Review: Samsung Galaxy A26 and Galaxy A36

Samsung has a cushy throne. Or at least the company acts that way. Its latest budget phones—the Galaxy A26 and Galaxy A36—check all the boxes. But next to beautifully designed handsets from Nothing and Motorola with comparable prices, it feels like Samsung is coasting on brand name and the fact that you can probably pick up one of these devices from a carrier in minutes.

And a lot of people will do exactly that, thanks to various carrier promotions that'll tease a “free” A36 or A26 if you sign up for a specific cell plan (hint: they're never free). So, if you plan on buying one of these, which one should you get? The $400 Galaxy A36 or the $300 Galaxy A26? I spent more than a week with both as my main phone, and the first thing I'll say is that they're easily the best Galaxy A-series phones Samsung has made in years. That's not a high bar, though.

Easy A

The piano-black color of these phones feels dated, not to mention that it easily attracts smudges and dust. Samsung calls it Awesome Black for the A36, but if anything it's more of a mid gray. Pick the lavender if you can, though the A26 comes in only a darker shade of black. Look at the competition—the stunning bright blue of Motorola's Moto G Stylus and its vegan leather texture, or the unique stylings of the Nothing Phone (3a) series, all under $400—and you'll feel robbed. Phones are personal and should have character; these galaxies are devoid of it.

They're fairly large phones with 6.7-inch AMOLED screens, with a 120-Hz refresh rate. I had no trouble using them on sunny days as the screen gets nice and bright, though colors look washed out when it cranks things up. The A36 gets slightly brighter, and colors don't look as faded in sunny conditions. The screen is interrupted with a teardrop-style selfie camera on the A26, whereas you get a more modern floating camera on the A36.

On the hardware, the A26 still retains the microSD slot, so you can expand storage past the internal 128 GB. You have no such luxury on the A36, which seems odd considering its higher price. The A36 does have an in-display fingerprint sensor versus a capacitive sensor on the power button of the A26, though I found it slower and not as reliable.

Here's the conundrum: I had a better overall experience on the Galaxy A26 than the Galaxy A36. It's baffling considering the $100 price difference between the two—more should be better, right? This was most pronounced with performance.

Immediately out of the box, I noticed more stutters and sluggishness from the A36's Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chipset, but the A26 and its Samsung Exynos 1380 processor felt more responsive and fluid. Benchmarks confirmed my suspicions: the A26 scored higher than the A36. There's some poor optimization happening on the A36, and while it could get fixed with software updates, I felt more satisfied with the A26. There are minor upgrades you get by paying more for the A36: a brighter screen, better speakers (the A26 sounds a bit raspy), and slightly faster charging. But performance is the most important metric to me.

One thing to note: I tested the carrier-locked AT&T version of the A36, which has a lot of bloatware. I bought an unlocked Galaxy A26, which still has bloatware but not as much. There's a chance something here is choking the performance of the A36, and that's another reason why we always recommend you buy unlocked. Still, the performance isn't painfully slow. Both phones chugged along fine enough to run most apps and even lightweight games. You'll just need a higher tolerance for the stutters on the A36—perhaps the version with 8 GB of RAM performs better.

Both have 5,000-mAh battery capacities, and I regularly ended my days with 30 to 40 percent remaining by bedtime, with average use. There have been heavier-use days, with navigation and music streaming, that dropped the battery life to 20 percent by 11 pm, but most people should be able to eke out a day comfortably without worry. Annoyingly, there's no wireless charging, something Motorola has been able to stuff into its $300 Moto G Power and $400 Moto G Stylus.

A+ Cameras

For the money, you'll be satisfied with the quality of images out of the main camera on either of these phones. The A36's 50-MP main camera has a slightly larger sensor, but you have to pixel-peep to see the differences. Colors can be a little off; Samsung still brightens up shadows too much; and you'll need to stay very still in low light to avoid a blurry image. But those are all the usual faults of camera phones in this price bracket.

Also included is an 8-MP ultrawide that's mostly only useful in broad daylight, but I didn't care much for the low-megapixel macro camera. Nothing managed to stuff a 2X optical telephoto camera into its Phone (3a) Pro—you'd think Samsung, with all its resources, would be able to raise the bar a little more here. I can't complain much, though. These are solid cameras.

I would buy a Moto G Stylus 2025 or Nothing Phone (3a) before the Galaxy A26 or Galaxy A36. They're just more interesting phones and have other small perks. But if your carrier is offering a tantalizing deal, then the Galaxy A26 would get my vote. It's a solid experience for the money, and the lower price just makes it a better value, especially with the smoother performance I saw in my testing. I just wish Samsung would find a way to make these phones a little more “awesome” than they actually are.