaxy A42 5G is expected to receive a good evaluation in terms of’cost performance’ as it has specifications that are generally compliant as a low-end product. It is unfortunate that some advanced features such as wireless charging and OIS (image stabilization camera) are not applied, but if you consider the price of the product (4,499,900 won), it is convincing.

However, it is annoying that the screen resolution (720p) is too low. And since it is a 5G smartphone, if you buy it through a mobile carrier, you have to use an expensive 5G plan. If you want to use this product with an inexpensive LTE plan, we recommend purchasing a self-contained model.

Written by / IT Dong-A Kim Young-woo ([email protected])