By Toby Shapshak

Samsung’s Galaxy A33 5G offers users 5G internet speeds and a range of other excellent features for just R7,000. That’s not much to pay for full waterproofing, decent camera support, and an excellent screen.

The dual-SIM Galaxy A33 has a 6.4in Super AMOLED screen. It offers similar visuals to Samsung’s S-series phones, but with a 90Hz refresh rate.

The 1080p screen is made from toughened Gorilla Glass 5.

Inside is one of Samsung’s Exynos processors. It has 6GB of RAM and 128GB storage, as well as a USB-C charge port. Several high-end features are also included: The fingerprint sensor lives underneath the screen, and its IP67 rating makes the phone wholly waterproof – if you rescue it from 1m of water within 30 minutes.

The A33 5G’s camera setup is also relatively fancy for a R7,000 smartphone. The main lens is a 48-megapixel (MP) wide-angle, with an 8MP ultrawide and 5MP macro camera included. Samsung’s also got a 2MP depth camera for depth-of-field photography. The camera handles 4K video recording (at 30 frames-per-second) and it’ll also provide super-slow-mo HD recording at 480fps. For selfies, there’s a 13-megapixel camera in the centre of the display.

It does all of this using a 5,000mAh battery that should provide a full day of power. If the battery gets a little low, the Galaxy A33 5G supports 25W fast-charging which will top up the phone in a relatively short time.

Samsung’s Galaxy A33 5G manages to cram an impressive collection of features into an affordable package. Even more impressive, Samsung has done this without making any substantial sacrifices. That’s a trick that’s weirdly difficult to do correctly.

You didn’t think you’d get all the headline features at this price, did you?

Toby Shapshak is the editor-in-chief of Stuff Studios.

By Toby Shapshak

Awesome. That’s the word Samsung uses to describe its new Galaxy A23 smartphone. It has an awesome screen, some awesome cameras, and an awesome battery. It’s hard to disagree with the use of that word.

The screen is a large and smooth 6.6-inches (167.2mm) and has impressively vivid colours, as we have come to expect from Samsung. With an impressive 1080 x 2408 (FHD+) resolution and a healthy 90Hz refresh rate, video look smoother and sharper, and pictures crisper.

Is “awesome” the word to describe the rear camera array with its four lenses and a flash? Very much so. The main 50 megapixel (MP) is complimented by a 5MP ultra-wide lens, a 2MP macro lens and a 2MP depth camera. The ultra-wide is itself worth talking about because it has a 123-degree viewing angle, which is similar to our eyes. That means the wide images you take will look, well, more natural to your eye.

The cameras also feature optical image stabilisation (OIS), which steadies the camera in case there is any movement.

The selfie camera is a very healthy 8MP and has a clever portrait setting that blurs the background and focusses on the person. It creates, well, awesome selfies for profile pictures.

Of course, with all of Google’s software preloaded – including Search, Gmail, Maps, Photos, YouTube and the all-important Play Store – it’s a whizz to connect back into Android and all your stored data and settings.

But in this age of #loadshedding, perhaps the most awesome feature is the 5,000mAh battery, which will keep your phone going and going and going for two days. This is especially useful when the lights go out.

The phone can play audio for up to 174 hours too and features Dolby Atmos sound. This standard for listening to music is a stamp of excellence and a feature you will immediately identify for its clarity.

Even the Galaxy A23's edges are, well, awesome. Samsung’s Ambient Edge design incorporates the rear camera array seamlessly into the phone’s body with slick curves. Samsung have also cleverly incorporated the fingerprint reader into the power button so you just lightly put your finger on it to unlock your mobile.

Is Samsung justified in calling the new Galaxy A23 “awesome”? Absolutely.

Toby Shapshak is the editor-in-chief of Stuff Studios.

By Toby Shapshak

When one of Scrolla’s team was burgled early last year and her phone stolen, we scrambled to get her a new handset.

It had to have a big clear screen for reading text on it. Check.

It had to have two SIM card slots, for both your own voice line and the data SIM we provide. Check.

It needed to have a big battery to get through, well, load shedding. Check.

It needed to have enough storage and an SD card slot for more. Check.

And, finally, it needed to be affordable. Check.

What phone did we buy?

The Samsung Galaxy A03 Core checked all the boxes.

And it cost just R1,800 on Everyshop.

We needed a workhorse device, which we got in spades. It has a 1.6GHz octa-core chip (octo means eight, so eight processor cores) as well as 2GB of RAM. It has 32GB of internal storage, but you add up to a 512GB microSD.

The battery is frankly over-specced for this kind of offering – an impressive 5,000 mAh.

You’ll never worry about making it through the day again, perhaps even two days, depending on how heavy a user you are.

Part of the reason that the A03 Core is so nippy to use is because it runs Android 11 Go edition, a lightweight version of Android specially designed for entry-level devices with 2GB of RAM.

Toby Shapshak is the editor-in-chief of Stuff Studios.