SAMSUNG GALAXY A41 Data Sheet :
| Model | Samsung Galaxy A41 |
|---|---|
| OS version | Android 10 Q |
| Manufacturer interface | One UI |
| Screen size | 6.1 inch |
| Definition | 2400 x 1080 pixels |
| Pixel density | 431 ppp |
| Technology | Super AMOLED |
| SoC | Helio P65 |
| Graphics chip (GPU) | Mali G52 |
| Random access memory (RAM) | 4 GB |
| Internal memory (flash) | 64 GB |
| Camera (back) | Sensor 1: 48 MP Sensor 2: 8 MP Sensor 3: 5 MP |
| Camera (front) | 25 Mp |
| Video recording | 4K |
| Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi 5 (ac) |
| Bluetooth | 5.0 |
| Supported bands | 2100 MHz (B1), 800 MHz (B20), 1800 MHz (B3), 2600 MHz (B7), 700 MHz (B28) |
| NFC | Yes |
| Fingerprint sensor | Under the screen |
|
Ports (inputs / outputs)
|
USB Type-C |
| Battery | 3500 mAh |
| Dimensions | x x mm |
| Coulors | Black, White, Bleu |
| Price | 340$ |
A Very Nice Format To Take In Hand :
Unlike its two older brothers, the Samsung Galaxy A41 does not benefit from a screen with a punch, but from a fine notch in the shape of a drop of water positioned at the top of the screen. We note above all a particularly compact device, fact which we will come back to later. Overall, with a 6.1-inch diagonal screen, the smartphone fits easily in the hand, aided by rather thin borders around the front panel. On the sides, there is only 2.5 mm of border between the edge and the screen. At the bottom, the border is also quite thin with 5 mm. Finally, at the top we could measure a border of 3.5 mm, and 7.5 mm by counting the notch.
On the back of the device, we will find a fairly classic design for a Samsung smartphone in 2020 with imitation glass plastic and a photo module positioned at the top left. As on the Galaxy S20 or Galaxy A51 and Galaxy A71, it takes on a form that we will call domino. Indeed, the module is rather large since it houses the three cameras on the left, positioned vertically and, on the right, the flash and the words “48 mega pixels”.
In terms of buttons and connectors, there is again that classic with rather rounded edges all around the smartphone. On the right, we will find the standby keys and the volume bar. On the left, Samsung has positioned the hatch for dual nano-SIM card and microSD card. On the lower edge, we will finally find the USB-C socket, the media speaker and the headphone socket.
Overall, the most surprising thing about the Samsung Galaxy A41 is its size. It must be said that the smartphone holds particularly well in hand with its format of 149.9 x 69.8 x 7.9 mm. It’s very simple, here we have a smartphone whose format is very close to that of the Huawei P30, one of my favorites last year. It must be said that in 2020, there are few smartphones to offer a screen of less than 6.4 inches, while the standard tends more and more towards the diagonals of 6.7 inches. Thanks to its plastic back, the Samsung Galaxy A41 is also a featherweight, weighing 151 grams on the scale.
Overall, we therefore have a smartphone with very complete connectivity and particularly easy to use even with one hand. Admittedly, it does not shine by its originality, but it is a telephone which one appreciates to use. The only black spot on the board is the lack of waterproofing certification, even if it is difficult to compare it with its price.
READ ALSO : Asus ROG Phone 3 & Gorilla Glass Victus
An Excellent Invoice Screen :
Traditionally, this is one of Samsung’s strengths on smartphones: the screen quality. The Korean manufacturer is one of the few to offer Oled screens right up to the mid-range, and the Samsung Galaxy A41 is no exception.
The Samsung Galaxy A41 has a 6.1-inch screen with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels, an aspect ratio of 20:9. What allow a particularly precise display with 431 pixels per inch. At this level of sharpness, we consider that with the exception of rare cases – such as the use of the smartphone in a virtual reality headset – it is impossible to distinguish each pixel individually. On the resolution side, no problem therefore on this Samsung Galaxy A41.
On a daily basis, the Samsung Galaxy A41 offers a particularly contrasting screen. Because, who says slab Oled also says infinite contrast. It is also bright enough to allow a comfortable reading of the screen even in direct sunlight with a large blue sky.
By default, the Samsung Galaxy A41 is calibrated with a vivid color mode and a neutral screen temperature. With these parameters, the smartphone can display 209% of the sRGB color space, 141% of the DCI-P3 space and even 95% of the BT.2020 space, which is much more difficult to reach. However, it suffers from a lack of color fidelity with an average delta E measured at 5.74 on the DCI-P3 space. The color temperature is also too cold, measured at 7243K, well above the reference 6500 K of white sunlight.
To remedy this, I was able to move the temperature cursor to the hottest level to arrive at a temperature of 6704K and a delta E of 5.63. Note also that using our probe and Calman Ultimate software from Portrait Displays, I was able to measure an excellent maximum brightness, at 564 cd/m².
Overall, the Samsung Galaxy A41 therefore offers an excellent screen and, if color fidelity is not its strong point, it offers a vivid display, infinite contrast, with excellent brightness and a good level of detail.
A Sometimes Frustrant User Experience :
For the software, the Samsung Galaxy A41 is equipped with Android 10 with the One UI 2.1 interface and the security patch of April 1, 2020. We would have appreciated a more recent security patch at the time of this test, carried out at the end of June 2020 , but it’s still correct.
On the One UI side, there is an interface that is now well known, in the same vein as that offered by other smartphones of the brand such as the Galaxy A51, the Galaxy A71, but also the Galaxy S20. It must be said that One UI is one of our favorite Android interfaces on the market, skillfully managing to offer many functions for personalizing the experience while maintaining clear navigation.
Finally, as is often the case with Samsung mid-range smartphones, it is indeed the fingerprint reader, integrated into the screen, which will mainly limit the software experience. And at the Korean manufacturer, it is particularly slow to detect your finger and may take up to a second before unlocking the smartphone. Admittedly, this is not the end of the world, but it makes us regret the fingerprint readers integrated on the back, much faster when unlocked. Fortunately, the Galaxy A41 also benefits from 2D facial recognition which, if not particularly secure – especially when facing 3D systems – turns out to be rather fast.
For the management of streaming applications, the Galaxy A41 is well equipped with Widevine DRM at level L1. Enough to allow him to play videos in HD on myCanal, Netflix or Disney Plus.
Very Average Performance :
To keep the smartphone running on a daily basis, the Samsung Galaxy A41 has a MediaTek Helio P65 chip. It is a mid-range SoC equipped with an eight-core processor – two 2 GHz Cortex A-75 cores and six 1.7 GHz Cortex A-55 cores – and a Mali-G52 graphics chip . Unlike the Galaxy A51 and A71, the Samsung Galaxy A41 therefore does not benefit from a Samsung processor. In addition to this SoC, the South Korean manufacturer has also integrated 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, expandable up to 512 GB by microSD card.
On a daily basis, the MediaTek chip is not the fastest we have ever tested. We are certainly far above what the Helio A25 of the Wiko View4 can offer, but we can clearly sense that this is not a chip optimized for performance. The Samsung Galaxy A41 is relatively fluid in conventional use, but we feel some slowdowns when opening applications which can take half a second between pressing on the touch screen and launching itself. Fortunately, the Galaxy A41 is doing better in multitasking, in applications or even 2D mobile games.
To test 3D games, I tried to install Fortnite on the Galaxy A41. Unfortunately, the Epic Games Store reports that the smartphone is “not compatible”. It must be said that devices with MediaTek chips are not popular with Epic Games. Fortunately, Call of Duty was able to launch, with low graphics quality and an average frame rate per second, two parameters that unfortunately could not be improved on the phone at the time of this test. With these parameters, the Samsung Galaxy A41 keeps up the pace and does not suffer from freeze. However, we would have appreciated being able to enjoy a smoother and better image. Since then, the game has nonetheless offered average graphic quality and a high frame rate.
In order to test the performance of the Samsung Galaxy A41 compared to its competitors in this price segment, I subjected it to a battery of benchmarks, whose scores I noted, compared to those of other models launched at a price. equivalent: the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro, the Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite and the Galaxy A51, now also available for less than 340 dollar. Note that the test on AnTuTu refused to launch on the Galaxy A41.
| Samsung Galaxy A41 | Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro | Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite | Samsung Galaxy A51 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SoC | Helio P65 | Snapdragon 720G | Snapdragon 710 | Exynos 9611 |
| AnTuTu 8.x | NC | 276 347 | 173 858 | 177 359 |
| PCMark 2.0 | 6 058 | 7 704 | 6 676 | 5 183 |
| 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme | 1 152 | 2 518 | 1 834 | 1 608 |
| 3DMark Slingshot Extreme Graphics | 1 009 | 2 371 | 1 692 | 1 496 |
| 3DMark Slingshot Extreme Physics | 2 285 | 3 214 | 2 597 | 2 180 |
| GFXBench Aztec Vulkan High (onscreen / offscreen) | 3,9 / 2,5 FPS | 10 / 6,7 FPS | 6,8 / 4,6 FPS | 5,6 / 3,8 FPS |
| GFX Bench Car Chase (onscreen/offscreen) | 7,1 / 8,1 FPS | 16 / 18 FPS | 11 / 13 FPS | 9,2 / 11 FPS |
| GFX Bench Manhattan (onscreen/offscreen) | 19 / 21 FPS | 38 / 42 FPS | 27 / 32 FPS | 23 / 23 FPS |
| Sequential read / write | 299 / 214 Mo/s | 500 / 205 Mo/s | 482 / 237 Mo/s | 480 / 178 Mo/s |
| Random read / write | 19,8k / 18,2k IOPS | 34,4k / 29k IOPS | 23k / 30k IOPS | 30,1k / 31,7k IOPS |
So we have a smartphone that does not have to be ashamed of its processor performance, as we can see from the results of PCMark, where the Galaxy A41 is average. However, it’s the graphics performance that the phone is going to have the most trouble with results far below those of Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 9 Pro and Mi 9 Lite. He is also, logically, ahead of the Samsung Galaxy A51 by a short head.
A Good Invoice Camera :
-
5 megapixel (f/2.4) portrait mode sensor.
-
48-megapixel wide-angle camera, 25 mm equivalent (f/2.0).
-
8-megapixel ultra wide-angle camera, 13 mm equivalent (f/2.2).
We therefore have the right to a fairly classic photo configuration in this price segment which only the telephoto lens ultimately lacks. Note that, unlike the high-end Galaxy S20, Samsung does not communicate on a hybrid zoom on the Galaxy A41, but only on an x8 digital zoom.
The following photos were captured in automatic mode, with the scene optimizer turned on by default, first with the ultra-wide angle camera, then with the wide-angle:
We have here a rather effective photo module, in particular in the management of high dynamic ranges as we can see in the sky photos, with clearly visible clouds, and whose shadows remain well detailed. However, we can note a slight disparity in colors between the ultra wide-angle camera and the main sensor. More annoying, the ultra-wide angle module is subject to a fairly visible optical distortion on the sides, while the main wide-angle module tends to make a mixture of pixels at the edges of the image.
The fact remains that on the whole we have a fairly consistent rear photo module in broad daylight with good image precision, in particular thanks to the main 48-megapixel sensor. However, this is less the case in low light. The Samsung Galaxy A41 indeed offers night shots with a lot of digital noise and, despite this increase in ISO sensitivity, does not manage to considerably increase the brightness of the photo, despite the activation of the scene optimizer.
Note also that unlike the Galaxy S20 for example, the Samsung Galaxy A41 does not offer night shot mode to allow long exposure with compensation for movements. However, it does have a portrait mode, which is logical since a dedicated sensor is associated with it.
Despite its dedicated sensor, the Samsung Galaxy A41 struggles to offer a good outline of the silhouette for portrait mode. In terms of hair, we can note several fuzzy strands. On the other hand, the smartphone successfully manages both portrait mode and HDR, which is still too rare in the mid-range segment.
For selfies, the notch at the top of the Samsung Galaxy A41 screen houses a 12-megapixel camera with a wide-angle lens opening at f/2.2. Note that the smartphone offers two different fields of vision with this lens: a first 31 mm equivalent for a person’s selfies and another 25 mm equivalent with a slightly wider field of vision. However, this is the same camera that simply operates a digital zoom in the image for a slightly tighter shot.
Autonomy Of More Than Two Days :
The Samsung Galaxy A41 offers a small battery on paper, with an accumulator of only 3500 mAh, where we now find a large number of smartphones with batteries of more than 4000 mAh, and even certain amounts at 5000 mAh.
However, theory is not everything and it is on this point that the Samsung Galaxy A41 knows how to take advantage of its SoC Helio P65 not very resource intensive, and its 6.1 inch screen. I was able to hold for 48 hours and 10 minutes before the smartphone fell to 10% battery. And yet, I was not idle during this use, using the GPS tracking of Runkeeper for 42 minutes, Twitter for 2h05, YouTube for 2h40 or Chrome for 45 minutes. In total, the smartphone screen will remain on for 6.58 hours.
The Samsung Galaxy A41 therefore offers an excellent autonomy, especially for a small smartphone model. A result that could almost surprise so much the Korean manufacturer is not recognized for the autonomy of its devices – yes, we think in particular of the Galaxy S20. But the fact that the smartphone has a small screen and a fairly low-power processor helps to offer such autonomy.
In addition to that, the Samsung Galaxy A41 comes with a 15 W charger (9 V / 1.67 A). On paper, this is a fairly limited power, but given the small size of the battery, it is enough for a charge that we can indeed qualify as fast. Indeed, it took 30 minutes to go from 10 to 46% of battery, one hour to go up to 77% and a total of 1h37 min for a charge from 10 to 100%.
Samsung Galaxy A41 Network & Communication :
The Samsung Galaxy A41 is equipped with a drawer allowing to integrate two nano-SIM cards in addition to a microSD card.The smartphone is also compatible with all of the 4G frequency bands: B1 (2100 MHz ), B3 (1800 MHz), B7 (2600 MHz), B20 (800 MHz) and B28 (700 MHz).
The Samsung phone also has an NFC chip for contactless payment, tickets, or Bluetooth pairing. The latter is compatible with Bluetooth 5.0 and the SBC, AAC, aptX and LDAC audio codecs. In addition, the smartphone is compatible with Wi-Fi 5 (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac) and geolocation by GPS, Glonass, Beidou and Galileo satellites.
Samsung Galaxy A41 Price And Availability :