Samsung Galaxy A16 5G Review: Some improvements, but one red flag remains

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Samsung Galaxy A16 5G Intro


When it comes to phones priced around $200, the Galaxy A16 5G is a top contender. In fact, the Galaxy A1X series have been among the world's best selling phones for years.

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And the A16 5G has got a beautiful AMOLED screen, 90Hz refresh rate, a good amount of storage, slightly faster chipset than before and even the promise for six years of software updates.

On paper, that sounds like an awesome improvement, but after using it for a while, I found one big red flag remains despite all the improvements. And for many people, it might unfortunately be a dealbreaker. Let's dive in the details.

Samsung Galaxy A16 5G
What we like
  • Cheap
  • Decent battery life
  • Decent camera quality
What we don't like
  • SLOW performance, stutters often
  • Plastic design, big bezels
5.2
PhoneArena Rating
5.2
Price Class Average
Battery Life
6.2
6.5
Photo Quality
5.7
5.9
Video Quality
4.9
4.5
Charging
5.1
5.4
Performance Peak
2.5
2.5
Performance Daily
4.6
4.4
Display Quality
6
6
Design
4
4
Wireless Charging
0
Biometrics
7
7
Audio
5
4.5
Software
8
7
Why the score?
This device scores average for this price class, which includes devices like the Samsung Galaxy A15 5G
User Score
Be the first to review this phone
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Sim-free
Amazon
$225
Sim-free
eBay
$455

Table of Contents:

Galaxy A16 5G Specs


Let's first start with an overview of the Galaxy A16 5G specs:


Galaxy A16 5G Design and Display

The Galaxy A16 5G is now a bigger phone, with a 6.7-inch screen


The Galaxy A16 5G evolves to a bigger size than its predecessors. It's now a bigger phone, with a 6.7-inch screen, and since it has extra big bezels, the sheer size of it has grown noticeably too.

The rails are still made of plastic, so it feels a bit cheap, but thanks to that, it also weighs a bit less than you might expect.

Buttons are on the right hand side, raised slightly from the sides of the phone in an island. The power key doubles as a fingerprint reader, which we found has decent accuracy, but takes an extra beat to respond.


In the box, you get just the phone and a charging cable, no charging brick, in case you were wondering.


The 6.7-inch AMOLED screen is definitely a highlight. It has beautiful colors and a typical brightness of around 750 nits, which is definitely decent enough and more than we expect at this price range.

The big bezels are certainly a bit of a distraction, but at least the screen quality is good.

PhoneArena Display Measurements:




Above, you can see our in-house display measurements for the Galaxy A16 5G, there are only slight changes from the A15 5G when it comes to colors and brightness.

Galaxy A16 5G Camera

Photo quality has surprisingly dropped a bit, but video quality is better in a few ways

Samsung Galaxy A16 5G
PhoneArena Camera Score
BEST 157
124
PhoneArena Photo Score
BEST 162
130
Main (wide)
BEST 85
71
Zoom
BEST 28
17
Ultra-wide
BEST 25
17
Selfie
BEST 30
25
PhoneArena Video Score
BEST 153
118
Main (wide)
BEST 80
60
Zoom
BEST 27
16
Ultra-wide
BEST 23
19
Selfie
BEST 28
24

On our PhoneArena Camera Score, the Galaxy A16 5G scored slightly better overall than its predecessor, but surprisingly, the changes to photo quality were for the worse as we noticed more issues with white balance and colors. Video quality, however, has improved noticeably.

So what cameras do we have on the Galaxy A16 5G?

On the back, this might look like a triple camera system, but the third lens is a quite useless 2MP macro snapper, so effectively you only have a usable 50MP main camera and a 5MP ultra-wide one.

Main Camera



The main camera is the one that does most of the heavy lifting on the A16 5G, and you can clearly see a change in the colors from the previous model. Pictures now look cooler, which in our view makes them less pleasing. You still get a good amount of details and dynamic range, but the warmer tone of the A15 5G is more flattering to the image above.


You can see something similar in the way this portrait photo looks on the Galaxy A16 5G compared to the A15 5G.

Zoom Quality



Since there is no dedicated telephoto camera on board, the Galaxy A16 5G does not make any giant leaps when it comes to zoom quality. Still, the processing is a bit nicer, so there is some improvement, it's just not a big one.

Ultra-wide Camera



The 5MP ultra-wide camera is not the most detailed out there, but it can get some use during the day. It captures decent photos, but nothing extraordinary at all. The colors again appear cooler and we see bigger issue with resolving detail toward the edges of these photos.

Selfies



All of those cool colors now also arrive to the selfie camera as well.

Video Quality


Video Thumbnail
 
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.

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Galaxy A16 5G Performance & Benchmarks

Stutter king


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:


Geekbench 6
SingleHigher is better
Samsung Galaxy A16 5G965
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G683
Samsung Galaxy A25 5G977
Geekbench 6
MultiHigher is better
Samsung Galaxy A16 5G1875
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G1728
Samsung Galaxy A25 5G2170
3DMark Extreme(High)Higher is better
Samsung Galaxy A16 5G367
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G340
Samsung Galaxy A25 5G647
3DMark
Extreme(Low)Higher is better
Samsung Galaxy A16 5G360
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G335
Samsung Galaxy A25 5G639

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


The Galaxy A16 5G arrives with Android 14 with Samsung's One UI 6.1 custom layer on top.

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.

With merely 4GB of RAM on board, there is NO Galaxy AI magic happening here.

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.

Galaxy A16 5G Battery

Decent numbers

Samsung Galaxy A16 5G
( 5000 mAh )
Samsung Galaxy A16 5G
Battery Life Estimate
6h 12m
Ranks #64 for phones tested in the past 2 years
Average is 6h 52m
Browsing
9h 43m
Average is 15h 32m
Video
11h 13m
Average is 10h 8m
Gaming
9h 52m
Average is 9h 44m
Charging speed
25W
Charger
37%
30 min
1h 43m
Full charge
Ranks #91 for phones released in the past 2 years
Wireless Charging
N/A
Charger
N/A
30 min
N/A
Full charge
Find out more details about battery and charging for all phones we have tested on our PhoneArena Battery Score page

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.

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:


Battery Life
Charging
Phone Battery Life
estimate
Browsing Video
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G
5000 mAh
6h 43min 10h 41min 12h 15min
Samsung Galaxy A16 5G
5000 mAh
6h 12min 9h 43min 11h 13min
Samsung Galaxy A25 5G
5000 mAh
5h 44min 14h 16min 7h 27min
Phone Full Charging 30 min Charge
Wired Wireless Wired Wireless
Samsung Galaxy A25 5G
5000 mAh
1h 21min N/A 51% N/A
Samsung Galaxy A15 5G
5000 mAh
1h 31min N/A 46% N/A
Samsung Galaxy A16 5G
5000 mAh
1h 43min N/A 37% N/A
Find out more details about battery and charging for all phones we have tested on our PhoneArena Battery Score page

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.


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.

Galaxy A16 5G Audio Quality and Haptics


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?



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.

It will get the job done for some users who don't care too much about performance, but if you value a fast and smooth phones, there might be better options around. Keep an eye on our best budget phones lineup for the latest in that space.

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