Samsung Galaxy A73 5G Review: The Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy A73 leans hard into the manufacturer’s usual strengths, rather than waste time trying to address familiar weaknesses. Instead of attempting to do it all or raise the bar for budget-friendly devices, the Galaxy A73 opts to excel at the specific things that, if you’re already considering it as a potential purchase, you probably care the most about.
What we love
- Snappy processor
- Long battery life
- Years of software updates
What could be improved
- Poor night mode
- No wireless charging
The essentials
- Performance: Great.
- Battery: Really good. I’d usually manage a full two days on a single charge.
- Screen: Gorgeous, much closer to premium than other mid-tier devices.
- Camera: Despite the high-megapixel sensor, the A73 only delivers decent photographic results.
80/100
As the high-end of the Android smartphone market has crept upwards in price, mid-tier offerings like Samsung’s Galaxy A Series have only become more popular. With overall design rarely deviating from the average, spec sheets becoming increasingly similar and innovation often exclusive to those looking for the best camera, the argument for spending more than $1,000 on your next handset has become somewhat fraught.
Enter the new Samsung Galaxy A73 5G. The A73 is the priciest, prettiest, and most powerful device in Samsung’s roster of mid-range devices. For some, the winning combination of a big screen and long battery life on offer here may make it a more compelling option than either the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G, Galaxy S21 FE, and even the Samsung Galaxy S22.
The Samsung Galaxy A73 5G might not have a camera that can compete with the likes of the Google Pixel 6 Pro, iPhone 13, or OPPO Find X5 range, but it’s got almost everything else. It doesn’t succeed where Samsung devices typically fall short, but at $799, it doesn’t have to.
Go big or go home
While the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G is the clear headline act of the latest Galaxy A series, the Galaxy A73 5G is a sideshow that shouldn’t be dismissed too quickly. At face value, this device is the natural choice for those who want just a little more.
The display here is just a bit bigger at 6.7-inches, and just a bit better thanks to one of Samsung’s Super AMOLED Plus display panel tech. These similarities aside, the two devices boast the same 1080p+ resolution, 800 nits of brightness, and 120Hz refresh rate. Compared to last year’s Galaxy A72, these specs are more-or-less identical. However, relative to the Galaxy A53, the new Galaxy A73 has a clear advantage with tangible benefits.
Even if the display is an obvious highlight, it’s far from the only design detail that feels more premium than you’d expect of a $799 device. The sides of the Galaxy A73 are wrapped in aluminium that feels right out of the Galaxy S series’ playbook, while the backside boasts a sleeker camera bump that’s almost as smoothly integrated into the body of the device like the one on the OPPO Find X5 Pro.
Although the Galaxy A73 5G does feature an in-display fingerprint sensor and IP67 water resistance, one feature it lacks is wireless charging. Given that the aforementioned features are hardly new to the A Series and that it’s been about two years since Apple smuggled wireless charging to the sub-$800 market with the second-generation iPhone SE, it’s a shame that Samsung hasn’t taken the opportunity to raise the stakes for what mid-range smartphone shoppers should expect here.
The Galaxy A73 comes equipped with the same amount of RAM and storage as the cheaper A53, boasting 6GB of the former and 128GB of the latter. However, aside from the aforementioned, there’s one big difference between the two when it comes to specs: the processor.
Rather than kit the Galaxy A73 5G out with one of its own Exynos processors, Samsung has chosen to splurge and kit the device out with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G processor. While past Exynos chipsets have sometimes delivered decent performance, the fact that Samsung still chooses to outsource things to Qualcomm rather than rely on their own in-house stock when it comes to higher-end devices like this the Galaxy A73 tells you most of what you need to know about them.
In practice, the everyday performance offered by the Galaxy A73’s combination of specs rarely failed to impress. Apps loaded fast, multitasking rarely dragged and even moderately-demanding mobile games like League of Legends: Wild Rift and Call of Duty: Mobile ran really well. I was less thrilled with the performance of more-demanding titles like Apex Legends Mobile, Fortnite, and Genshin Impact, though it should be said that is also the case for most (and especially mid-tier) Android smartphones.
Everyday trumps enthusiast
If your smartphone needs are more modest, then the Samsung Galaxy A73 is likely to deliver relatively-exceptional results. It’s something of an overachiever like that. However, things become a little dicier once you drift from everyday into enthusiast territory.
There’s no better example of this than the camera. The quad-lens camera perched on the back of the Samsung Galaxy A73 5G incorporates a 108MP primary camera sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide lens, a 5MP macro lens and a 5MP depth sensor.
While the substantial bump in megapixels is the obvious upgrade over last year’s Galaxy A72, I can’t help but feel like Samsung’s decision to trade out a telephoto lens for a macro one was the wrong call. Even if it’s very much in line with modern trends, it costs the Galaxy A73 a lot of flexibility in exchange for a little bit of novelty.
Smartphone photography is typically where Samsung frequently plays catch-up to what Google and Apple are doing in the space, and the Galaxy A73 is only the latest victim of this dynamic. If you're looking to snap a quick pic in a pinch or squeeze in a little bit of food photography, the Galaxy A73 5G should be up to the task. In ideal conditions, it usually does a good job of capturing bright, colourful, and detailed images.
On the other hand, if you’re not close enough to your subject or the lighting is a little uneven, the results are rarely the kind that you’ll want to share on social media. The night mode here is good at making dark details visible, but it introduces enough noise that I’d find myself second-guessing their quality as soon as I moved onto a screen that wasn’t quite as nice as the one on the Galaxy A73.
As with wireless charging, it’s not hard to imagine a world where Samsung was a little more ambitious. The Galaxy A73 talks a big game when it comes to AI-powered image enhancement, but the difference between this and something like the Google Pixel A series is night and day. Until Samsung can crack that problem, the camera side of the equation remains an inherent weakness that the Galaxy A73 just can’t shake.
Still, these shortcomings should be weighed against the Galaxy A73’s last ace up the sleeve: battery life. At 5,000mAh, the Galaxy A73 5G has a battery that’s equal to the Galaxy A53 and 500mAh larger than the one found in the Galaxy S21 FE.
I'd regularly get between six and seven hours of screen time on a single charge and could usually go a full two days of regular usage before having to charge the device back up again.
Burned down with streaming video, the Samsung Galaxy A73 5G took 18 hours and 27 minutes to go from 100% to 0%. All told, the Samsung Galaxy A73 delivered the kind of long battery life that makes you rethink whether the premium perks attached to devices that cost twice as much are really worth it when this is a viable alternative.
Samsung Galaxy A73 5G - Final Thoughts
The Samsung Galaxy A73 isn’t a massive improvement over what you’ll find across the mid-range segment market, but it doesn’t have to be. When the display is this nice and the battery life is this good, you can get away with a lot. And if your expectations for the camera aren’t that high, you can probably get away with this device instead of something more expensive like the Galaxy S21 FE.
Even if the Galaxy A73 5G disqualifies itself from contention when it comes to smartphone photography, it’s probably still one of the best options out there for those who have already done the same. The battery life is great, the performance is snappy, the screen is gorgeous and the price is right.
Samsung Galaxy A73 5G camera samples
Find a better phone plan
Thousands of mobile phone plans unpacked. All the facts. No surprises.
Related Articles
Sign up for telco news, money-saving deals and more.
