Samsung’s not done yet. After a busy year that’s seen Samsung sticking Galaxy AI into anything and everything it can reach, the company is taking a break and heading back to its budget roots with the launch of the Galaxy A16 5G. At least, it will. Samsung has yet to officially announce the thing, which is only out in the wild due to a premature listing on the company’s Dutch website.
As such, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect when the A16 5G eventually turns up locally – minus the pricing and available colourways. The Galaxy A15 still demands a price of R4,000, so expect it to slightly exceed its older sibling, thanks to Samsung’s promises that the A16 will still receive Android OS and security updates up ’til 2030. That’s six years’ worth – all for a price that likely won’t crack the R7,000 mark.
The not-so-A-team
Even so, we don’t need to tell you that Android OS updates are not exactly the most exciting things in the world. We’re far more interested in the physical aspects, which this year include a larger screen, vast improvements to the CPU, a slimmer design the bittersweet loss of the 3.5mm headphone jack, which bumped the A16 to an IP54 rating, an uncommon occurrence in this price range.
Samsung’s whittled the A16’s size to a slim 7.9mm, touting a 6.7in (up from 6.5in) Super AMOLED display on the front end. It packs in the same battery and RAM specs we saw in the A15 – 5,000mAh and 4GB respectively – with a fresh SoC to go along with it. The Dutch website doesn’t exactly list it, but earlier leaks reckon Samsung has opted for its Exynos 1330 chipset. Oh, and there’s 128GB of storage.
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Finally, there’s the camera set-up. Samsung’s kept things more or less the same here, with a 50MP main snapper fixed to the rear and a 5-MP ultrawide and 2MP depth sensor to give it some support. A 13MP selfie shooter embeds itself in the 6.7in display.
We’ve since reached out to Samsung in the hopes of confirming the A16’s local availability and subsequent pricing, though we were unable to learn anything ahead of publication. If we learn anything new regarding pricing, we’ll be sure to let you know.