While Samsung’s flagship phones are always the company’s most impressive, most people look at the mid-range phones and the budget phones instead. If you’ve been waiting up to see what Samsung has in store for the lower ranks, it’s all finally here, and it looks great.

Samsung has unveiled its latest additions to the Galaxy A series, showcasing three new models: the Galaxy A56 5G, Galaxy A36 5G, and Galaxy A26 5G. It’s not the first budget phones to be launched by Samsung this year—that honor belongs to the even cheaper Galaxy A16 5G. But they’re probably the best ones in Samsung’s sub-flagship lineup right now. All three models boast a large 6.7-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. They are pretty good screens considering the price points these phones will be selling at. But that’s not the only good thing about these phones.

In the camera department, we start seeing more differences. All three feature a 50MP main camera with an F1.8 aperture, autofocus (AF), and optical image stabilization (OIS). The differences lie in the secondary cameras. The A56 5G sports a 12MP ultrawide lens (F2.2) and a 5MP macro lens (F2.4). The A36 5G and the A26 5G, however, steps down to an 8MP ultrawide lens (F2.2) and a 2MP macro lens (F2.4). And both the A56 5G and the A36 5G feature a 12MP front camera, whereas the A26 5G has a 13MP one (which might be a lower-quality sensor regardless of the higher megapixel count).

All three models offer a base configuration of 128GB of internal storage. The A56 5G comes with 8GB of RAM, while the A36 5G and A26 5G are equipped with 6GB of RAM. It’s good to see that we’re getting 128GB of storage in the base models—less than this could become a problem, even if it’s on a budget phone. Each phone is powered by a 5,000 mAh battery, so battery life should be relatively decent as well. All three Galaxy A series models also feature an IP67 rating for water and dust resistance. This means they can withstand submersion in up to 1 meter of fresh water for up to 30 minutes, as well as being protected from dust ingress.

All three devices run on Android 15 with Samsung’s One UI 7.0. And just like with the Galaxy A16, Samsung is promising here a whopping six generations of Android OS and One UI upgrades, along with six years of security updates. This means that with these phones coming out of the box with Android 15, they will be updated all the way up to Android 21 in the year 2031. It’s pretty outstanding for a budget phone—even as these might be the more “disposable” ones compared to flagships, they are also frequently purchased by older people, which tend to stick to one phone for a long time regardless of how cheap it might be. Having a phone that’s still updated for a decent amount of time even within a lower price bracket is very cool, and it’s something I hope other phone OEMs learn to do in the short term.

The Galaxy A56 5G will be available for $499.99, while the Galaxy A36 5G will cost $399.99 and the Galaxy A26 5G will set you back $299.99. Both the A36 5G and the A26 5G will be available later this month (the A36 5G will be a Best Buy exclusive on March 26th while the A26 5G will launch on March 28th) while the A56 5G has no availability details just yet—it might take a while longer in the oven.

Source: Samsung