Samsung Galaxy F62 Review – Speedy But Not Full On

Is the rebranded M51 worth your attention?

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If you’ve been surfing the internet in the past few weeks, and whether you care about smartphones or not, you must’ve come across the Samsung Galaxy F62 thanks to the blitzkrieg advertising. Anyway, for the uninitiated, this is Samsung’s new mid-range offering made especially for Flipkart.

Samsung Galaxy F62

7.9
Design and Build 6.0
Display Quality 8.0
Camera Quality 7.3
Software 8.3
Performance 8.6
Battery Performance 7.0
Audio Performance 7.8
Day-to-day Usage 8.0
Network Performance 7.6
Value for money 10.0

What Is Good?

  • Long battery life
  • Good selfies
  • Good value for money
  • Headphone jack

What Is Bad?

  • Performance throttling
  • Low light pictures could've been better
  • Prone to scratches

For all intents and purposes, the Galaxy F62 is a modified Galaxy M51 with a slightly tweaked design and an upgraded chipset – the Exynos 9825. This is the same chip that’s inside the Note 10 and the Note 10+, Samsung’s previous gen Note flagship.

But, is it #FullOnSpeedy like Samsung claims it to be? Well…we’ll find out.

Performance: Is the Exynos 9825 Worth the Hype?

Let me get straight to the point – Is the Exynos 9825 on a mid-range phone in 2021 the performance monster that Samsung claims it to be? Well, the short answer is no. The 2-year-old Exynos 9825 is more powerful than the Snapdragon 750G, Snapdragon 765G, and the MediaTek 800U on paper. But, in real world scenarios, the performance is actually on par with these mid-range chips. Allow me to explain.

The first thing I did is run benchmarks on the phone. In AnTuTu, forget the four lakh fifty thousand odd number promoted by Samsung in its marketing, it couldn’t even touch over 3.5 lakh in my initial tests. Then, I ran the CPU Throttle test. Within the first three minutes of the test, the performance throttled down to under 80% of its max performance. The final result was the CPU throttled to 74% of its max performance.

So, like any normal person I put the phone inside the fridge for a couple of minutes to cool it down. Once the temperature of the phone dropped under 30 degrees. I ran AnTuTu again. At which point, I got a score of over four lakh.

To understand what’s happening, I played Call of Duty for an hour. The phone can achieve the max possible settings of Very High graphics and Max frame rates, which is better than the 750G on the Mi 10i.

Also read: Mi 10i Review: Xiaomi Starts 2021 With a Bang, Sets Benchmark for Mid-range Phones

The starting temperature was around 32.7-degrees and the battery was at 67% charge. After an hour, the temperature went up to 43.3 degrees and the battery dropped to 54% charge. But, here’s what’s more important. At the highest graphics settings, the game was choppy and laggy. I had to drop it to High graphics and Max framerates to get decent sustained gaming performance.

So, what’s happening here? Simply put, Samsung is throttling the performance of the Exynos 9825 to prevent overheating and offer good battery performance. Which is why, daily performance was fine. I rarely faced any hiccups. Therefore, when compared to phones such as the Mi 10i or the Realme X7, the F62 is sometimes slightly better but most of the times on par when it comes to daily and gaming performance. If you really want a performance-oriented phone, I’d suggest you go for the Realme X3 with Snapdragon 855+ instead if you are willing to live with its other flaws. The Galaxy F62 is speedy but definitely not full on.

That said, the storage performance on the UFS 3.0 storage is definitely class leading and beats the other phones in this price range. You can take a look at the numbers for yourself.

Battery and Network Performance: Can the 7000mAh Battery Handle the Power?

With all the performance throttling, you can expect good battery performance from the phone. I got around 8 hours of Screen-on-Time (SoT), despite my heavy usage. But yes, I did get a better SoT of around 9 hours using the Galaxy M51. Basically, you can expect anywhere between a day and a half and two days of battery life on the F62. As for the charging time, it took me 1 hour and 53 minutes using the in box 25W charger.

One of the complaints for a lot of folks was that F62 doesn’t have 5G. I am slightly disappointed too, to be honest. Because, there’s no harm in future proofing. But, even if you don’t care about 5G, the lack of proper 4G Carrier Aggregation should be irksome.

That said, I must admit that 4G network performance was rock solid regardless of that. And, I got great call performance as well especially thanks to the great earpiece on the phone.

Design: Too Glossy for My Taste

If you ask me, I am not a fan of the glossy plastic exterior of the Galaxy F62. It is very reflective, attracts smudges, and scratches easily. Plus, the pin stripes on the Grey colour of the device is not my scene. But design is subjective and you might like it. Maybe the Green or the Blue colour variants catch your fancy.

Although, what I particularly like about the design is that Samsung includes a headphone jack with the phone. The audio performance is good too. No, it is no Mi 10i when it comes to audio fidelity, but it comes close. By the way, the speaker on the bottom is a mono speaker and sounds alright. Once again, the stereo setup on the Mi 10i is better. As for the tactile feedback of the volume rocker and the power button, it is great too. Incidentally, the power button also includes the fingerprint scanner. It is fairly fast at unlocking the phone. The SIM card tray is a full fledged one that accepts two Nano SIM cards and a microSD card as well.

In hand, the phone does feel pretty big and heavy owing to the 218gm weight and the 9.5mm thickness. However, this is not too bad considering the massive 7000mAh battery inside it. Also, the weight distribution is great, so I didn’t really feel it weighing me down while using it. But, if you want to put the phone in a case – something that Samsung has omitted this time from the box – then it is going to add to the weight of the phone.

Display: AMOLED Goodness as Usual

The Galaxy F62 has the same 6.7-inch sAMOLED+ display with FHD+ resolution that was also present on the Galaxy M51. It is a nice and crisp panel that comes with HDR10 support and Widevine L1 certification. It is bright enough outdoors and I have no particular qualms with that. But yes, you don’t get a high refresh rate option. In this price range, it is anyway a toss up between 60Hz, AMOLED and 120Hz, LCD these days. And considering all of the “knowledgable tech crowd” is firmly in the AMOLED clan, they are going to appreciate the quality of this panel.

Camera: A Sense of Deja Vu

The quad camera setup on the Galaxy F62 is exactly the same as the Galaxy M51. You get a 64MP main camera, 12MP ultrawide, 5MP macro, and 5MP depth. To know about the camera performance of the F62 in detail, take a look at our camera comparison against the Galaxy M51 and the Mi 10i. Although, let me quickly summarise my findings:

  1. The Galaxy F62’s main 64MP camera is a fairly sharp shooter but not the best in its class. The resulting pixel-binned 16MP images are good enough in daylight and match the M51 in terms of details, textures, and dynamic range. But, if you like shooting Hi Res 64MP shots in daylight, the F62 does a good job. Although, note that the colour processing veers towards a very heavy red bias that looks odd.
  2. In low light, the F62 struggles and I mostly found the Mi 10i to be way more reliable. That’s not just true for the Mi 10i’s main camera but also for its ultrawide one. The F62’s ultrawide angle camera is better in daylight, however, and matches the performance with its sibling the Galaxy M51.
  3. The macro camera takes sharp macros.
  4. Portraits look better on the F62 than they do on the M51 just because the facial tones don’t have a red bias. But, the edge detection is better on the Mi 10i.
  5. Talking about facial tones, it has been vastly improved even in selfies especially when you compare it against the M51. I liked the selfies I got from the F62 in compared to the M51 and even the Mi 10i.
  6. When it comes to video, I think this is the best phone in this price range for shooting 30fps videos in 4K using the front and the rear camera. The quality of videos, stabilisation, and sound recording is great. Plus the autofocus speeds are much improved too thanks to the more powerful 9825 processor. The only letdown is you still don’t have an option to shoot 60fps videos even in 1080p. For context, even the Galaxy M51 doesn’t have the option.
  7. There’s also the Single Take option on the F62, if you care about it. I don’t, honestly.

Overall, the F62 is a decent camera phone that improves upon its predecessor slightly but I still think the Mi 10i is my camera of choice for photography in this price range. If it is videography that you crave for, go for the F62 or the M51, you can’t go wrong with either.

Software: Latest But Bloatware Riddled

I must say this, Samsung is truly making great strides as far as software updates are concerned. Where Xiaomi and Realme are still stuck with Android 10 on their phones in 2021, Samsung has introduced the Galaxy F62 with Android 11 and latest OneUI 3.1. Plus you get Knox Security and Samsung Pay with NFC as well. This is proper top of the line, OneUI experience on a sub 25k phone.

That said, it is definitely filled with a lot of unnecessary apps and third-party notifications from the same apps. Pray tell me why would anyone want three short video apps – Moj, MX Takatak, and Chingari – pre-installed on their phones? Thankfully, all of these can be uninstalled. Otherwise, it is the same great OneUI 3.1 with Google’s Discover feed set as default minus one page. Don’t change it to the Samsung Free page by opening the app, else you won’t be able to get out of it.

Also read: Mi 10i Review: Xiaomi Starts 2021 With a Bang, Sets Benchmark for Mid-range Phones

If you can tailor your experience by deleting unwanted apps and customising notifications, the One UI 3.1 experience on the F62 is seriously the best software experience you can find in this price range.

Should You Buy the Samsung Galaxy F62?

If you’ve been craving a proper performance-oriented phone in the sub 25k price range to fill that large Poco F1-sized hole in your heart, the Galaxy F62 is not going to serve your purpose. Don’t get me wrong, the F62 is still one of the most powerful phones in this price range but it cannot offer you a sustained max performance, unfortunately. Also, what is with brands and making seemingly performance-oriented phones look unappealing? The Poco F1 was not a looker and neither is the Galaxy F62.

My mini rants aside, if you look at the Galaxy F62 as an overall package, it definitely has a lot going for it. It is definitely a better option than the Galaxy M51 now, thanks to the new software, slightly better camera performance, and better overall performance. But, the Mi 10i has a couple of advantages up its sleeve – good looks, exceptional camera performance, and doesn’t throttle as much. Plus, if you want to future-proof yourself, you get 5G too. Then there’s the Realme X7 if you want to shave off a couple of thousand more from your budget and buy a phone that’s 5G ready. But, the camera performance could leave you wanting for more.

So, which one would you pick? Let me know in the comments section below.