It’s the season of affordable smartphones battling it out. We’ve had Apple, Google is on the way, and Samsung has just thrown its hat into the ring. The Galaxy A series is due to be updated next month. The Galaxy A36 starts at $400 and the Galaxy A26 is $300. The Galaxy A56 will also be upgraded to $500, but there is no release date set yet. All three devices feature “Awesome Intelligence,” Samsung’s rebranding for Galaxy AI on its lower-cost devices.
The Galaxy A56 and A36 all have the same screen size, but they offer different essentials. Each phone comes with a 6.7″ Super AMOLED screen and a 120Hz refresh-rate, which is not a standard specification at this price-point. It also has a battery of 5,000mAh to support it. All phones come with 128GB storage. The Galaxy A56 is powered by Samsung’s Exynos1580 chipset, while the Galaxy A26/A26 are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 6 Generation 3 platform. The Galaxy A56 is the only device with 8GB of RAM. The A36 and A26 have 6GB. It will be interesting to see if Awesome Intelligence actually works, since the flagships all adopted more RAM in order to accommodate AI. Samsung has also promised six years of Android OS updates and support.
The A-series cameras are all different, but only slightly. The Galaxy A56, considered the “highest tier” of the trio, comes with a 12-MP Ultrawide camera, 50-MP Primary camera, 5-MP Macro and a 12MP Front-facing camera. The Galaxy A36 starts at $300 and has the same primary but dialed down with an 8-MP Ultrawide camera and 5-MP Macro camera. There’s a 12-MP camera on the front. The Galaxy A26 is the cheapest, at $300. It has all of that, except for a 20MP macro camera and 13MP front camera.
Awesome Intelligence
You may be asking yourself, “What exactly is “awesome Intelligence”? Samsung is rebranding its budget phones with artificial intelligence. It’s great that Samsung has come up with an alternative to Galaxy AI. That sounds more “forward thinking” than “awesome”. Awesome Intelligence allows you to use key Google Gemini features, such as Circle to Search and the new feature launched for the Galaxy S25 Series that helps you identify songs. You’ll have access to Galaxy AI features such as Object Eraser. There are a few more Samsung features like Nightography algorithms within the camera app. There’s just enough Awesome Intelligence in the camera app to make you say “Awesome!”
This is a different approach to Apple and Google who use the same processor in their flagship devices and lower-cost ones, ensuring parity across the ecosystem. Samsung decided to focus on its strengths in manufacturing. Samsung’s budget phones will have bigger batteries and better screens. It will be interesting to see if Samsung continues to pare down AI features on flagships and lower-cost phones, and what features it will consider “essential” for Awesome Intelligence.
