Exactly a year after Samsung crammed flagship smartphone features into affordable A Series mid-rangers, the company has done it again for the launch of the Galaxy A53 5G, which is priced to compete with last year's Pixel 5a as well as offering an Android alternative to the iPhone SE.
A number of the phone's specs have a very familiar ring to them. The display looks about the same as its predecessor, an AMOLED panel at 6.5 inches and 1,080 x 2,400 pixels with a refresh rate of 120 Hz and outdoor-visible brightness of up to 800 nits.
The camera specs are also the same as before, with a 64-MP main module boasting optical image stabilization, a 12-MP ultra-wide, a 5-MP macro and a 5-MP depth camera around back, and a 32-MP selfiecam to the front.
The new model is a little slimmer though, at 74.8 x 159.6 x 8.1 mm (2.9 x 6.28 x 0.3 in), but weighs the same 189 g (6.6 oz), and the processing brains have been treated to a refresh, with the A53 rocking an unspecified (but brand new) octa-core 5-nm chip with two 2.4-GHz cores and six 2-GHz cores, compared to the 8-nm silicon for the A52's Snapdragon brains. System support comes from 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, with microSD expansion up to 1 TB.
The handset runs Android 12 with a One UI 4.1 skin, and the company is promising support for four generations of operating system upgrades. It also packs Samsung Knox security to help keep your digital treasures safe, and up to five years of security updates are available too.
Elsewhere, the A53 features a relatively large 5,000-mAh battery for up to two days of per-charge usage and 25-W fast-charging, though a charger isn't included in the box. In addition to 5G mobile internet, there's 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.1, and an IP67 rating means that it should survive submersion in up to a meter (3.3 ft) of water for 30 minutes.
The Galaxy A53 5G is up for pre-order now for a starting price of US$449.99 (that's $50 cheaper than the A52 5G's launch price), with general availability pegged for March 31.
Product page: A53 5G
