I traded my flagship Samsung phone for their RM1,499 Galaxy A33. I wasn’t disappointed

I’m going to start off by saying that I’ve been boycotting Samsung phones ever since my Galaxy S3 decided to TouchWiz itself to death in less than a year. The combination of bloatware and the Exynos processor kept me away from Samsung phones for almost a decade… until the Snapdragon-powered Z Flip 3 came out .

I’ve always liked gimmicky phones – the Blackberry KeyOne and the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 were my last two phones – so I gave in and bought myself the Flippu-Flippu, fully expecting the user experience to not be as good as Xiaomi’s. But surprisingly I grew to like the OneUI experience, although with some caveats that I’ll get into later.

So, when I was given the Galaxy A33 5G, a midrange phone that’s almost a third of the price, an Exynos processor, AND no gimmicks to use for 2 weeks; I was kinda skeptical.

 

But it felt surprisingly good in my hand (heheh)

You might want to take this section with a grain of salt because, according to a friend at SoyaCincau, I’m in a very small subset of people who actually likes Glasstic – Samsung’s marketing term for plastic that feels like glass – but hear me out.

First up, it’s leagues better than the shiny plastic from the early Samsung phones (ugh) and the matte finish feels sturdier and grippier than the glass housing of my Flippu-Flippu or the ceramic back of the Mi Mix 3. It’s definitely a phone that I won’t be putting in a case because well, it feels like it’s already in a case.

This material allows for a seamless camera bump that I still find myself admiring after 2 weeks. Just like how I would sometimes open and close the Flippu just to admire the hinge, I find myself tilting the A33 to admire how light reflects off the camera bump. That’s not to say it distracts from the screen, which is a 6.4″ Super AMOLED panel that’s brighter than my chances of getting another phone from Samsung to review after this.

Unlike many things that end up in my hand, I don’t have to worry too much about getting the phone wet thanks to the IP67 water and dust resistance. It works fine despite being splashed a few times from me listening to YouTube videos in the shower, and once when I was caught in the rain.

You can find the full list of specs in my initial unboxing review here.

 

It’s okay out of the box, but can be a great phone if you tinker with it

If you’re the type of person who just wants to turn the phone on and use it, you’re not going to be disappointed. But then, you’re probably going to be better off with a cheaper POCO phone. The value of the A33 is in its settings and (ironically enough) bundled software which can make the experience a lot better if you spend some time going through them.

One example would be the speakers, which I was a little disappointed with at first. The sound was waaaaaaay thinner compared to the Flippu-Flippu, but I later realized that the Dolby Atmos setting is turned off by default. And yes, the sound quality from both the bottom and earpiece speakers were much nicer after turning it on. It’s also a similar story for the screen, which is set to 60Hz refresh rate instead of the 90Hz it’s capable of.

The good news is that many features from Samsung’s premium phones have made it into the A33. One of them is Samsung Pay, which basically links your credit or debit card to the phone for contactless payments. Coupled with another e-Wallet like Grab, I find myself carrying my wallet out of habit than any actual necessity. Another fun feature is Bixby Routines, if you like the idea of having your phone perform some automated actions like turning off the wifi when you leave the house or have your phone say something like “Plug me in Daddy” when the battery goes under a certain percentage.

While it doesn’t have DeX, Samsung’s partnership with Microsoft brings Link to Windows, which is actually really darn useful if you have a Windows device. It basically runs as a hub which allows you to make and receive calls, view notifications and, the best part, mirror and control your phone from Windows. Here’s one where I played my favorite potato farming game from my PC:

 

Yes, but can it run Genshin Impact?

I’m not a heavy gamer – as you saw above, my idea of mobile gaming is farming potatoes for Communism. However, I decided to install Genshin Impact since it’s the Crysis of mobile phones. Overall, the gameplay is smooth, although you can see a bit of aliasing (jagged lines) when the characters move and there are occasional stutters in certain cutscenes where there are too many things happening.

This phone also heats up way less than any of my previous phones, only warming up slightly after 40 minutes of Genshin. In day-to-day use, I’m not actually seeing any performance differences between the Flippu and the A33 – they both run equally as smoothly as long as you aren’t a pro gamer.

The 5,000mAh battery also gave me between 20 – 25 hours of use before I popped it back on the charger. But that’s from a max charge of 85% with the Battery Care feature that limits the charging and heeding to Bixby Routine’s appeal to plug it in at 25%-ish. If you really run the battery out, I think you would actually get pretty close to a day and a half.

On the downside, you’ll have to either own or buy a charger to take advantage of the A33’s 25-Watt Super Fast Charging since there’s no charger in the box. With an older charger, it takes me 70 minutes to bring the phone from 25% to 85%.    

 

The cameras are good enough for social media

The A33 5G comes with 5 cameras:

• 48MP main with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS)
• 8MP ultrawide
• 5MP macro
• 2MP depth
• 13MP selfie (front)

I initially planned to fully test out the cameras towards the end of my test period but what I didn’t plan on was getting the Cocojumbo. So rather than show you sad pictures from my dimly-lit room, here are some of my earlier test shots:

One thing I want to highlight though, is the stock photo editing app which comes with an object eraser similar to the Google Pixel’s magic eraser. Essentially, it’s Photoshopping stuff out with a couple of taps:

For the most part, it works pretty well especially if you don’t have the original photo as a reference.

 

Samsung’s best app isn’t officially available

Going back to how this (or any Samsung phone) can be made much better with a little tinkering, I found out that there’s a whole slew of customization modules available under the Good Lock app. It’s made by Samsung, it allows much greater customization for OneUI, and….. it’s not available in Malaysia.

I found it because I wasn’t happy with OneUI’s gesture navigation. Compared to the Xiaomi, the transparent arrows didn’t give me the right feedback and I couldn’t change it. But once I installed the One Hand Operation+ module, hooooboy. I didn’t only get to change the cosmetics and vibration, but also custom gestures such as dragging and holding my finger to switch to my previous app.

These modules apply to every aspect of OneUI, from customization like creating live wallpapers and OTT Samsung Keyboards, to real quality of life improvements like removing unnecessary system icons in the status bar or making your recent apps a row of easy to reach tiles at the bottom of the screen.

So far, only One Hand Operation+ is officially available, but you’ll have to download APKs for the rest of the modules. I’m mentioning this because Good Lock was the gamechanger that made me like OneUI, but you can skip this if you aren’t familiar or don’t like the idea of installing APKs.

 

So can the A33 replace my Flippu-Flippu? Kinda.

I come up with nicknames for my devices – as evidenced by what I’ve been calling my Z Flip 3 – but I just don’t have one for the A33. And I think the difference is that the A33 feels more like a utility device that I can use and not worry about, but also likely forget after switching phones.

But as a basic, non-power, non-gamer user, it does make me wonder if I’ve overpaid for my phone or any other Samsung flagship. Of course, there will be differences in features like cameras, S-Pen, or being able to fold in half; but I can’t help but question if these are worth 3 times the price of a RM1,499 phone that pretty much performs the same…. right down to the same promise of 4 years of OS updates and 5 years security updates.    

So I think that if you’re looking for a good phone on a budget, then this is a great option. But if you’re like me and tend to form emotional attachments to devices, then you’re going to find life with the A33 a stable marriage that’s lost its spark.