People want phones for cheap, but they don’t want cheap phones, you dig? Remember the earliest smartphones? I’d never bought high-end phones before that, and so for my first smartphone in 2010 I bought a mid-range HTC that was, as I’ll politely put it, a flaming piece of crap.
After that, I just shelled out for the high-end phones because I couldn’t deal with the lag and the crappy cameras. Fast forward to today, and the slick specifications have trickled down to where you don’t have to spend both an arm and a leg (just one) to get a very capable smartphone that’ll last you for years without running out of speed or storage.
Case in point, the Samsung Galaxy A36 5G is on sale for $350. It may be less than half the cost of a Galaxy S25 or iPhone 16, but is it half the phone? Not hardly. It’s almost as good, and for a mid-priced phone it’s on the top tier of available options.
the stats
Aside from the support for 5G cellular network access, as the name makes obvious, the Galaxy A36 5G comes with a 6.7″ screen that has a 120Hz refresh rate. Given the $350 sale price, the specs on the Galaxy A36 5G are rather good.
For snapping photos and taking videos, you’ve got a 50 megapixel lens, 8 megapixel ultra-wide lens, 5 megapixel macro lens, and on the front for selfies, a 12 megapixel lens. The 6GB of RAM is adequate, if nothing to write home about, and while 128GB of storage space is about as low as you’d want in a modern smartphone, you’ll have no problem with running out of room if you periodically, even infrequently, offload your photos to an external drive, computer, or the cloud.
All these Galaxy A36 5Gs I’ve linked to here are unlocked, meaning you can activate them on the carrier of your choice. You’re not locked into using one on a particular carrier, which is common among phones.
If you were to buy one locked to the Verizon network, then you have to use it with a Verizon plan. If you already have Verizon, then great. That’s fine, although you would be trapped into staying with Verizon, so you wouldn’t have the choice to leave if you decide you want a change or find a better deal on another cellular provider.
But if you’re an AT&T customer and you buy a phone locked to Verizon, you’d have to switch your cell plan to Verizon in order to use the phone. That’s why buying an unlocked device is so important. It means freedom to choose your own cellular company. Score another point for this deal, then.
The post Need a Budget Android Phone? This Unlocked Samsung Galaxy Is on Sale. appeared first on VICE.
