It’s season when affordable smartphones reveal it to each other. There’s Apple, Google is hoping for it, and Samsung just throws that roster into the ring. The Galaxy A-Series is scheduled to be refreshed next month. It starts at $400 from the Galaxy A36 and starts at $300 from the Galaxy A26. The Galaxy A56 starts at $500 and has bumps as well, but the release date is not yet predicted. Three devices include “Awesome Intelligence.” This appears to be a rebranding of Samsung’s low-cost device, Galaxy AI.
The Galaxy A56, A36, and A26 all come with screens of the same size, but each comes with a different tier of necessities. Each phone has a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate rather than standard specifications at this price, and a 5,000 mAh battery to accommodate it. All phones start with 128GB of storage. Samsung’s Exynos 1580 chipset powers the Galaxy A56, while the Galaxy A26 and A26 run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 platform. Only the Galaxy A56 offers 8GB of RAM, while the A36 and A26 are stuck at 6GB. It will be interesting to see how intelligence works, given that the flagships all did the opposite in adopting more RAM to accommodate AI. Software updates are also locked here. Samsung promises six years of support and Android OS updates.
All A-Series camera systems are different, but only a little. The Galaxy A56 is considered the “best” layer of the trio and features a 12MP ultrawid camera, a 50MP primary camera, a 5-MP macro camera and a 12MP front camera. Starting at $300, the Galaxy A36 has the same primary camera, but is dialed down to an 8MP ultrawid camera and a 5-MP macro camera. There is also a 12 MP front camera. The cheapest Galaxy A26 for $300 has everything except the 20MP macro camera and the 13-MP front camera.
Amazing intelligence
What is “great intelligence”? It’s Samsung’s attempt to rebrand artificial intelligence for its mobile phone budget lineup. It’s good to come up with ways to distinguish its products from the Galaxy AI. Because it sounds more like “moving forward” than “great.” Awesome Intelligence allows you to use Key Google Gemini abilities such as Circle To Search. This includes new abilities launched in the Galaxy S25 series to help identify songs. It also provides access to Galaxy AI features such as Object Eraser. Beyond some other important features, such as the camera app’s nightography algorithm, it’s about it. A great intelligence enough to say “great!” or something like that.
This is a slightly different approach from Apple and Google. Apple and Google use the same processors for flagship and low-cost devices to provide software parity across the ecosystem. Instead, Samsung chose to lean in a place with strong manufacturing capabilities. So Samsung’s budget-friendly phone will display a killer screen and a large battery. It will be interesting to see how Samsung cuts AI capabilities from flagship to low-cost subsets and how it considers Awesome Intelligence’s “essential” functionality.
