20 Oct 2025
The Samsung A36 is presented as a refined smartphone that offers a compelling option, despite certain limitations. This thorough review details its features and performance, providing crucial insights to ensure a well-informed purchase and prevent buyer's remorse.
The Samsung A36 is a smartphone described as refined but not without flaws, and this review aims to provide essential information to potential buyers to prevent financial regret.
The A36 adopts Samsung's current design language, featuring a glass back cover with cameras integrated into a frame rather than an island, showing reasonable protrusion. Its plastic frame, intended to feel like aluminum, is not impeccably clean, exhibiting visible weld lines and asymmetrical edges.
The phone's bottom houses a Type-C port, SIM card tray, microphone, and a speaker. The right edge contains the power button and volume controls, with the power button conveniently located below the volume buttons for better practicality. A microphone is also present on the top edge, while the left edge is bare.
The front panel showcases reduced bezels compared to its predecessors, though they remain somewhat bulky at the top and bottom, and the edges appear asymmetrical initially, becoming normalized with use. The selfie camera is placed in a punch-hole cutout, and the phone is IP67 certified, with screen edges slightly protruding to offer additional protection against impacts.
The device features a 6.7-inch 120Hz Super AMOLED display that offers incredibly attractive quality and good brightness. While the asymmetrical bezels can be initially bothersome, users adapt over time, and the display does not support HDR+ features.
Equipped with a 5000 mAh battery, the A36 provides a full day of charge for normal or light usage, such as social media and messaging. However, heavy usage involving gaming or extensive camera use prevents it from lasting a full day, indicating an under-optimized power consumption. The phone supports 45W fast charging, an upgrade from the previous 25W, allowing for a full charge in approximately 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes, although the adapter is not included.
The A36 utilizes an under-display fingerprint sensor for security, which requires a steady hand for accurate and efficient recognition, suggesting it may not be the fastest or most seamless solution available.
The main 50-megapixel sensor produces amazing 12.5-megapixel photos that are exceptionally clean, offering good dynamic range, clarity, and detail, positioning it among the best in its price segment. Minor flaws include occasional color inaccuracies, white balance issues, and light metering errors, which are considered normal for this price range, while night photos could benefit from improvement.
The phone includes an 8-megapixel ultrawide sensor and a 5-megapixel macro camera, which is largely dismissed due to its limited utility. Video recording is available at 30fps with a regular stabilizer and 18-megapixel quality, offering attractive results for its price segment.
The 12-megapixel selfie camera captures images with good dynamic range, white balance, and color metering, but zoomed-in details on faces can appear 'watery' due to specific lighting conditions and inconsistent autofocus, making it a functional but not outstanding component.
Powered by a Snapdragon 630 processor and UFS 2.0 storage, the A36 exhibits very normal processing performance, reminiscent of the A55 which showed performance degradation over time. It can run games like 'Off-Duty' on medium settings, but prolonged play often results in lag, wobbling, and frame drops, with noticeable UI slowness even when the phone is new.
The A36 is projected to receive up to 6 years of software updates, a significant attraction for a Samsung phone, featuring a refined One UI interface with various Samsung functionalities. While it does not include Samsung's flagship-level AI capabilities, it integrates clever Google AI features like Circle to Search and Gemini for tasks such as music identification and text summarization, with limited expectations for photo editing AI.
The phone delivers mid-range sound with extremely good separation and appropriate loudness, but it presents a thin low end and a slight drop in sound quality at the high end, consistent with its segment.
The Samsung A36, priced around 32-33 million Tomans (as of May 3), offers a cool design, good screen, decent battery, and a very good main camera, making it suitable for casual users prioritizing camera quality and long-term software updates. However, its 'normal' processor renders it less ideal for heavy gaming or processing tasks, where competitors like the Poco X7 Pro significantly outperform it. The A36 is considered a good buy if its price drops to approximately 28-29 million Tomans.
If hardware performance is a critical factor for heavy gaming and processing tasks, the A36 offers limited utility, though its camera capabilities are notable.
| Feature | Assessment | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Design & Build | Mixed | Modern glass back, integrated cameras. Plastic frame with visible weld lines, asymmetrical edges, IP67 certification. |
| Display | Good | 6.7-inch 120Hz Super AMOLED, attractive quality, good brightness. Asymmetrical bezels. |
| Battery Life | Decent (Light) / Weak (Heavy) | 5000 mAh, full day for normal/light use. Struggles with heavy use. Supports 45W fast charging (adapter not included). |
| Main Camera | Very Good | 50MP sensor, clean 12.5MP photos, good dynamic range, clarity, detail. Minor color/white balance issues. |
| Selfie Camera | Normal | 12MP sensor, good dynamic range/white balance. 'Watery' detail on zoom, inconsistent autofocus. |
| Performance | Normal / Weak (Heavy Use) | Snapdragon 630, UFS 2.0. Likely to lag in gaming/heavy tasks, UI exhibits slowness. Not for long-term heavy reliance. |
| Software Support | Excellent | Projected up to 6 years of updates, refined One UI, includes Google AI features. |
| Audio Quality | Good (Separation/Loudness) / Mixed (Fidelity) | Extremely good separation, appropriate loudness. Thin low end, slight drop in high end. |
| Overall Value | Mixed | Good for casual users, camera focus, long-term updates. Overpriced at current market rate (32-33M Tomans) for its processor. Recommended below 29M Tomans. |
