Low-cost phones are becoming popular now. You can buy a smartphone for just $250 and it will get security updates for four years. These phones work well for most things like gaming and taking good pictures. I found this to be true with Samsung’s Galaxy A13 5G.
Ratings: 7/10
| Wired | Tired |
| Affordable. Great performance, plus a day and a half of battery life. Includes fingerprint reader, MicroSD card slot, headphone jack, and NFC for contactless payments. Samsung promises 2 OS upgrades and 4 years of security updates. Works on all major US carriers. | Low-res LCD screen doesn’t get very bright. Drab plasticky design. Camera is lackluster in low light. |
Technical Specification for Samsung Galaxy A13 5G:
| Network | Technology | GSM/HSPA/LTE/5G |
| Launch | Announced | 2021, December 02 |
| BODY | Dimension | 164.5 x 76.5 x 8.8 mm (6.48 x 3.01 x 0.35 in) |
| Weight | 195gm | |
| Build | Glass front, plastic back, plastic frame | |
| SIM | Nano-SIM | |
| DISPLAY | Type | PLS LCD, 90Hz |
| Size | 6.5 inches, 102.0 cm2 (~81.1% screen-to-body ratio) | |
| Resolution | 720 x 1600 pixels, 20:9 ratio (~270 ppi density) | |
| Platform | OS | Android 11, upgradable to Android 13, One UI 5.1 |
| Chipset | Mediatek MT6833 Dimensity 700 (7 nm) | |
| CPU | Octa-core (2×2.2 GHz Cortex-A76 & 6×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55) | |
| GPU | Mali-G57 MC2 | |
| Memory | Card Slot | microSDXC (dedicated slot) |
| Internal | 64GB 4GB RAM, 128GB 4GB RAM, 128GB 6GB RAM | |
| Main Camera | Triple | 50 MP, f/1.8, 26mm (wide), PDAF |
| 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro) | ||
| 2 MP, f/2.4, (depth) | ||
| Features | LED flash, panorama, HDR | |
| Vedio | 1080p@30fps | |
| Front Camera | Single | 5 MP, f/2.0, (wide) |
| Vedio | 1080p@30fps | |
| Coms | WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct |
| Bluetooth | 5.0, A2DP, LE | |
| Featue | Sensor | Fingerprint (side-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, compass, barometer |
| Battery | Type | Li-Po 5000 mAh, non-removable |
| charging | 15W wired |
This Android phone might not seem very nice – it’s made of plastic and gets smudged with fingerprints easily – but I’ve been using it for almost a month without any problems. If you don’t like spending a lot on a phone and don’t need the best cameras, the A13 5G has the basics covered and it’s really affordable. You can check price HERE.
A+ Phone:
When it comes to inexpensive phones, it’s important to have a device that can smoothly run all your favorite apps and games. The Mediatek Dimensity 700 processor in the Galaxy A13 5G does a good job with this. Apps open pretty fast, switching between them is quick, and the phone doesn’t slow down much. Even games like Pako Forever and Dead Cells work well on this phone.
The A13 5G has a battery that holds 5,000 milliamp-hours (mAh), which lets the phone work for over a whole day. If you’re careful, you might even make it last for two full days. However, usually, I got a day and a half of battery life. Similar to many inexpensive phones, this one doesn’t support wireless charging, and it takes some time to fully charge it to 100 percent.
You have 64 gigabytes of storage, which is a bit low for a phone in this price range. But there’s a MicroSD card slot that lets you add more storage if you want. Other good things about the phone include NFC, which lets you pay with Google Pay without touching anything (something I think all phones should have), a power button that also works as a fingerprint sensor, and a place to plug in headphones.
Samsung’s software on this phone isn’t as simple as what you’d find on phones like the Moto G Stylus 2022 or OnePlus Nord N20 5G. There are quite a few Samsung apps, but you can remove many of them, and you still have a lot of options to customize things. Samsung is ahead of other companies when it comes to supporting the software: they promise to upgrade the operating system twice and provide security updates for four years. No other phone in this price range offers that. (The A13 5G was first released with Android 11, but it’s already been updated to Android 12, and it will also get Android 13.)
The screen is not very impressive on this phone. It’s a lower resolution LCD screen with a refresh rate of 90 Hz. While using the screen feels somewhat smooth, if you look closely, things might not appear very clear. This didn’t bother me too much while using the phone, but the screen’s brightness was a bigger issue. It’s difficult to see the screen properly when you’re outside in bright sunlight, and Samsung’s automatic brightness adjustment is slow. Most of the time, I had to change the screen brightness myself.
In this picture taken with the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G’s Portrait mode, the camera at the back of the phone uses a depth sensor to make the background blurry, which you can see happening here. The details are not super sharp, but considering this is a $250 phone, it’s still a pretty nice photo.
The camera setup is not exceptional either. Even though there are three cameras, it’s not as great as it seems. There’s a main camera with 50 megapixels, along with a 2-megapixel macro camera and a 2-megapixel depth camera. The depth camera is mainly for making portrait photos look better with a nicer background blur, and I don’t often find a use for the macro camera, which is for taking very close-up pictures of things.
The main camera takes pretty good pictures when the lighting is good (as long as you hold the phone steady while taking the photo to avoid blurriness). The colors might not always look completely natural, and it has trouble with scenes that have very bright and dark parts. Unfortunately, there’s no night mode, so pictures in low light can be noisy and not very clear. Still, I’d say the camera is about as good as the one on the $400 Moto G 5G, if not a bit better. I recently went on a trip to the Poconos for a bachelor party and sent my partner a lot of photos, and I didn’t get annoyed with the camera.
Budget Alpha
This Samsung phone was first released only for AT&T in December, but it’s now also available without being tied to any specific carrier. I checked with Samsung, and it will work on T-Mobile and Verizon networks, including their 5G connections. I want to mention that Samsung also offers a Galaxy A13 version with 4G LTE (slower internet) and slightly different features. I haven’t tried that version, so I can’t easily suggest it.
Even Motorola’s competing phone, the Moto G Stylus 2022, doesn’t have 5G, and it doesn’t come close to Samsung’s long software support. The OnePlus Nord N20 5G has a nicer screen, but it doesn’t work on Verizon, and it only has 4G LTE on AT&T.
The A13 5G doesn’t have these problems and costs less than those two devices. It might look simple, but it works everywhere and is pretty straightforward. In my opinion, it’s the best phone under $300 that I’ve seen, and it will make most people happy.
FAQ’s:
- How Old is Samsung Galaxy A13 5G? >> Launch date is 3 Dec 2021.
- Is Samsung galaxy A13 is worth buying>> Yes
- What is Battery life of A13>> As per Samsung manual its 2 days but depends on usage.
You can also check out few other options of smartphones recently launched in Aug2023.