Introduction
Earlier this year, Samsung breathed new life into its new budget-friendly lineup with the introduction of the Galaxy M series. Samsung has received a better response from the Galaxy M series (a sub-20k segment of India), the Samsung is back with the second-generation smartphones. The Samsung M30s is the top-of-the-line mid-ranger, which comes with the most noticeable changes like a new 48MP main sensor, an Exynos 9611 Chipset, and a massive 6,000 mAh battery. The Samsung M30s comes in two configurations. The 4GB RAM + 64GB variant is priced at $200 and the 6GB + 128GB costs $240. The phone can be purchased from Amazon and Samsung’s retail partners.
Design
The Galaxy M30s implements a simple curved plastic back design that has a horizontal gradient that shifts from blue to green. With a weight of about 190 grams, it measures 159 x 75.1 x 8.9 mm, and the front is protected with Gorilla Glass 3. The rear panel also has a fingerprint sensor that works well and fast, but the face unlock takes a while to unlock the device.
Another design change is the way the back sensors and LED flash. The LED sits inside the cutout for the cameras, and the plastic back doesn’t feel very premium, but it doesn’t feel cheap. The right side of M30s is reserved for the volume rockers and power button while the 3.5mm audio jack and USB-C connector at the bottom.
Display
The Samsung Galaxy M30s features a 6.4 inches Super AMOLED display, which carries a Full HD+ resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels. The AMOLED display offers a small notch on the top, and Samsung calls this design Infinity-U. With a 19:9 aspect ratio and 403 PPI density, the phone provides an 84.2% screen-to-body ratio. We have recorded a maximum brightness of 441 cd/m2, but when the adaptive brightness toggle switched on, the controller can boost the panel up to 642 cd/m2.
Galaxy M30s provides better color accuracy at sRGB reproduction. At full high brightness level, we haven’t faced any issue on display. Furthermore, the bezels around the screen are also just average, with the chin being a lot thicker.
Battery Life
For a budget/lower mid-range phone with a 6,000 mAh battery, you would exactly like to buy Galaxy M30s (with 6,000 mAh). As a comparison, the Samsung M30s has a 1,000 mAh larger battery than the Samsung Galaxy M20 and Galaxy M30. Samsung has shipped this handset with a 15W charger that can charge battery 0% to 21% in 30 minutes. As for fast charging, it’s the unfortunate mix of slow charging, but perhaps, the huge 6,000 mAh with 15W fast charging takes slightly much time. Anyway, the Samsung M30s has 130h excellent endurance rating, and you can watch videos up to 21h as well as 3G talk time of 35:29h. It allows spending up to 16:13h for web browsing.
Software
The Smartphone runs One UI based on the top of Android 9 Pie, and may Samsung release Android 10 updates for Galaxy M30s. The notification shade – swipe down from the top; it’s easier to reach all the shortcuts with your thumb. In easy shortcuts, the phone provides various icons – Wi-Fi, Mute, Bluetooth, Portrait, Flight Mode, Torch, Power mode, Mobile Data, Mobile Hotspot, Blue light filter, Location, and Smart View. Just below from these icons, there is a brightness control key. In the Settings menu – when you open the general settings menu, you can bring down the upper rows down to the bottom for more comfortable reach. One of another better thing we’ve noticed is that the Galaxy M30s offers an Always-on display feature. The so-called FaceWidgets has a few other options, such as weather, alarm, music, or today’s agenda (all are shown on the lock screen and the always-on display). In the settings icon, there are Connections, Sounds and Vibration, Notifications, Wallpaper and Themes, Lock screen, Biometric and security, Accounts and backup, Google, Advanced features, Digital wellbeing, Device care, Apps, General management, Accessibility and more. In-display menu, you can select the font size, font style as well as Dark mode. As for biometric options, the face unlock is nicely fast and accurate but less secure. The fingerprint sensor on the backside can help you to unlock the device and also offers better security over face unlock.
Performance
The upgraded Samsung Galaxy M30s getting powered by Exynos 9611 Chipset, and thanks to the refined and efficient 10nm FinFET manufacturing processor.
The new Exynos is more powerful as well due to 4x higher clocked Cortex-A73 cores clocked at 2.3GHz and the 4x low-energy Cortex-A53 cores ticking at 1.7GHz. On the other hand, the improved Mali-G72 MP3 also offers better raw performance graphically-intensive tasks. The M30s arrives in two memory flavors – 4GB/64GB and 6GB/128GB.
Here are complete synthetic benchmarks.
GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)
Higher is Better
GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)
AnTuTu 7
Back Camera setup
One of the most significant updates – the Samsung Galaxy M30s comes with a 48MP main sensor while the predecessor M30 has 13MP primary sensor. The phone has a triple camera setup, which includes a 48-megapixel primary sensor with f/2.0 aperture, 8MP ultra-wide sensor with f/2.2 aperture, and a 5MP depth sensor with f/2.2 aperture. The primary sensor is 26mm wider and also has 0.8µm pixels as well as PDAF. In Camera’s general setting menu, it has the desired resolution option, including various filters and beauty effects. Unfortunately, the shutter speed and the manual focus options are missing. We expected that the new 48MP primary sensor of the Galaxy M30s would perform much better than the old M30, and we were right. The captured images look sharp, dynamic range is impressive, and the colors are accurate, but the zooming effect isn’t surprising.
On the other hand, pictures by ultra-wide are much week than the primary sensor (48MP). Moreover, in night time photography experience is well with the primary sensor, but ultra-wide and other sensors can’t perform a great job. We have also saved beautiful images at a dynamic range by activating the HDR mode. The Samsung Galaxy M30s also allows capturing pretty with natural skin tones at blur background (portrait mode). You can record 4k, as well as FHD, vides at 30fps, and slow-motion videos at 960fps.
Front camera
On the front panel, there is a water-drop notch which houses a 16MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 26mm (wide) for taking selfies and live video recording. To be honest, the 16MP sensor of M30s isn’t much batter for selfie experience. The low-light selfie experience also week and underexposed stills. Anyway, you can record FHD videos at 30fps.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Best 6.4 inch Super AMOLED display with an Always-on display
Outstanding 6,000 mAh battery
48MP primary sensor
Cons
The face-unlock still slow
The ultra-wide sensor can’t capture well images in both daylight and night mode
The selfie sensor also can’t capture well pictures
No earphones in the box
Verdict
If you have read the complete review of Samsung Galaxy M30s, you can notice I have some complaints. Yes, the Galaxy M30s isn’t perfect, but not bad because it has many other incredible features like 6,000 mAh battery, Super AMOLED display, and 48MP immersive primary sensor at a reasonable price. Aside from some cons, the Samsung M30s also proved to be quite different from its sibling by getting closer to the Galaxy A-series. If you can neglect some problems, then you can buy the Galaxy M30s (as per your choice) with various new features at an affordable price.
Alternatives
For roughly, At the same price, you can purchase the Galaxy A50. The Galaxy A50 has some better features like under-display optical fingerprint sensor, Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the front, and AMOLED display. It also has a triple camera setup, but the primary shooter is 25MP instead of Galaxy M30s 48MP. But, for better selfie experience, the Galaxy A50 offers a 25MP sensor while Samsung M30s has a 16MP sensor. Aside from UD FP technology, the Galaxy M30s has a 6,000 mAh battery instead of Galaxy A50’s 4,000 mAh battery. As per your choice, if you want to enjoy better selfie experience and a UD fingerprint sensor, then you can buy Galaxy A50, but bear in mind, it needs a $240 price instead of $200 (Galaxy M30s). On the other hand, the Redmi Note 8 Pro is another similarly-priced alternative and also beating the Galaxy M30s in terms of performance, photography experience, and charging speed. The Redmi Note 8 Pro has a 64MP quad-camera setup, 6.53 inches display, 20MP selfie sensor, 4,500 mAh battery with 18W fast charging, and rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. The Redmi Note 8 Pro has an IPS LCD and Helio G90T Chipset with a 12nm Octa-core processor while Galaxy M30s offers a 10nm Octa-core processor. Apart from IPS LCD and 4,500 mAh battery, the Redmi Note 8 Pro’s sole version (6GB RAM + 64 GB ROM) costs the same $200.