Samsung Galaxy A16 5G vs Galaxy A15 5G: What’s new?

Intro

Samsung has a new budget phone in town, the Galaxy A16 5G, and you might not know it but the Galaxy A1X series are among the world’s top 10 best-selling phones.

The reason is clear: this phone is super affordable at just over $200, but what changes does Samsung bring to the Galaxy A16 5G this year? And what are the differences between the Galaxy A16 5G and the Galaxy A15 5G?

Disclaimer: The Galaxy A16 5G is already in stores in many countries, but it is still not available in the United States. We expect the model to arrive stateside around December 2024 to January 2025.

Design and Display Quality

A bigger screen, but design still feels a bit cheap

Except for the slightly bigger size of the A16 5G, these two feel similar (Image by PhoneArena)

There are two noticeable changes in the A16 5G design: the bigger size and the missing 3.5mm headphone jack.

Apart from that, you still have a plastic back and plastic frame, which help the A16 5G feel just as light as the A15 5G, but at the same time… just as plasticky, too.

Despite this cheaper feel, plastic has some advantages. First and foremost, it won’t break like glass, so this might help you decide to go case-less with a plastic phone.

The button island on the side is present on both (Image by PhoneArena)

Buttons are on the right handside on both phones, with the power button being flush with the “button island” and the volume rocker protruding a bit.

The power key doubles as a fingerprint reader on the A16 5G, and it’s quite accurate, but a beat slower than we are used to on other phones.

The A16 5G is also a tiny bit slimmer at 7.9mm (the A15 5G measures 8.4mm). That’s a small detail, but it’s one we like to see.

Bezels are slightly slimmer on the A16 5G, but still bigger than on most other phones and you have that chin (Image by PhoneArena)

The screen is bigger on the A16 5G at 6.7 inches, up from a 6.5-inch size on the A15 5G.

Both have bigger than usual bezels around the screen, but slightly thinner on the A16 5G. Overall, despite the bigger screen, the width has not grown by much.

Display Measurements:

As you can see above, the maximum brightness is roughly the same on these two, reaching nearly 740 nits when measured on an all-white screen (100% APL). That is decent, but not in the same league as more expensive phones which often reach around 1,000 nits these days. But hey, we can’t blame Samsung at this price!

Both phones also support 90Hz fast refresh rate for smooth scrolling, which is a welcome addition. Overall, these are good-looking screen! We know a few more expensive phones that still rock older LCD panels that look WAY worse than this, so the display is actually one of the advantages of the A16 over the competition.

Performance and Software

A noticeable uptick in performance

The new Exynos chip is faster than the MediaTek one used in the A15 5G (Image by PhoneArena)

With the A16 5G, Samsung makes the jump to an Exynos 1330 chipset, a 5nm processor, which is… passable. Also, it’s still coupled with the same insufficient 4GB RAM. It’s all about cost cutting here!

Last year, we were harsh with the A15 5G because of its very sluggish performance. The A15 runs on an even slower, 6nm MediaTek Dimensity 6100+ processor.

We can definitely see an improvement, but we also see stutter very often and the A16 5G is far from even decent.

Performance Benchmarks:

The GeekBench CPU-focused test shows big gains on the newer phone, compared to the previous generation, but we have to reiterate that despite these gains our biggest wish for the A16 5G is still a faster chipset.

The 3D Mark gaming test on the other hand shows almost no improvement on the A16 5G, which means that you won’t be playing much Genshin Impact on this phone. It’s just too slow for those more intense games, but hey, casual games will run okay.

The base model of both the A16 5G and A15 5G come with 128GB of storage, which is a good amount.

Camera

Samsung has tweaked the image processing and colors

Same camera hardware, but colors in images actually look different (Image by PhoneArena)

By the looks of it, the Galaxy A16 5G and A15 5G both appear to have three cameras on the back, but since the ultra-wide is a 5MP one with not much detail and the third one is a trashy 2MP macro camera, you essentially only have one useful camera on both phones.

It uses a 50MP sensor with f/1.8 aperture.

PhoneArena Camera Score:

On our PhoneArena Camera Score, we detected a big jump in video quality on the A16 5G, especially when it comes to the main camera and digital zoom. However, photo quality actually drops by quite a bit thanks to some unexpected changes to the colors and image processing.

Main Camera

In this shot, you can clearly see a big divide in the color reproduction of the new and older model, where the older goes for warmer, more pleasing colors, while the new one has colder tonalities.

The same repeats in this portrait shot and it’s a strange change in image style. We guess it has to do something with a change to the ISP with the switch to an Exynos processor, but we honestly prefer the warmer look of the previous phone.

Zoom Quality

There is no dedicated zoom camera on either one of these, so in this photo captured with digital zoom we see more similarities than differences.

Ultra-wide Camera

Finally, the ultra-wide camera has the same unimpressive 5MP resolution on both phones, so it lacks a bit in detail.

Selfies

The front camera on both uses seemingly the same 13MP sensor and hardware, but once again we see the colder tonalities and the change in color reproduction on the A16 5G.

Video Quality

Video quality is comparable when it comes to detail, but there are differences in the color science, with the same colder tonality on the A16 5G that we saw in photos.

One extra capability it has earned is you can switch to the ultra-wide camera after starting a recording with the main one, a useful feature missing on the previous model.

Battery Life and Charging

Same battery size

The headphone jack is gone on the A16 5G (Image by PhoneArena)

With a 5,000 mAh battery size on both the A16 5G and A15 5G, we also expect real-world battery life to be mostly similar.

Let’s see if our in-house PhoneArena battery tests show that.

PhoneArena Battery and Charging Test Results:

Interestingly, we see the A16 5G lasts a bit less than the previous model. This is something we see in all three of our tests.

On our first and lightest, web browsing test, the A16 5G got close to 10 hours, while the older model scored an hour more. Similar story on our YouTube video test, and finally, on our 3D gaming test, there was a smaller difference of half an hour.

Overall, we estimate you can expect usage of around 6 hours and 43 minutes in the real world on the A15 5G, and a half an hour less of screen time on the A16 5G.

We also tested wired charging on both phones, using a compatible 25W+ charger, and there were some slight differences. We attribute this to some slight variability that is possible on this test, but overall a full charge takes around one hour and a half on both.

Audio Quality and Haptics

The A15 5G was a disappointment when it came to its speaker quality, so it’s good to hear that the A16 5G has made at least some progress.

Unfortunately, you still only get a sinlge bottom firing speaker as before, but this speaker distorts less and can be pushed a bit more, almost to its maximum while retaining reasonable clarity. And that was not quite the case on the A15 5G.

Haptics on both feel a bit cheap and vague, but we did not have huge expectations about that.

Specs Comparison

Which one should you buy?

The A16 5G has improved in a meaningful way, but it still feels slow (Image by PhoneArena)

It’s clear that the Galaxy A16 5G makes some improvements, while only slightly bumping the price tag. It’s not a bad upgrade, considering the dirt cheap price tier we have here, but we do wish the phone was faster. The performance is still the biggest bottleneck for Galaxy’s A1X series.

All the rest is passable. You get decent battery life and beautiful SUPER AMOLED screen colors.