Samsung Galaxy M30s Review : The best mid range smartphone by Samsung till date

In terms of design, the Galaxy M30s aren’t different from its predecessor Galaxy M30 as you get the same polycarbonate back which is quite sturdy and good to hold. The back has a gradient pattern that looks good and is available in Pearl White, Opal Black, and Sapphire Blue.

The back of the Galaxy M30s houses the triple camera setup with the LED flash to the top. Besides the camera, there is a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner just above the Samsung branding in the middle The fingerprint scanner was quite accurate and fast but not as fast like on the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro.

On the front, you get Infinity-U display with minimum bezels to the side.
The smartphone has the volume buttons and power button housed on the right side and on the left there is the triple card slot housing two slots for a sim card and another dedicated slot for microSD card. 

At the bottom of the smartphone, there is a USB Type-C port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The device weighs around 188gms which wasn’t heavy as it had that 6000mAh battery inside. Samsung has perfectly done the weight distribution of the smartphone as it feels light and not heavy to use.

The Samsung Galaxy M30s houses a 6.4 inches full HD+ Super AMOLED display (1080 x 2340 pixels) with a screen to body ratio of 19.5:9. The Super AMOLED display of the smartphone looks really good as in AMOLED you get deep blacks and blues as well as good viewing angles from sides. The colors look punchier in the display and when viewed in direct sunlight the screen visibility was also good and if the outdoor mode is turned on you get a much brighter panel.

As with Samsung they make some of the best AMOLED panels and with the Galaxy M30s display viewing content like watching movies and playing games is really good. Samsung provides various customizations to the screen as you can choose from Vivid and Natural in the display settings.

Like other Samsung smartphones, there is an Always-On display for notifications as there is no physical LED notification light on the front.

We did notice that Samsung uses the front camera as the auto-brightness sensor to save cost. During the night the smartphone can go really low in brightness which will make the experience even better while watching videos or playing games.

The Galaxy M30s comes with Widevine L1(DRM support so you can easily stream HD content from Netflix, Amazon, Hotstar, etc. Compared to other smartphones in this range, Samsung Galaxy M30s with the Super AMOLED screen has a lot going for it.

When it comes to performance the Galaxy M30s hold an edge over its predecessor as it ships with Samsung’s own Exynos 9611 chipset which is better than the Exynos 7904 in the Galaxy M30. It is based on an octa-core configuration where 4×2.3 GHz Cortex A73 cores are for performance and 4×1.7 GHz Cortex A53 cores for power efficiency and are built on a 10nm process coupled with a Mali-G72 MP3 GPU.

The performance of the CPU and GPU is good but not the best at this range. The performance of the chipset almost similar to the Snapdragon 660 found in the Redmi Note 7 and the Nokia 7.2. In the majority of tasks on a daily basis whether heavy or light use, the smartphone handled everything with ease.

Switching between apps and multitasking was very smooth throughout. On Antutu the device scored a good 152428 which is almost equal to the Snapdragon 660 on the Redmi Note 7S and on Geekbench it scored 1674 on Single core and 5328 on Multicore respectively.

When it comes to gaming, the Galaxy M30s ran all games with ease but with heavy games like PUBG, Asphalt 9 Extreme, Call of Duty there were some frame drops noticed. PUBG ran fine at high graphics settings but when switched to the ultra graphics the phone was lagging and the back of the phone was getting warm.

Similarly for Call of Duty or Asphalt 9 Extreme while played on high graphics there was a major drop in frame rates but in normal graphics, it ran fine. So when it comes to gaming this phone is good but the phones with Snapdragon 710,712 and 675 perform better in gaming.

When it comes to software the Galaxy M30s run Samsung’s own skin OneUI 1.5 built on top of Android 9 Pie. The Galaxy M30s will soon get Android 10 as said by Samsung but we don’t know when will it get as Samsung is very slow in pushing updates.

Samsung uses the OneUI in all of its smartphones and it is nothing different from the Galaxy M30s. The software is very slick and easy to use as all controls fall to hand easily. With every software update, Samsung is refining the UI to give a good user experience.

Being a custom UI there are additional features such as motions and gestures for the shortcut. There are a lot of pre-installed Apps and you can easily uninstall them if not needed. Overall the software is smooth and easy to use. 

One of the most interesting points about the smartphone is its camera. On the back, there are three cameras that house the 48MP f/2.0 main camera with an 8MP ultrawide camera and a 5MP depth sensor. The camera by default captures images in 12MP and if you want to take pictures in 48MP then you can use the 48MP mode from the camera UI.

This camera app is similar to the one on the Galaxy M30 and other Samsung smartphones. Many smartphones come with standard 48MP Sony sensor instead Samsung has opted for its own ISOCELL sensor which provides really good images whether day or light.

The pictures come out to be good from the main camera as there are very good color saturation and very little noise in the background. When switched to Portrait Mode, the Galaxy M30s took decent shots with good edge detection but the background blur wasn’t noticed much. Overall the 5MP depth sensor does help the camera to take good portraits.

Switching to the Night Mode in the Galaxy M30s, the smartphone gave very crisp and detailed images during the night with good levels of exposure and contrast. With HDR turned on, you get some really good pictures. There is also Live Focus and Pro Mode to enhance the performance of the camera.

Coming to the ultrawide camera which is an 8MP, it captures good images with a wider field of view.

The images taken from the ultrawide camera came out to be above average as there was some overexposure, color saturation could have been better and the noise was prominent in the background.

But when switched to Night Mode, the images from the ultrawide camera came out to be good during the night. You can easily switch between the camera and video modes in the camera UI.

Coming to video the Galaxy M30s can shoot 4k videos at 30fps. the video is a bit shaky but the details are well taken care of with proper dynamic range. At 1080p the video is more stabilized and the details in the video looking really good as there is a good dynamic range and the color saturation throughout the video is also very good.

Even the videos taken by the ultrawide camera are good but the results look a bit inaccurate and the sharpness is bit affected.

On the front, the Galaxy M30s comes with a 16MP f/2.0 camera that takes some really good selfies but the sharpness and exposure do get hit and could have been better. When it comes to portraits the Galaxy M30s came out with really good portraits with proper edge detection and background blur. The front camera can only shoot video at 1080p.

Overall the camera is good for a smartphone at this range but with some major improvements is needed which Samsung could fix with a future software update.

Samsung Galaxy M30s Battery Life:

Samsung Galaxy M30s Sound Quality:

The Galaxy M30s comes with a single firing downwards loudspeaker which produces good sound and when switching to outdoor mode, the sound is even louder.

The audio output through the 3.5mm headphone jack is also really good and since the smartphone comes with Dolby Atmos the sound experience is even richer.

The Galaxy M30s is priced at Rs.13,999 for the 4GB RAM and 64GB storage and Rs.16,999 for the 6GB RAM and 128GB storage which is slightly expensive and is available on Amazon and Samsung store online.

With the Galaxy M30s, Samsung is back into the game in the mid-range segment which was continuously being dominated by Chinese manufacturers like Realme, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, etc. The Galaxy M30s one of the strongest offerings does make the right deal as you get an excellent battery life, a good set of cameras, and good software that can run the smartphone smoothly.

With that fantastic AMOLED display, the smartphone has a lot going for it. But in some areas, the Galaxy M30s fall short as compared to the Chinese manufacturers which are gaming and performance as Exynos 9611 isn’t a proper gaming chipset but still, you can run normal games easily.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro which is priced at Rs.14,999 with the Mediatek Helio G90T and Realme XT at Rs.15,999 with Snapdragon 712 provides better gaming compared to the Galaxy M30s.

The Galaxy M30s is meant for people who want more battery life with a good display, cameras, and decent performance and the trust of Samsung. 

Now Samsung has upped the game and it has proved itself as one of the best mid-range smartphones to date.