Samsung Galaxy A16 5G Review: Some improvements, but one red flag remains – Ultra-Sim

The Galaxy A16 5G can record 4K video, which is great to see and you even have decent video stabilization, a common issue in this price class.

One important video issue is resolved on the A16 5G too – you can now switch back and forth between the main and ultra-wide cameras, something you could not do before.

We do notice the same trend towards cooler colors, but maybe just a bit less pronounced in video.

Galaxy A16 5G Performance & Benchmarks

Stutter king

Despite the slight upgrade, the A16 5G is still way too slow (Image by PhoneArena)

Our biggest complaint against the Galaxy A15 5G last year was about its slow performance, so have things changed with the A16 5G?

Not really.

Technically, the A16 5G does come with a slightly faster chipset, but the increase is definitely not big enough to get rid of the almost constant stutter when using this phone. This quickly gets extremely annoying. You notice stutter when you unlock the phone, when you use apps, when you scroll around and it’s just not a good experience.

The A16 5G also only packs 4GB of RAM, not merely enough for Android’s multitasking requirements.

Performance Benchmarks:

As you can see, we have a nearly 50% improvement in single-core CPU performance, which is a noticeably change over the A15 5G and brings the A16 5G on par with the costlier A2x series.

But there is almost no improvement in multi-core CPU performance, and overall, what matters most is that real-world performance of the A16 5G is just still a stuttery experience (even if slightly improved).

As for graphics, there is practically zero improvement and we cannot recommend this phone for gamers. In that regard, the A2x series from Samsung offers nearly double the performance speeds.

At least you get a decent amount of storage on board at 128GB, but that is kind of the norm these days, so no reason to celebrate here either.

Galaxy A16 5G Software

No Galaxy AI and even some common features like screen recording are missing

Samsung promises six years of software updates, a big commitment for such a cheap phone. We of course can only applaud that, but we would much rather see Samsung optimize the actual performance of this phone as that would be a much better investment of resources.

We were also surprised to see some very common features like screen recording are not available on the Galaxy A16 5G, likely because of that slow chipset. Bummer.

Despite a larger 6.7-inch size, the Galaxy A16 5G sticks with the same 5,000 mAh battery size as its predecessors.

Nothing too bad about that, it puts out solid numbers and will last you a bit over a day easily.

In our in-house battery testing, we found the phone lasted a bit less than its predecessor. On our lightest battery test, web browsing, the A16 5G scored less than 10 hours, which is one of the worst scores for the year.

It put out decent numbers on YouTube video streaming test and for 3D gaming, though, so overall, it gets a PhoneArena Battery Score of 6 hours and 11 minutes of expected screen time, half an hour less than last year’s model.

Forget about fast charging and there is also no wireless charging (Image by PhoneArena)

When it comes to charging, you get 25W speeds, which are not fast by any means, but not terribly slow either. A half an hour charge gives you nearly 40% back, while a full top up from 1% to 100% takes 1 hour and 43 minutes.

There is no wireless charging on board, but that is a rarity at this price point.

We were disappointed with audio quality on the Galaxy A15 5G last year, and we are happy to see some slight improvement this year.

The A16 5G still has a single bottom-firing speaker, but sound quality is a bit better. The speaker still distorts at close to maximum volume, though, so it’s best to listen to music a few steps below that.

As for haptics, they feel a bit cheap and vague, but we did not have huge expectations here.

Should you buy it?

It’s hard to criticize dirt cheap phones like the A16 5G, but it’s just too slow and stuttery (Image by PhoneArena)

The Galaxy A16 5G is roughly a $200 phone and we cannot expect too much.

In some areas, it beats our expectations. It’s got a gorgeous and now bigger display, decent battery life and a camera that can now record better video. It also has six years of software updates, a rarity for such dirt cheap phone.

But unfortunately it still feels a bit too slow and stuttery, and this is a major red flag. This quickly gets annoying when you scroll around social media and the phone has not improved its GPU and gaming performance at all since last year.