Samsung Galaxy A33 5G: Biasa in the front, sexy in the back

For whatever reason, we’ve never done a tech review on Cilisos. So when Samsung Malaysia asked if we’d like to review their latest midrange phone, I jumped at the thought of getting to play with a new phone AND going Mr. Mobile on it.

What arrived at our door was the Samsung Galaxy A33 5G, which retails at RM1,499. We’ll list the important specs at the end of the article, but as you know, specs on paper and actual performance can be pretty different things. Since a full review of the phone will take a while, I thought I’d do a quick pre-review based on my first 30 minutes with it, starting with the unboxing.

The good news is, you’ll get to the phone really fast

I’ve always liked the excitement of unboxing a new gadget – it’s super frivolous but there’s a certain excitement that comes with peeling off the plastic, and marveling at how each accessory is perfectly fit into the box like little Legos. But if you share that same sentiment, you’re gonna be in for a disappointment.

Ever since manufacturers hopped onboard the no-charger-in-the-box train, the unboxing experience is super straightforward. You open box. You see phone. You take out cable. You find SIM tray pokey-pokey tool. You ignore leaflets. Even the peel of the plastic protector around the phone isn’t as satisfying anymore. You might think it’s because this is an affordable phone but nope, it was the same experience with the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and (after asking around) with most phones from other brands as well.

We got the phone in Awesome Black, but it also comes in 3 other colors – Awesome Blue, Awesome White, and Awesome Peach – which we can only assume are all….awesome.

One thing to note is that the included cable is USB-C to USB-C, which means that it won’t work with older chargers that have the old rectangular USB-A lubang. It probably isn’t that big a deal since most of us would have a USB-C charger from an older phone, but it’ll likely not give you the 25W Super Fast Charging the phone is capable of.

The A33 5G also doesn’t have wireless charging, but that’s probably not a huge loss since wirelessly charging the 5,000mAh battery will likely take forever. But on the bright side, it’ll last forever too (or up to 2 days according to Samsung).

The screen is great, but the real beauty is in the back

So, Samsung has always been known for making great screens, and the A33 5G’s is bright, sharp Super AMOLED screen with a 90Hz refresh rate. If you like counting pixels, you might be a little disappointed to know it caps out at 1080p resolution but the YouTube videos I watched still looked good.

Personally though, the true highlight of this phone is the phone’s back. The material is this nice-feeling matte…something…. that Dee, our video producer, was convinced was some sort of fancy coated metal. I wasn’t too sure myself, so I used the phone to Google what it was made of; and the answer is plastic. But really, holding this phone brings me so much joy that I wish I could make a girlfriend out of this material.

The other part of the back that caught my eye was the camera bump. Like, camera bumps are just something that we’ve been forced to accept at this point, but the A33 5G’s bump is my favorite part of the phone. It’s this smooth seamless ridge that casts a really nice shadow (or reflection) depending on how the light hits it. I never thought I’d say it, but this camera bump rocks my world more than it rocks the phone.

And that brings us to the camera.

Here are some pictures from the A33 5G

The A33 5G comes with 5 cameras:

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

I’ll have to play around with the cameras a little more, but here are some test shots on a dull, overcast day; with no filters and on default settings:

For RM1,499 the specs look pretty decent (on paper lah)

If you’re keen on knowing what’s on or in the phone, here are some of the other specs. But if you don’t care about these things and just want to know how well the phone works on a day to day basis, then hang tight for the full review (and skip the bullet points below):

• Exynos 1280 5nm Octa-core processor
• 6.4 inch, 1080 x 2400 FHD+ Super AMOLED display
• 8GB RAM + up to 8GB virtual RAM
• 128Gb storage + up to 1TB MicroSD card
• IP67 water and dust resistance
• Gorilla Glass 5 screen
• Dual speakers (front + bottom) with Dolby Atmos sound
• Under-display fingerprint scanner
• 5G-ready

At the time of writing, the phone is sitting on my desk downloading close to 15 gigs of Genshin Impact. How will that turn out? Well, I’m curious too.

This article is not sponsored or dictated in any way by Samsung Malaysia. Who would pay someone to praise the back of a phone??