Samsung’s Affordable Galaxy A36 and Galaxy A26 Will Get 6 Years of Software Updates

The trio share many more specs, like how they all have a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with a 120-Hz refresh rate, a 5,000-mAh battery capacity, and they even have the same camera types that consist of a main 50-megapixel sensor, an ultrawide, and a macro lens, though the megapixel counts change for some of these. Three cameras on the back might sound impressive at these prices, but the ultrawide and macro cameras on budget phones are typically not very good, so it’ll be interesting to see if that’s the case yet again here or if these cameras will prove useful.

It’s not just about megapixels though. Samsung specifically calls out the A36 selfie camera (and likely the A56’s)—they may have fewer megapixels than the A26, but this 12-megapixel shooter is capable of 10-bit HDR footage up to 4K at 30 frames per second. That just means it’ll do a better job representing colors in selfie videos.

Samsung says the A36 and A56 have a larger vapor chamber cooling system for better heat dissipation during intense processing activities like gaming, and that this system is nearly the same size as last year’s Galaxy S24+. They also support 45-watt fast charging, which should get you up to 70 percent in 30 minutes.

AI Performance

The main area where they all differentiate is performance. The A26 5G and A56 5G make use of Samsung’s own Exynos processors, specifically the Exynos 1380 with 6 GB of RAM and Exynos 1580 with 8 GB of RAM, respectively. The Galaxy A26’s configuration seems to be the same as last year’s Galaxy A35 5G, which had decent performance but was still somewhat stuttery. But that phone launched at $400 whereas the A26 is $100 less.

Samsung Galaxy A36 (left) and A26 (right)

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Only the Galaxy A36 5G has a Qualcomm chipset, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3, a new chipset announced late last year, though performance should be similar to the Snapdragon 7S Gen 2 found in many international phones, like the Poco X6.