Samsung A16 5G: An affordable  pocket rocket

While flagship smartphones get all the hype, mid-range models like Samsung’s Galaxy A16 languish with little to no media coverage.

This is a bummer, as mid-rangers are often where the real innovation is. Clever engineering involves squeezing as much performance as possible from the technology while keeping the phone affordable. More importantly, the increasingly gloomy outlook of New Zealand’s economy makes a cheap and well-specced phone highly appealing. So, is the A16 Samsung’s version of that phone?

Design-wise, the A16 could initially be mistaken for Samsung’s considerably more costly flagship. A closer look reveals a bigger bezel and plastic on its rim and body instead of the alloy and glass used on the Galaxy S series. Either way, it’s a great-looking device and its design lends it a distinctly premium look and feel.

The A16 is a generously sized slab of smartphone goodness, weighing around 200g. At 164.4 x 77.9 x 7.9mm, it’s quite a handful. According to Samsung’s blurb, it can be had in Light Green, Black or Grey.

The area in which the A16’s mid-range specs first became apparent is its waterproofness, with an IP54 rating, which means that while it’ll shake off the odd raindrop and some dust, it isn’t a candidate for video conferences during underwater diving. Its plastic body makes it a little more forgiving with accidental drops, but still, a case is a good idea.

Considering its affordable sticker price, its large 6.7″ display is a pleasant surprise. As you’d expect from Samsung, it’s vivid and crisp thanks to it being a Super AMOLED screen capable of cranking out peeper-pleasing colours. Adding a 90Hz refresh rate also makes for smooth scrolling, even if 120hz would have been better for hard-core gaming (which is pointless anyway, as most high-end games need flagship-grade CPUs). The display is also bright, hitting 800 nits at max brightness, translating into good outdoor readability.

If you’re into using your phone’s speakers to consume media, the A16 only has a single speaker on its bottom edge, so you can have any audio you want as long as it’s mono. While the A16 can deliver decent volume levels, the laws of physics will require you to pair the A16 with some decent Bluetooth cans if you want anything approaching bass (and stereo).

Samsung has offered different CPU silicon, depending on which country you buy the A16 in. In New Zealand, it’s a Mediatek Helio G99 chipset, which packs an octa-core CPU of 2×2.2 GHz Cortex-A76 and 6×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 cores. This isn’t too shabby at the A16’s price point and probably offers better bang-per-buck performance than Samsung’s own Exynos 1330 CPU, which is used for the A16 in other geographies.

Rounding things out is a modest 4GB RAM and 128GB storage. While this and the CPU limit the A16’s ability to play AAA games and run other demanding apps, the good news is that Samsung has thoughtfully added MicroSD support for up to 1.5TB, which many flagship devices simply don’t have.

Navigating Android was smooth. While stutters and pauses are to be expected when multitasking and using multiple apps, I soon got into the habit of frequently killing off unused apps running in the background. Here’s hoping the next version comes with 8GB, offering a better balance between performance and cost and fewer micro stutters.

While high-end games and the A16 are not likely to be a great combination, my inner sadist installed and ran Genshin Impact, albeit on its lowest settings. It worked, just. For less demanding casual games such as Candy Crush, the A16 ran without a hitch.

Flipping the A16 around reveals a 50MP main shooter (f/1.8 aperture) on its back, a 5Mp (f/2.2 aperture) ultra-wide snapper, and a 2Mp macro lens. In sunny daylight conditions, I got decent results with the main shooter due to the A16’s solid image processing capabilities. Shifting to the ultra-wide camera saw a noticeable drop in photo quality, which is only to be expected when moving from a 50MP to a 5MP sensor. The Macro lens, however, seems largely pointless given the low image quality it captured. Perhaps Samsung could ditch the macro shooter and opt for a better ultrawide image sensor in next year’s model?

I found myself pleasantly surprised at the photos the A16 managed to capture. Where earlier Samsung budget phones copped some criticism for over-sharpening/oversaturating images, the A16 acquitted itself well with natural-looking daylight shots that were a definite step up from the often soft and muddy images I’d typically get with similarly priced phone cameras. If that’s the good news, the not-so-good news is that the lack of optical zoom means you rely on digital zoom. This produced acceptable results at 2x, while pixelation and softness crept into things and were noticeable at 4x and 10x zoom. Shooting in low light also saw decreased image sharpness. At the same time, night-time shots often came out blurry owing to the lack of OIS (optical image stabilisation) to smooth out camera shake for extended shutter times. The 13MP selfie shooter around the front in a teardrop configuration did a solid job with Facetime Messenger video calls and quick selfies.

A 5000mAh battery powers the show. With typical use, I managed to get just shy of two days of use before the A16 demanded it be connected to a charger. As is the norm nowadays, a charger isn’t included in the box.

I had a spare 65W Samsung charger, and with it, I was able to take the A16 from flat as a pancake to 25% in 15 minutes, and just over half charged in 30 minutes. Fully charging it took about an hour and a half, which is to be expected at this price point. Interestingly, Samsung didn’t include wireless charging capabilities, which is a glaring omission when competitors such as Motorola offer it at this price point.

The A16 5G runs Android 14, which is overlaid with Samsung’s custom One UI 6.1 skin. Its intuitive design and clean, uncluttered layout have seen it garner a steady following, which looks set to grow as Samsung has committed to six years of updates for the A16 through to 2030. This standout software support gives it a solid amount of future-proofing.

Priced at a wallet/purse-pleasing $399, the A16 represents a solid compromise between cost and functionality. It delivers a great display, impressive software support, and decent cameras. Best of all, it looks like a million bucks.

https://www.samsung.com/nz/smartphones/galaxy-a/galaxy-a16-5g-blue-black-128gb-sm-a166pzkdxnz/buy/