Samsung Galaxy A35 Review: An Enjoyable, Sometimes Surprising, $400 Phone

8.0/ 10
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Samsung Galaxy A35

Pros

• Impressive night mode and selfie photos
• Vivid display
• Great battery life
• Premium feel

Cons

• Portrait photos are hit-or-miss
• Slight lag when launching some apps

In a dimly lit restaurant in San Francisco, electric candles flicker overhead. Lanterns are pegged against deep red walls lined with old portraits, casting a golden glow throughout the space. A friend and I sit at a long, dark wood table, admiring the Harry Potter-inspired decor, when the waiter brings our order: an “enchanted burger” and “pretzel wands.” I pull out my Samsung Galaxy A35, curious to know how this $400 phone will handle taking photos of our meal in such a dark space.

To my surprise, the images are bright, vibrant and detailed. You wouldn’t know by looking at the photos just how shadowy the restaurant is in real life. That’s not to say the A35 has captured the perfect image. The pretzel wands in the foreground of one photo aren’t in sharp focus, and there is a slight red overtone throughout. Overall, I’m impressed with how the phone illuminates our surroundings.

“Impressed” is an adjective I found myself using quite frequently while testing the Galaxy A35. Even when first holding the phone, it gave off a more premium feel than its price tag would suggest. It’s got smooth, rounded edges, a slick glass back and thin bezels. Although the frame is made of plastic, the metallic finish levels it up. The A35 has just enough heft to make it feel like a quality device, and it fits perfectly in the palm of my hand. I can easily swipe across my screen and through apps with one hand. Admittedly, I’ve never been accused of having petite hands, so take that with a grain of salt.

Using the A35 felt like taking a trip down memory lane since I was a decade-long Samsung Galaxy S user before switching over to the dark side with the release of the iPhone 14 Pro. While the A35 isn’t part of the more premium flagship Galaxy S lineup, it still borrows many features, like the placement of side buttons and the general UX design. There are some key shortcomings, like occasionally inferior images and lag time, that distinguish the A35 from premium alternatives.

Overall, using the phone was an enjoyable, nostalgic and sometimes surprising experience.

Galaxy A35 design and display

The A35 comes in four colors: navy, light purple, light blue and yellow. (Only the first two options are available in the US.) I got the navy one, which almost looks black and contributes to the phone’s sleek appearance, though the iridescence of the lilac shade actually seems the most eye-catching to me. 

Like most new phones today, the A35 has a USB-C port and no headphone jack (something I haven’t missed in a very long time). It comes with 6GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage and supports up to 1TB of expandable storage – a rarity in 2024. It runs on an Exynos 1380 octa-core processor. The $400 price tag places it $100 below Google’s Pixel 8A budget phone.

The A35 features a 6.6-inch, 1080p super AMOLED display, with a 60-120Hz adaptive refresh rate. That makes it a bit larger than the display on the Pixel 8A, which clocks in at 6.1 inches and features that same refresh rate. The cover and back glass are Gorilla Glass Victus Plus, which is touted as being more scratch-resistant than older iterations.  

Overall, I was pleased with the A35’s display; it’s crisp and bright, even with a peak brightness of 1,000 nits. The screen is still easy to see in the bright daylight, and I appreciate having an always-on display – one of my favorite features on any phone. 

While streaming Netflix, I forgot I wasn’t watching on my everyday iPhone 14 Pro, since there were no glaring differences, apart from scenes looking slightly more saturated on the A35, but not at all in a bad way. I had similarly positive takes on scrolling through TikTok and Instagram; videos played smoothly and images were clear and crisp. 

I also like the convenience of the optical fingerprint scanner, although there is a slight lag when unlocking. The face unlock feature on the A35 is solid too, but I found it interesting that once the phone detects your face, the option to unlock with a fingerprint disappears. I’d prefer to have both options available all the time. 

I also wish I could tap the screen once to wake it up, but you either have to double-tap or push a side button to turn on the display, and then unlock the phone. It’s a small thing, but still an adjustment from other phones I’ve used. 

The A35 runs Android 14 and supports four years of OS updates and five years of security updates. That pales in comparison to the Pixel 8A’s seven years of OS and security updates, so if you’re planning to hang onto this phone for more than about four years, you may soon be forced to upgrade. I tend to trade in my phones after about three years, so this wouldn’t really affect me.

Impressive images… most of the time

Let’s go back to one of the most important features on any phone these days: the camera. The A35 sports a 50-megapixel wide camera, an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera and a 5-megapixel macro camera. It also has a 13-megapixel front camera.

I took the A35 along with me to Filoli gardens in Woodside, California, and snapped some regular and portrait-mode shots of the rose bushes there. The regular shot, taken in the early afternoon, looks vibrant and crisp; the pink roses are in clear focus, and nothing looks under- or over-saturated. The portrait mode photo struggled a bit with determining what was in the foreground, so some of the flowers and stems were blurry. The colors were equally authentic and vivid. A couple of other shots overdid the shadows at the base of rose bushes bordering the garden, but the overall colors were still vibrant.  

I also brought the A35 along on a recent trip to Chicago, where I snapped some photos of downtown buildings like The Rookery. The dark masonry exterior looks slightly shadowy by the windows, casting a darker overtone in some areas, but the image otherwise depicts true-to-life colors. The sky overhead is a vibrant blue, and the Willis (*cough* Sears) Tower looms in the background, reflecting the sunlight. Other images I snapped throughout downtown are equally sharp and detailed.

I tested portrait mode on my niece Mariam to see how it handles photographing people and noticed it again struggled with what to blur. In one image, half of her right leg is blurry. In another, locks of her hair blowing in the wind are out of focus. Otherwise, portrait mode did a good job of blurring the city skyline in the background and making Mariam (and her snowcone) the clear focus. 

The A35’s camera offers three optical zoom levels: 0.5, 1x and 2x. This wouldn’t be an Abrar camera test without images of a teacup, so I snapped some photos of one of my favorite pieces in my living room. At all three zoom levels, everything in the image is clear and focused, and we get the full scope of the setting in the wider shots. There’s also 10x digital zoom, which does a decent job of punching in on faraway objects, although images are a bit fuzzy.

General indoor shots are also sharp, although a bit saturated, which isn’t surprising knowing that photos snapped on Samsung phones generally tend to play up saturation. If you don’t mind that, you can more easily appreciate the vitality of the scenes. 

Videos taken at both 30 and 60 frames per second in full HD resolution are smooth, including when I pan the phone. Some highlights are also slightly overblown, especially in bright sunlight. For instance, in a video of rose bushes nodding in the wind, there’s less variation and richness in the shades of different colors. Another video of Lake Michigan with the Chicago skyline in the background fared better, with the water dancing in a radiant, sparkling blue, and the colors of different skyscrapers contrasting against one another clearly in the background. (The A35 also supports UHD videos at 30 frames per second.)

I was perhaps most impressed by selfies on the A35. One afternoon, I wandered over to my CNET colleague Faith Chihil’s desk to snap some photos of us using the front camera, and we were both blown away by the crispness and clarity of the images. Once again, the colors popped in all the right ways, and the foreground was perfectly in focus.

After taking the photos, I handed the phone to Faith and asked her to guess the price tag. She weighed the device in her hand, swiped through the home screen and looked closely at our selfie before answering, “Around $1,200,” while glancing over at her own Galaxy S22 Ultra. She was shocked when I shared the actual (much lower) price.

Again, that’s not to say the A35 is directly comparable to any of the higher-end flagship devices from Samsung, Google or Apple. The overall quality of photos is merely a testament to how well the A35 performs for its price. 

A35 battery life and performance

The next test was seeing how well the A35’s battery could keep up with a typical day of heavy phone use. To my delight, it easily handled a full day of texting, calling, scrolling through social media and streaming, and then some. One charge got me through about a day and a half of regular use.

After draining the phone’s battery, it took 1 hour, 27 minutes to fully charge it again, using a 30-watt charger. (The A35’s 25-watt charger is sold separately, so I used one I already had.)

During CNET’s 45-minute endurance test, which involves a combination of streaming, scrolling through social media, joining a video call and playing games, the battery dropped from 100% to 95%, matching the performance of the Pixel 8A.

In a longer, three-hour battery test, during which I streamed a YouTube video in full-screen mode at 100% brightness, the A35’s battery dropped to 97% after one hour, 92% after two hours and 87% after three hours. It fared better than a similar test on the Pixel 8A, which dropped to 83% after three hours. 

I didn’t experience any major issues with the phone’s overall performance. There’s a slight lag when launching the camera; it takes about a second to open. Screenshots also take about a second to capture. Other little details left a more positive impression. For instance, while watching YouTube videos, the phone quickly transitioned between portrait and landscape modes when rotated. I also felt it was perfectly responsive to taps and swipes; not too sensitive, or vice versa. 

Multitasking was smooth, too. I could seamlessly watch YouTube videos in picture-in-picture mode while scrolling through photos or texting, supporting my habit of juggling too much at once.

The A35 is dust and water-resistant, with an IP67 rating, just like the Pixel 8A. This means the phone can handle being submerged in up to one meter of water for 30 minutes, and that someone as clumsy as me doesn’t have to worry too much the next time I spill a glass of water.

Galaxy A35 overall thoughts

From that first day of testing the Galaxy A35 in that dark San Francisco restaurant to making it my travel companion in Chicago to using it in my day-to-day communications, I’ve been consistently pleased with the performance of everything from the camera to the display. I’ve enjoyed revisiting the Samsung ecosystem, and exploring how this device stacks up against other budget phones like the Pixel 8A, but also flagship devices I’ve spent more time with. I was curious to see what I’d have to compromise with a lower price tag.

My overall takeaway is that you can’t shave off several hundred dollars without cutting a few corners; images won’t always be as sharp as what you’ll get with a $1,000-plus phone and the materials the frame is made of will be more cost-efficient. You also won’t get the Galaxy AI suite of features available on Samsung’s flagship phones, which can simplify various tasks, like editing photos and translating texts. But there’s still a lot $400 can get you. That includes vibrant photos, stellar battery life and a smooth, vivid display. 

With the A35 costing $100 less than another great budget phone, the Pixel 8A, you still won’t have to compromise too much in the way of quality. Although the Pixel 8A has a better camera and will receive software updates for longer, the Galaxy A35 still captures great shots and videos and offers a decent timeline of software and security updates. In short, the Galaxy A35 is well worth the price.

If you’re looking for a lower-priced phone that won’t compromise your everyday needs, this one fits the bill. 

How we test phones

Every phone tested by CNET’s reviews team was actually used in the real world. We test a phone’s features, play games and take photos. We examine the display to see if it’s bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and build to see how it is to hold and whether it has an IP-rating for water resistance. We push the processor’s performance to the extremes using standardized benchmark tools like GeekBench and 3DMark, along with our own anecdotal observations navigating the interface, recording high-resolution videos and playing graphically intense games at high refresh rates.

All the cameras are tested in a variety of conditions from bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes. We try out special features like night mode and portrait mode and compare our findings against similarly priced competing phones. We also check out the battery life by using it daily as well as running a series of battery drain tests.

We take into account additional features like support for 5G, satellite connectivity, fingerprint and face sensors, stylus support, fast charging speeds and foldable displays, among others that can be useful. We balance all of this against the price to give you the verdict on whether that phone, whatever price it is, actually represents good value. While these tests may not always be reflected in CNET’s initial review, we conduct follow-up and long-term testing in most circumstances.