Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 stars3.5 stars. Good phone but oversized and with some important flaws
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 December 2023
I have had Samsung Galaxy phones before and found them very good, which is why I bought this one. Had I had time to research other makes and models I may have chosen differently.
The main reason I was not 100% sure about buying this was the size. It is really too big. My S8 was rather large but this one is noticeably bigger. This makes it difficult to handle, and anyone with small hands would find it nearly unusable. It is also difficult to fit into the pockets of a number of clothes I regularly wear.
The main issue I have with it is the fingerprint reader in the power button. This is very narrow and fails to read my fingerprint too often. It is particularly bad at opening the phone. Sometimes I press the button and see a message telling me I have had too many failed reads and I will not be able to use fingerprint recognition again for 30s, this is after I have only pressed the button once. I do not want to use face recognition for a number of reasons so this is very inconvenient.
The phone also stops recognising the SD card and I have to turn the phone off, take the card out and refit it to get it to reappear.
There is no way to set a minimum screen brightness when set to auto. It does eventually learn this, but it gets reset every time I turn the phone off fully, which I have to do to get the SD card working again.
On the positive side, it has excellent battery life, the big size does mean it has a big screen, and in other respects than those listed above, it is a very good phone with some nice features. The camera is very good, and the three back lenses make it very versatile. I only take my camera with me now when I know I am going to want extreme telephoto, for wildlife, etc.
