| Pros | Cons |
| Great battery life | Plastic build |
| Good quad-lens camera | No telephoto lens |
| Big screen | Not much of an improvement on A70 |
The Samsung Galaxy A71 is a great all-rounder for the money, let down only by a plastic build and the lack of much improvement since the last model.
The Samsung Galaxy A71 is, as you might expect, a successor to the Samsung Galaxy A70. That phone we found to be a superb mid-ranger, with hardly any issues that couldn’t be overlooked given its price.
So does the Samsung Galaxy A71 repeat the trick? It certainly looks promising at first glance – there’s a quad-lens camera, a huge battery, an even bigger screen, and solid core specs.
That said it doesn’t overcome the key flaws of its predecessor. So in a sense this is more of the same. The question is, is that good enough in 2020?
There’s an enormous 6.7-inch 1080 x 2400 Super AMOLED Plus screen on the Samsung Galaxy A71. That’s as big as the biggest flagships, matching for example the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus and exceeding the Samsung Galaxy S10.
Its resolution isn’t quite a match for those phones, but it’s still decent, making for 393 pixels per inch. Notably it’s no better on this front than the Galaxy A70, and it doesn’t include HDR10 support, but it’s still very solid for the money, with decent colours and a high maximum brightness.
It’s flat, unlike many of Samsung’s most premium flagships, but then it’s also cheaper than those.
While there’s not much change on the screen, the design has been at least slightly improved since the Samsung Galaxy A70, as the Galaxy A71 has a punch-hole camera rather than a notch, and seemingly slightly smaller bezels.
As such there’s very little wasted space, but it has the same major design issue as the A70: the back and frame are made of plastic, which at this price, in 2020, is a real disappointment and our biggest complaint with the Samsung Galaxy A71.
Of course, this won’t matter much to everyone, and if you plan on putting the phone in a case then it’s pretty much a non-issue. There’s also no water resistance, but that’s less surprising.
Samsung has at least put some effort into the colours, with many shades offering a colourful ‘prism’ effect on the rear, that rather distracts from the fact that it’s plastic.
The Samsung Galaxy A71 has an octa-core Snapdragon 730 chipset paired with either 6GB or 8GB of RAM. Those RAM amounts are verging on high-end, and while the chipset isn’t, it is a strong upper mid-range option. It’s also an upgrade on the Galaxy A70’s chipset.
The phone performs very well in general, and while the likes of the OnePlus 7T and Pixel 4 will have it beat in speed tests, for day to day use you’re unlikely to feel like you’re missing out much, even when gaming and multi-tasking.
You get four lenses on the back of the Samsung Galaxy A71, an impressive number, but one that’s even more impressive on the cheaper Samsung Galaxy A51.
Still, the lenses here are better, or at least the main one is, as it’s 64MP, up from 48MP on the Galaxy A51. It’s also double the 32MP of the Galaxy A70.
Of course, megapixels aren’t everything, but the snapper here is a good one. Like many recent phones this has a ‘Quad Bayer’ lens, meaning that as standard it combines four pixels into one larger one, meaning that you will generally be taking 16MP shots rather than 64MP ones, but 16MP ones that can take in a lot of light. And if you prefer you can switch to 64MP.
The other lenses meanwhile include a 12MP ultra-wide one, a 5MP macro one and a 5MP depth sensor. These ones are less impressive, but make for a fairly versatile setup – though one that’s notably lacking a telephoto lens.
Photo quality in general is strong for the money. This isn’t a match for the quad-lens shooter on, say, the Huawei P30 Pro, but it’s strong for its class.
The Samsung Galaxy A71 also has a 32MP camera on the front, which is a high megapixel count for a selfie camera, though no better than the Galaxy A51.
One highlight of the Samsung Galaxy A71 is that it runs Android 10 – it’s one of the first Samsung phones to do so out of the box.
That means your software is up to date, though this isn’t stock Android, it’s overlaid with Samsung’s One UI 2. That in itself though is quite an appealing interface, other than Bixby (Samsung’s AI assistant), which can be easily ignored in favour of Google Assistant.
The Samsung Galaxy A71 also has an in-screen fingerprint scanner. Like many aspects of this phone, this is less impressive for also being in the Galaxy A51 and Galaxy A70, but it’s still a decent feature to find in a mid-range handset, and it works quite well here.
You also get a headphone port, which isn’t much of a feature but is something that lots of phones are doing away with.
The Samsung Galaxy A71 has a 4,500mAh battery. As with so much else here we saw this before on the A70, but Samsung’s approach of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” isn’t the worst thing, as this is a good size, even for such a big screen.
Indeed, it delivers impressive life. If you’re frugal with your use then two days of life isn’t totally out of the question. It also supports fast 25W charging (the same as the Samsung Galaxy S20), but no wireless charging.
There’s 128GB of storage, paired with a microSD card slot, which should give you plenty of space to play with, and connectivity options include Bluetooth 5.0, and NFC (for contactless payments and the like) – there’s no 5G though.
The Samsung Galaxy A71 has a lot going for it, but most of those things are the same as the Samsung Galaxy A70: it has the same big battery and screen, both have an in-screen scanner, and both have the same key flaws, most notably a plastic build and lack of water resistance – the former of which is getting less forgivable as time goes on.
But we don’t want to sound too negative. The Samsung Galaxy A70 was a superb phone and the Samsung Galaxy A71 is even better – the chipset is faster, and the camera and design are improved. It’s not as big of an improvement as we’d have liked, and the faults feel more problematic now, but taken on its own terms this is still a great phone.
