Samsung Galaxy A80 Review UK

Samsung Galaxy A80 Review: Overview & Price

In this Samsung Galaxy A80 review, we go over everything you need to know about the phone, as well as showcasing the best contract deals here in the UK.

This phone brings much of what you would expect from a 2019 smartphone, with an interesting sliding mechanism alongside impressive specs.

The Samsung Galaxy A80 release date was early in 2019, and it certainly hit the market hard thanks to its incredible features.

Currently priced at £579 here in the UK, making it slightly cheaper than the Huawei P30 and Samsung Galaxy S10.

There is some pretty amazing Samsung Galaxy contract A80 deals going around here in the UK at the minute.

Here is some of what you can expect from the Samsung A80 specs;

• Full HD+ OLED display
• 3700mAh battery
• 48-megapixel camera
• Sliding mechanism design
• In-display fingerprint sensor

This phone isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, however, we do think that this device is appealing for us Samsung lovers.

You may be wondering is the Samsung Galaxy A80 waterproof? Find out shortly in this review.

Let’s take a closer look at what this phone has to offer…

Samsung Galaxy A80 Review: Design & Display

One of the first things we noticed about the Samsung Galaxy A80 design is that it is thick, and can be tricky to keep a hold of when using one hand.

The phone is made from Gorilla Glass with a metal frame, making it feel high-end.

The glass also protects the phone from scratches and damage, although we do recommend investing in a case and screen protector if you want to keep your device in good shape.

The A80 feels just as pricey as the iPhone XS Max or Samsung Galaxy S10; we wouldn’t say this is a lightweight phone either.

Weighing in at 220g, the Samsung A80 is one of the heaviest phones we have seen, this adds to its premium phone but won’t be ideal for those wanting a nimble device.

The phone comes in three colours, either Angel Gold, Ghost White or Phantom Black.

We were fortunate enough to get our hands on the Phantom Black to carry out this review, and we have to say we found it stunning.

On the right-hand side of the phone you will find the power button, whilst over to the left is the volume rocker.

Usually, the volume rocker and power button are on the same side so we found it a little strange to get used to and harder to reach, although after a couple days we did get used to this.

At the bottom of the phone is the USB-C port alongside the single firing speaker, but unfortunately, there is no 3.5mm headphone jack here.

Which means you may want to invest in some Samsung Galaxy Buds or another set of wireless headphones if you like to listen to music on your phone.

Now the most appealing part of this phone for us was the pop up rotating camera section, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

When you want to take a selfie simply slide up the top panel and it will reveal the selfie camera after flipping it over to face you.

We did run into a couple of problem with this novelty though, firstly it is a dust magnet.

We found that we would need to wipe the slider down with a wipe all of the time because it would collect dust and we didn’t want it interfering with the slider.

Secondly, it does take a while to slide it up, so if you’re in a hurry and are trying to snap a quick selfie with your favourite celeb, then this phone might cause you some problems.

Another downside to this feature is that it makes the Samsung Galaxy A80 not waterproof, so be sure not to drop this phone in the rub or around by the pool as it will break.

On the positive side to having this pop-up slider is that it makes more room for a no notch display, which ensures you get a great display with as much real estate as possible.

So the Samsung Galaxy A80 display is a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED with a 1080p resolution and 20:9 aspect ratio.

Viewing content on this phone looks amazing, this is down to the AMOLED display giving deep black and vibrant colours, and however, colours are not as accurate as we first hoped.

Brightness levels are average for a phone of this calibre, with it going to 405nits in manual mode and 607 in auto mode.

This ensures no matter where you are in the world the sunlight won’t stop you from using your phone; this could be a bad thing for some of us though.

Another perk of having an AMOLED display is the always-on display, this allows you to keep track of time and check any notifications at a glance without having to wake up the phone.

The Samsung A80 even has an under the display optical fingerprint scanner, it certainly isn’t the best on the market and isn’t very fast, however, it is great for the likes of online banking and storing passwords on your phone.

The Samsung A80 display has lots of modes to play around with, there is a ‘Dark Mode’ which is meant to be used at night to prevent the phone damaging your eyes, we found this works well and its easier to get to sleep at night once you enable this mode, it also means the phone won’t singe your eyelashes off when you wake up to a text at 3 am.

The A80 has a ‘Vivid Mode’ in the settings which enhances colours and makes gaming and watching video much more enjoyable.

The A80 even has a one-handed mode, which is great if you have small hands, however, we would consider a smaller device if you do as the 6.7-inch phone is chunky and large so it probably won’t be the first choice of those with tiny hands.

Throughout this Samsung Galaxy A80 review we were seriously impressed with the display, it does everything you would expect of a mid-range 2019 smartphone and ensures you are never without a YouTube video to watch or a game to play.

Samsung Galaxy A80 Review: Performance

When it comes to the Samsung Galaxy A80 performance the first thing we looked at was the speaker at the bottom.

This speaker is surprisingly good and gives a high amount of bass with no distortion when used at high volumes.

Not only does this enhance the music that is played through your phone, but also movies and YouTube videos.

The Samsung Galaxy A80 runs from the Snapdragon 730 chipset that is one of Qualcomm’s most recent processors.

It won’t blow you away with crazy speeds but we found the Samsung Galaxy A80 runs smoothly and without any interference.

The Samsung A80 comes with an impressive 128GB of internal storage, which we feel is more than enough for the average user in 2019.

This amount of storage ensures you can store tons of music, movies and apps on your device without breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately, Samsung hasn’t gave the option to expand the storage with a microSD, which for most people is unnecessary but it would have been nice to have the option as some of the competitors do offer this luxury.

So not only does the Samsung A80 have a brand new chipset, but it is also backed by a whopping 8GB of RAM.

This combination ensures the phone runs smoothly when gaming, streaming and handling everyday tasks.

See Related:

*Samsung Galaxy A40 Review*
*Samsung Galaxy A50 Review*
*Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Review*

We tested the phone out on our favourite game Runescape and found the phone handled the MMORPG with ease even in max graphics, we didn’t notice any fps drops or lag either.

When comparing the benchmarks between the competitions the Samsung A80 is a clear winner, which is evident to see when playing games like Asphalt and PUBG.

If you are a gamer and love to play demanding games on your smartphone, then this could be the one for you.

The Samsung Galaxy A80 comes with Android 9.0 and One UI laid over the top, this interface is incredibly clean and easy to use.

The A80 breezes through the UI smoothly and we love how customisable the interface is, with custom themes at your fingertips.

One UI keeps applications in a neat and tidy app drawer, so you’re never scrambling around looking for you Dominos app on a Sunday.

We love how big the application buttons are too, so those who have bad eyesight or chubby fingers won’t struggle with this phone, especially that it is a huge 6.7-inches.

Features like ‘Digital Wellbeing’ are present here, which help you kick that social media addiction by letting you know exactly how many hours you are spending on each application every day.

As a whole the Samsung Galaxy A80 specs are impressive, and in testing we found it to be a very powerful phone that handles gamer, media and much more easily.

That being said if you are a gamer and are looking for some serious power, we would check out our Huawei P30 review as this is a similar price but has better performance benchmarks.

Samsung Galaxy A80 Review: Camera

The Samsung Galaxy A80 main camera is a 48MP f/2.0 alongside an 8MP /f.2.2 ultra-wide lens.

Photos from the main camera come out in 12MP, with lots of detail, good contrast and colours.

The phone does have the option to shoot in 48MP, however, the image quality does suffer a lot more.

When shooting with the 8MP ultra-wide lens we found images to be decent, nothing mind-blowing but we do love the lens for its field of view.

The ultra-wide lens allows you to take group photos without having to get everyone bunched together, this is because the lens has a much wider field of view and can fit so much more into the image.

The Samsung Galaxy A80 camera also has a ToF lens that is used to gauge depth and blur the background for portrait shots.

This lens works well to blur the background and ensure that as much detail is on the subject as possible, we found this to be the perfect Instagram lens as it really increases the quality of the subject, especially in portrait mode.

This does come at a cost though as there is no telephoto lens which is used to zoom in, so don’t expect to be taking close-ups of wildlife that is far away with this phone.

There is still digital zoom, but we found when zooming in the image quality would drop drastically so we tried to stay away from zooming in as much as possible.

As a whole shooting in daylight with the Samsung A80 camera is impressive, although we have definitely seen better in some Huawei devices, like the P30 Pro.

When shooting in low light the Samsung Galaxy A80 produces decent images, although they are slightly soft and come out on the darker side.

The good thing is that the A80 camera has a dedicated ‘Night Mode’, which draws in as much natural light as possible to help with the overall image quality, and it works well.

The ultra-wide lens in low light does struggle, its more than capable of taking decent shots in lit-up places, although if you’re in the dark you won’t get any Instagram worthy images with this lens.

The phone does use ‘Scene Optimisation’ which we have seen in lots of other mid-range 2019 smartphones and it works really well.

However, with the A80 we found all it really did was make the image come out brighter, which doesn’t help quality much at all.

Moving around the front the Samsung Galaxy A80 has an 8MP motorised flip out selfie camera, which is not as good as we thought.

The first thing we noticed is that the phone disables auto-focus, leaving you with arms-length fixed focus.

Photos with the selfie cam are average, with skin tones looking good and quality being decent too.

In portrait mode, the Samsung A80 selfie camera does well to produce an Instagram worthy shot, with great subject separation.

The Samsung Galaxy A80 camera can record in 4K@30fps, with recordings coming out with plenty of detail.

Colours and dynamic range are great when recording too; we loved shooting video of wildlife at our local farm.

As a whole the Samsung A80 camera is impressive, working well in daylight and low light, however, we wish the motorised mechanism didn’t have its downfalls, such as making the phone susceptible to water damage.

Samsung Galaxy A80 Review: Battery Life

The Samsung Galaxy A80 battery is a 3700mAh, which may sound like more than enough but in reality, it just got us through a full day of usage.

When we get a phone to review we do really push it to its limits, so we feel the average user will get more than a days use out of this phone.

When you take into account the size of this phone, and the huge 6.7-inch display we would have expected at least a 4000mAh battery.

The Samsung A80 does make up for it with its charging speed though, and the device can go from 0-50% in around half an hour.

The device comes with a 25W fast charger in the box, ensuring that you can get a speedy top up when needed.

You may be wondering does the Samsung Galaxy A80 support wireless charging?

Well unfortunately not, the A80 doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles as to what you might find on the Samsung Galaxy S10, that being said for its price range it certainly does offer some quality features.

Samsung Galaxy A80 Review: Summary

So should you buy the Samsung Galaxy A80?

Well if you are looking for a mid-range smartphone that brings lots to the table and has a unique design, then yes!

The A80 not only has a fantastic 6.7-inch AMOLED display, but it has a motorised pop-up selfie camera that is a cool added bonus to this phone.

However it does come with a cost, that being that the Samsung A80 is not waterproof, so please be careful using this device around water as it will surely damage the phone if you drop it.

The Samsung A80 specs are impressive too, with an impressive 128GB of internal storage coupled with a whopping 8GB of RAM.

This device will have you breezing through your favourite games and its clean UI.

Samsung Galaxy A80 Dual-SIM 128 GB Rotating Camera Smartphone - Black (UK Version) 

We hope you have enjoyed our Samsung Galaxy A80 review, feel free to check out our Samsung Galaxy A50 review as well as our Samsung A70 review before making any purchase decisions as these phones may be more suited to you.

We even showcase the best Samsung Galaxy A80 deals at the top of this post.

Samsung Galaxy A80 Review: Full Specification

Launch: 2019, April

Body:

• Dimension: 165.2x 76.5 x 9.3mm (6.50 x 3.01 x 0.37 in)
• Weight: 220g (7.76 oz)
• Build: Front glass (Gorilla Glass 3), Back Glass (Gorilla Glass 6), Aluminium frame
• Sim: Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)

Display:

• Type: Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
• Size: 6.7 inches, 108.4cm² (-85.8% screen-to-body ratio)
• Resolution: 1080 x 2400 pixels, 20:9 ratio (-393 PPI density)
• Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass 3
  – Always-on display

Platform:

• OS: Android 9.0 (Pie); One UI
• Chipset: Qualcomm SDM730 Snapdragon 730 (8nm)
• CPU: Octa-core (2×2.2 GHz Kryo 470 Gold & 6.18 GHz Kryo 470 Silver)
• GPU: Adreno 618

Memory:

• Card slot: No
• Internal: 128GB, 8GB RAM

Camera:

• Primary:
  – 48MP, f/2.0, 26mm (wide), PDAF
  – 8MP, f/2.2, 12mm (ultrawide)
  – ToF 3D camera, f/1.2, 30mm
• Features: LED flash, panorama, HDR
• Video: 2160p@30fps, 1080p@30/60fps (gyro-EIS)
• Single:
  – Motorised pop-up rotating main camera module
• Features: LED flash, HDR
• Video: 2160p@30fps, 1080p@30/60fps (gyro-EIS)

Sound:

• Loudspeaker: Yes
• 3.5mm Jack: No
  – Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
  – Dolby Atmos Sound

Comms:

• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
• Bluetooth: 5.0, A2DP, LE
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS
• NFC: Yes
• Radio: FM Radio
• USB: 2.0, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector

Features:

• Sensors: Fingerprint (rear-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, ANT+

Battery:

• Non-removable Li-Pro 3700mAh battery
• Charging: Fast battery charging 25W

Misc:

• Colours: Angel Gold, Ghost White, Phantom Black
• Price: As seen in the above post

Tests:

• Performance: Basemark OS ||: 3268 / Basemark X: 33811
• Display: Contrast ratio: Infinite (nominal)
• Camera: Photo / Video
• Loudspeaker:  Voice 69dB / Noise 71dB / Ring 79dB
• Battery Life: Endurance rating 90h