The Galaxy A27 5G has a stronger chipset, at least.
Samsung
Samsung has revealed its latest budget-minded A-series phone, the Galaxy A27 5G. The main upgrade that the company is pitching this time is a new Infinity-O display. As with the display in last year's A26, it's a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED screen with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. What's different this time around is that it has a hole-punch design to accommodate the 12MP front-facing camera rather than a small notch at the top of the screen. "Together with a reduced and more balanced bezel, this adds screen space and removes distractions to keep content front and center," Samsung claims.
The rear camera array includes a 5MP ultra-wide lens, 50MP OIS wide sensor and 2MP macro camera. The A27 has 6GB of memory and 128GB of internal storage, which is expandable by up to 2TB via microSD. The battery capacity remains the same as last year's device as well at 5000mAh. There's support for 25W fast charging too.
The A27 runs on a Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chipset. Samsung suggests this helps make the handset feel more responsive for everyday use while delivering a GPU performance boost over the A26.
The handset has an IP64 rating for water and dust resistance, which is lower than the A26's IP67 rating. It can withstand splashes, but isn't rated to withstand temporary immersion in water.
On the software side, there are a bunch of AI features, including multi-object recognition in Circle to Search and real-time translation into 22 languages for transcriptions in the Voice Recorder app. You can choose from a number of AI assistants, including Gemini and Perplexity (Bixby is still kicking around too). Samsung says it will support the A27 with "with up to six generations of Android OS and One UI upgrades, as well as up to six years of security updates from the initial global launch date."
You'll be able to pick up an A27 in the US starting July 14. Other markets will get it a bit earlier, on July 3. However, as with pretty much every other device, there's a price increase. The Galaxy A27 5G starts at $350, which is $50 more than the A26.