Samsung Galaxy A50 US Version Factory Unlocked Cell Phone with 64GB Memory, 6.4" Screen, Black, [SM-A505UZKNXAA]

10 MONTH UPDATE (August 25, 2021):I was going to wait until the 1 year anniversary before posting an update. However, this one pertains to 5g on ATT. I was on their cheapest prepaid plan where you pay the annual amount which equates to a $25/mth average fee. This plan DID NOT allow connection to the 5g network. The speeds were still very good but I wanted to experience 5g on this phone. So I switched to the $65/mth prepaid plan which gives 22gb of 5g data.My 5g experience was horrible. The speeds usually remained at 1.5mbps to 3.4mbps throughout the day. Only late at night did speeds get up to 43mbps. Tinkering around with the phone I tried to test LTE but could not find Network Mode which should have been under Mobile Networks in the settings. If you can't find it on your A71 5g, simply go to your dialer and enter this string of characters: *#*#4636#*#* It will automatically take you to a menu of 3 options. Choose "Phone Information". Then click the option for "Set Preferred Network Type". Then select LTE only.Lo and behold my speeds were 43mbps to 83mpbs in the middle of the day consistently. I don't know how good 5g is on other carriers but where I am, the speed is slow on ATT even though the coverage map shows that it should be strong. Going to LTE only is giving me speeds faster than broadband. I hope this helps!8 MONTH UPDATE (June 12, 2021):Eight months in and I still have no complaints regarding my purchase of the A71 5G. I'm loving all the updates it has received including Android 11. I have figured out how to successfully get the finger print reader to work 100% of the time. Basically, I've just trained my hand and thumb to place my thumb perfectly where it needs to be. It's like second nature now. Samsung continually updates its customization apps. If you have this phone you really do need to make sure you have the latest version of Good Lock (found in the Samsung store) and its various modules. You'll be able to control the adjustments to just about every facet of the phone. I love the camera on this phone. The shutter speed is average, however, in outdoor lighting the pictures are phenomenal. The wide angle selection for the rear camera and the selfie camera produces excellent shots. One thing I did wish the camera had was motion autofocus. You'll just have to spend flagship money to get a feature like that.Overall my experience with this phone has been excellent. The battery life is still excellent and still charges very quickly. I'm still using video background on my lock screen and home screens and the battery still performs like a champ. I've upgraded my wireless earbuds to Bose from the Galaxy Buds. No BT connection issues at all. My phone also connects to my Win10 laptop via the built in Link to Windows feature. The only drawback is that I still can't get the laptop to show the phone's screen. My laptop is older and doesn't have Mirror Share on it so that might be the reason. On a good note though the SmartView feature on the phone works extremely well with my Roku. I can mirror my phone's screen on my TV through the Roku using this feature. Displaying photos and video to family on a large wide screen TV is amazing but the biggest benefit is displaying Zoom calls on the TV from my phone. I can use the phone as the webcam but then see everything and everyone on the TV.I still highly recommend people get this phone. The features and the quality that you get for the price can't be matched by other phones.2 MONTH UPDATE (Nov 11, 2020):Two months in and I'm still quite happy with the A71 5g. I've removed plenty of the bloat using methods I found on the Internet. Just google "How to Remove Samsung Bloatware without Root technastic". The first link in the results should take you to the article. The method is for more advanced users. You will need to use your computer to assist in the removal.DEALING WITH SPAM CALLS AND TEXTS: During this election season I received non-stop spam calls and texts. No matter how many times I blocked a phone number the calls and texts still came in from new numbers.SOLUTION: I put the phone in "Do Not Disturb" mode in the Settings. This kills all notifications. I then selected to allow notifications from my contacts. I made sure to add companies that I deal with such as banks etc. that may call into my contacts list. The only drawback is that this doesn't apply to Duo or other apps that you may receive messages on. For example, if someone DM's you on Instagram, you won't see the notification.5g ABILITY: I am on AT&T's prepaid plan. To pay the least amount, I paid for a full year. I didn't realize that 5g is not available on most prepaid plans. Oh well. It doesn't really matter much because my use doesn't require downloading super large files. There's no advantage to streaming movies or sending/receiving texts and emails on 5g than on 4g LTE. Loading websites on 5g might be quicker but it's negligible. The only prepaid plan that gives you 5g support on AT&T is their Premium Plus plan for $75/month. I don't believe that 5g is worth the extra $50 per month.Overall the A71 5g is a champ. The screen is crystal clear and the phone operates smoothly even though at 60hz. I've customized it and have removed much of the bloat. The facial recognition is quick and flawless. I have it configured to open directly to the home page-no extra buttons to push or extra swipes to make. I just lift the phone and tip towards my face and it opens to the home screen. Battery life hasn't been a problem. My usage includes 3 to 4 hours of Youtube Music streaming high quality music while connected to Galaxy Bud Live bluetooth earbuds, an hour or so of Youtube videos in 1080p, 3 plus hours on Google News, 3 cumulative hours in Instagram, an ongoing texts throughout the day. I use a video background on the home screen as well as a video background on the lock screen. I usually end the day with about 30%-40%. I then just refill overnight.I'll update again in a few months.----------------------------------------------------------------Quick Update September 15: My neighborhood is right in the center of a 5g area according to the ATT coverage map. However, I have yet to see "5G" appear on my phone. I've only ever seen LTE. I'm not sure what the problem is.Original Review September 10:My A71 5G arrived yesterday. I've spent the last 24 hours customizing it.Here are my First Thoughts:- Screen is amazing. Videos are much better when viewed on Samsung displays.- The phone itself is quite a thin slab. It's thinner than my glass bodied Honor 8 from 2017 which was my daily phone until now. This makes the A71 5G extremely slippery.- The phone has many customization features although not quite as customizable or as easy to customize as my Honor 8.- Back plastic looks good but is still very slippery.- Camera system is more advanced than my Honor 8. Focus, clarity, wide angle, etc, the A71 5g looks to have an awesome camera. I will test out and update this review later.- Fingerprint & facial recognition are consistently accurate if I'm paying attention to what I'm doing. You can't get lazy or you will get errors before it lets you in.- Always On Display is cool but there's no configuration for adding your own photo or video or animated gif- Call quality is excellent- Transferring data from old phone to new phone is kind of a chore. You'll still have to do plenty manually after the automated transfer process- the One UI is buttery smooth just like everyone says.- dismissing apps from the recently used screen is a swipe up rather than swipe rightSurprises I Encountered:- A71 5G doesn't use a Samsung dialer as its native dialer app. It uses an app from Hiya. If you want the app to filter spam then you'll have to give up some privacy to Hiya.- Microsoft apps come already installed. The downside is that you won't be able to get Outlook to access your mail. According to the reviews the app is currently screwed up after a recent update. I couldn't get it to connect to any of my email accounts (non gmail and non hotmail accounts).- There is no native email app installed on the phone. I had to download Samsung Mail from the Play Store.- There's no way to configure ring tones and alert tones for contacts in Google Contacts. I use Hangouts for my permanent personal number from Google Voice. On my Honor 8, I could configure a unique tone for each of my contacts. I could also configure special ring tones. No such luck with the A71 5G.- The charging cord is USB-C to USB-C which means the charging brick has a USB-C socket. This is great when you want to connect the A71 5g to an old phone to transfer files, but it negates my ability to use my newly purchased 6ft USB-C charging cord w/magnetic attachments. The way the cord works is that there is an adapter that fits into the phone's USB-C socket with a round magnetic connector that the cord easily connects to. The cord itself has a magnetic connector on one end and a regular USB male on the other to connect to a charging brick. The A71 5G's charging brick only accepts USB-C.- The phone has a built-in "app lock" type of function. It allows you to put apps and files into a secure folder. The apps or files in the folder can't be opened unless you use your fingerprint or PIN. The surprise here is that when you place an app in the folder, it creates a new instance of that app which means you will still have the app accessible as normal but you will have a new instance of the app which requires secure access. So if you have a dirty Instagram account and a clean account, you can have the clean account logged into the app in the app drawer and the secured version of the app logged into the dirty account. I had to do some Google searches to figure out why I was still able to open an app placed in the secured folder from the regular app drawer.So-so Observations:- 5G speed: I tested at 9:30pm. I live in a suburban area adjacent to a metropolitan city. AT&T supposedly has 5G in my area. I got an average of 45mbps download speed and 7.7mbps upload speed via speedtest.net. I compared that to my broadband speed of 64.7mbps download & 10.25mbps upload with Centurylink using the 5ghz channel on the router. I probably would have gotten better speeds with TMobile but oh well. Let me know what you're getting if you have AT&T with any 5G phone.- Theme customizations. If you come from a Honor phone like me you'll miss your ability to fully customize your UI such as choosing among a large selection of available navigation buttons; a huge selection of different icon sets and not just icons that are contained inside a square or a circle but true free floating graphics; a user friendly interface to customize lock screen features including wallpaper from within the same theme customization interface. I took for granted that these things were the norm across all devices but not so this Samsung device. You have to go back-and-forth through multiple menu items to make changes to different parts of the UI. For example, if I want to place my own personal video as wallpaper on my lock screen, I have to do it via a handful of menus rather than the Themes app which itself, btw, can only be accessed via the Settings menu.More observations to follow.

This phone checks off all the boxes of a phone for a typical SOHO user. On sale, it's a great deal!Hardware:The processor is mid-range not flagship-level, but the phone feels snappy in basic day-to-day tasks, which was my #1 concern. The screen is bright, crisp and has no notch; just a tiny "hole" for the front camera lens. Nice.The phone comes with 4 GB RAM and 128 GB of storage. I added a MicroSD with another 128 GB of storage. Ample RAM and plenty of storage.The phone also has a relatively large screen, which I also wanted, and has all the 4G LTE bands for T-Mobile including 66 and 71 (unlike its dual-SIM International counter-part, which does not have at least one of those bands, from what I've read). It also has other LTE bands which are used by carriers outside the US (as shown in the specs).In addition to the usual Wi-Fi and BT radios, this phone also has NFC, unlike many other phones in this price range (like almost all Moto phones that I researched as well as some of the Chinese brands' non-flagship phones).The screen protector glass that I use seems to make the fingerprint reader unable to recognize my fingerprints, so I would have preferred a separate fingerprint reader, but the phone does also offer face recognition, which I have not tried.One thing this phone does not have is an LED on front for notifications, but I don't really miss that, as you can see an "always-on" screen by simply double-tapping the screen.Software:I happen to dislike the design that Samsung used in their built-in apps like Contacts and Messages, where they block out a large portion of the top of the screen for just a title and some subtitle information, and begin the contacts or messages only about half-way down the screen. Once you scroll, you regain the whole screen, but I find this annoying to initially lose half the screen. Solution: Download the official Google Contacts and Messages apps and use those instead of Samsung's.One thing I do like in both Samsung and LG's customization of Android is that you can choose to have the bottom software back button on either the left, which is the "Google" default or on the right, which is the "Samsung" default. From what I have seen, Moto and perhaps others do not offer this option; the back button is always on the bottom left, not customizable to the right.I use the extremely customizable Nova Launcher (highly recommended) so I did not use the included Samsung Launcher.A big benefit to having a Samsung phone is the following: there is a "feature" of Android OS 10, about which many have complained online. If you connect a Bluetooth headset, and set that to play both phone calls and music, then your notification sounds will play over the headset only, not the phone's speaker. So if you are not wearing your headset and you get a text, for example, then you will not hear any notification sound.LG addresses this by enabling you to toggle from the notification "shade" whether or not to use the BT headset for only calls or for audio as well.But Samsung does better, in my opinion. It offers a free SoundAssistant app (downloadable from either their App Store or the Play Store but only for Samsung devices) which easily addresses this (and adds some nice features, like quick access to all volume sliders and more). I have it set to always play the notification sounds over the speaker, even if I'm listening to music on my BT headset.Samsung and LG both offer software (typically included in the phone) that enables you to migrate from any old phone, including their respective competitors' phones, to their own. Samsung calls this SmartSwitch. I was unable to use a USB-C to USB-C cable to do the transfer, but Wi-Fi direct did work to copy over all my call logs and other data. Google also can backup/restore some data from your Google Drive, but that does not include Call Logs and certain other data.Finally, since it is unlocked by Samsung, there are no hoops through which to jump (like calling the carrier for an unlock code, etc.) if you want to travel overseas and use a local SIM card; it's unlocked and ready to go.Other thoughts:My more recent phones have been LG Stylo phones, with the Samsung Galaxy S3 prior to those.I have been looking into a replacement for my old LG Stylo phone, which is very laggy as it comes with only 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage.Most of the Moto phones, for example, while reasonably priced, do not come with NFC. You probably won't miss NFC until you happen to need it. You could use NFC to transfer data from one device to another, though you can use Wi-Fi Direct instead, in most cases. Samsung actually makes good use of NFC with its Samsung Pay digital wallet, if you are interested in that.Bottom line: This phone is a very good all-around mid-range phone. On sale, it cost not much more than a typical low-end phone from T-Mobile or elsewhere. Unlike many other phones, it has NFC but, more importantly, it just works and does not lag.