The Galaxy M32 is a great mid-ranger but with minor misses.
Samsung M-series smartphones are the most popular smartphones in the mid-range segment and this new Galaxy M32 has joined the bandwagon. The major factor why the M-series has been popular is that it combines great software experience with the OneUI and some very good specifications which also include excellent battery life. This makes them head to head with popular smartphones from Xiaomi, Realme, etc.
Recently Samsung launched the Galaxy M42 (Review) which is the first 5G smartphone in the M-series as it came with a Snapdragon 750G chipset and has some good internals. However, the display was not good as it just has an HD+ display. But the Galaxy M32, Samsung has corrected certain things and provided some very good specifications.
The Galaxy M32 comes with a Full HD+ 90Hz AMOLED display, 64MP camera at the back, a larger 6000mAh battery and has the OneUI experience built within. It is powered by the Mediatek Helio G80 chipset though. So should you consider the Galaxy M32 for the specifications that it offers though there are some compromises? Let’s find out in the full review.
Samsung Galaxy M32 Design:
The Galaxy M32 has a polycarbonate back which has a design similar to the one found on the Galaxy F62. This back has vertical lines running and looks like the back is finished in a glass material but Samsung likes to call it Glastic and the back has a rainbow pattern when the smartphone is tilted in different angles. The back houses a square-shaped camera module that houses the quad cameras.
The camera module is slightly protruded and just outside the camera module, there is a LED flash. The back does feel glossy and catches a lot of fingerprints. Samsung has provided a P2i coating making it splash resistant to small spills of water. Another change that Samsung has done is the placement of the fingerprint scanner from the back-mounted to the side-mounted one on the power button.
To the sides, there is a plastic frame running and to the right side, there is a power button and volume buttons where the power button doubles up as a fingerprint scanner and to the left side, there is a triple card slot that houses two SIM cards and a microSD card for storage expansion. At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grill, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The top only has a secondary noise-canceling microphone. The Galaxy M32 weighs around 196grams which is slightly on the heavier side due to the massive 6000mAh battery and the side has 9.3mm thickness making it slightly difficult to grip. On the front, there is an Infinity-U display instead of a punch-hole display. Overall, the design and build seem to be good but a glass back could have been better.
Samsung Galaxy M32 Display:
The Galaxy M32 has a 6.4-inches Full HD+(1080×2400 pixels) Super AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. Since it is an AMOLED display, the color reproduction is excellent and the viewing angles are also great. There is no green tint or black crush on the display. The display has a slightly thicker chin at the bottom but the bezels are narrower on the sides.
In terms of brightness, Samsung has well-calibrated the display as it can go achieve 800 nits of peak brightness under direct sunlight and with a normal 450nits of brightness. The display is easily visible under direct sunlight. You get two options which include Vivid and Natural. Other than this you can adjust the white balance from warmer to cooler on the display.
This display is much better compared to other IPS LCD displays that we have seen in other smartphones in this price range. Though having an AMOLED display, Samsung has not skipped on a high refresh rate as you are getting a 90Hz refresh rate and you can switch to standard 60Hz to juice out better battery life.
Higher refresh rate displays were previously found on expensive Samsung smartphones basically the A-series, Note series, and the S-series, but it is good that now we have a high refresh rate display in mid-range smartphones from Samsung. This display has support for Widevine L1, so you can stream HD content from OTT platforms but misses out on HDR support and maybe Samsung will fix this issue in a future software update.
This display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 which is really great considering the price point of the smartphone but Samsung has done a small cross-cutting here. Instead of providing an in-display fingerprint scanner, they have provided a side-mounted one on the power button which is much faster and also accurate. Overall, this display makes a good experience for media consumption.
Samsung Galaxy M32 Performance:
The Galaxy M32 is powered by the Mediatek Helio G80 chipset which is a mid-level chipset found in Realme Narzo 30A. This chipset is an octa-core chipset that has 2×2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 cores and another 6×1.8 GHz Cortex-A55 cores with a Mali G52 GPU. This chipset is not the best as we can see smartphones having Mediatek Helio G95 or Snapdragon 720G chipset which are much more powerful.
Daily, the performance is good as it can easily all tass with ease but there were minor stutters noticed while multi-tasking throughout. When it comes to heavy tasks like video rendering, running benchmarks, and playing games, the smartphone did take some time to each task. In gaming, Call Of Duty Mobile ran well as Medium graphics and high frame rates settings.
There was no option for high graphics settings which we have seen on the Mediatek Helio G95 and the Snapdragon 720G chipset powered smartphones but the gameplay is smooth enough with just minor frame drops. This clearly shows this chipset is meant for normal activities and not for high gaming. The same is for benchmarks, wherein Geekbench 5.1, the smartphone scored 367 and 1272 respectively.
The Galaxy M32 comes in two variants: 4/6GB LPDDR4X RAM with 64/128GB storage but here storage speeds are of eMMC 5.1 speeds instead of UFS 2.1 which is slightly faster. This a slight downgrade from the Galaxy M31s that has an Exynos 9611 chipset with UFS 2.1 storage. So performance and gaming feel average.
Samsung Galaxy M32 Software:
The Galaxy M32 runs on OneUI 3.1 based on Android 11 out of the box. This seems to be a good upgrade over the core OneUI 2.1 that is present on the Galaxy M31s. Like all other user interfaces, there is a lot of bloatware present and if you sign in to your Samsung account, there are ads noticed here and there as the user gets a lot of recommendations while setting up the smartphone.
Many Samsung-specific applications are present also. And like all other Samsung smartphones, there is also the Google integration where swiping to the left of the home screen has the Google Feed but the dialler is of Samsung instead of the Google dialler.
OneUI provides a lot of features and customizations regarding the look and feels and some of these features include Samsung Knox security, Secure Folder, Samsung Pay Mini, and also Alt Z Life feature is present. Since it has Android 11, all the features like Bubbles, removal of the location while sending an image and better privacy settings are all present.
Samsung is now the best when it comes to software updates as we get three OS updates and four years of security updates for this smartphone also. But with the latest software updates, Samsung tries to install some of the bloatware which can be uninstalled. Though in terms of updates, Samsung has a good track record, in terms of bloatware, it needs to be improved.
Samsung Galaxy M32 Cameras:
The Galaxy M32 has a quad-camera setup that includes a 64MP f/1.8 main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera, and a 2MP depth camera. On the front, there is a 20MP f/2.2 camera. Well, these cameras seem to be a slight downgrade over the Galaxy M31s that has a 64MP Sony IMX682 sensor for the main camera, a 12MP ultrawide camera with 5MP depth, and macro cameras.
The main camera does a good job in terms of details and the dynamic range is also good. There is some amount of noise present and the details do look slightly softer. The contrast and white balance are good though. The 64MP resolution also takes very good detailed images but does crop in some subjects to prevent noise.
The images from the main camera during the night come out with good details but the dynamic range is not so good. There is oversharpening and the colors look oversaturated. The details in shadows are well retained but by turning on the dedicated Night Mode, the exposure and the dynamic range get improved and the noise is slightly lower.
The 8MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range and details. The 119-degree field of view is a good but slight downgrade compared to the 123-degree field of view found on the Galaxy M31s. The colors in the images look slightly oversaturated and around the edges of the images, there is a lot of distortion present.
At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with average details and dynamic range. There is a lot of noise present in the images and the highlights in shadows are crushed. The ultrawide camera gets a dedicated Night Mode which does improve the dynamic range and reduces the noise in the images but the color saturation is just average here.
The 2MP macro camera is also a downgrade from the 5MP camera on the Galaxy M31s, as a result, the images have a poor dynamic range with a lot of noise. The colors look washed out and the 2MP depth sensor does a decent job in terms of portraits. The portraits have a good dynamic range with natural-looking skin tones on the human subjects. The edge detection is good with proper background blur.
On the front, the 20MP camera does a good job in terms of selfies with a good dynamic range and natural-looking skin tones. The selfies have more natural-looking skin tones and the noise is kept to a minimum. The portrait selfies come out well with proper edge detection.
In terms of videos, the main camera can record only 1080p videos at 30fps since Mediatek Helio G85 is restricted cannot record 4K videos which is a slight downgrade from 4K video recording at 30fps found on the Galaxy M31s. The video footage has good color saturation and dynamic range with less noise and the stabilization in videos is quite good.
The same goes for the ultrawide camera that can record videos in 1080p at 30fps resulting in videos with above-average dynamic range and good details. There is an Ultra-Stable Mode for stabilized videos on both cameras and the front camera also records 1080p videos at 30fps which comes out with a good dynamic range and the skin tones do not look oversaturated.
Samsung Galaxy M32 Battery Life:
The Galaxy M32 packs in a massive 6000mAh battery which is similarly found on the Galaxy M31s. With the display set to 90Hz, the smartphone can easily last for two continuous days with normal usage, and with moderate to heavy usage, the smartphone easily lasts for almost one and half-day which is really good and much better compared to other smartphones at this price segment.
The Galaxy M32 has support for 25W fast charging, but unlike the Galaxy M31s, there is no 25W fast charger bundled inside the box, so instead, you are getting a 15W fast charger which takes around two to three hours to charge the smartphone from 0 to 100 percent which is a quite long time. With the 25W fast charger, the Galaxy M32 will take around 2 hours to charge completely which is still slower.
Other manufacturers are providing fast-charging solutions like Xiaomi has 33W fast charging on the Redmi Note 10, Realme provides 30W fast charging on the Realme smartphones at this price range. Though the charging is slower, the battery life remains great.
Samsung Galaxy M32 Audio Quality:
The Galaxy M32 has a single firing downwards bottom firing speaker which is adequately loud but still the sound feels muffled and distorted at the highest volume settings. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack and the sound output through it is good but still the audio quality is not the best as other smartphones like the Redmi Note 10 Pro that has stereo speakers.
Verdict:
The Galaxy M32 is a good mid-range smartphone from Samsung that has almost everything but some minor flaws also. It packs a 90Hz AMOLED display, a better Mediatek Helio G80 chipset compared to Exynos 9611 on its predecessor, a 6000mAh battery and runs on OneUI thus ensuring good software and security updates further in the future.
The only downsides on the smartphone are the cameras where Samsung has provided a 8MP ultrawide camera with 2MP macro and depth cameras instead of 12MP ultrawide camera with 5MP depth and macro cameras on other Samsung mid-range smartphones, then the Mediatek Helio G80 though being a good chipset does not have support for 4K video recording also the game optimizations are not so good.
Though the Galaxy M32 has a larger 6000mAh battery that gives excellent battery life but Samsung has done cross-cutting by providing a 15W fast charger instead of a 25W fast charger which the smartphone supports. OneUI is great in terms of software update but it does have a lot of bloatware present and the Samsung specific applications throw in a lot of notifications making the user interface slightly clumsy.
So on an overall basis, if you want a Samsung smartphone only with a great display, decent performance and gaming, excellent battery life, good cameras and better software updates, then the Galaxy M32 is a great choice but if you see other aspects like a premium build and design, better cameras and more powerful performance, then there is the Redmi Note 10 Pro present.