Samsung Galaxy A27 first impressions

Samsung Galaxy A27 is here. Samsung recently added a new smartphone to its A-series with the launch of Galaxy A27 in India. This latest offering from Samsung comes with a starting price tag of Rs 28,999 and it comes with powerful set of specifications and enhanced AI capabilities. With up to six generations of OS upgrades and long-term security support, the new Galaxy A series is built to last. We used the pretty looking Samsung smartphone for sometime and here are our first impressions of the device.

Design
The Galaxy A27 5G ditches the notch for a punch-hole design, and this is the single most noticeable change over its predecessor. Samsung has finally moved away from the dated waterdrop notch seen on the Galaxy A26 5G in favour of a modern punch-hole display, giving the Galaxy A27 5G a cleaner and more premium appearance. In hand, the phone feels noticeably more contemporary than the device it replaces. The slimmer bezels enhance the overall look, making the device feel closer to Samsung's higher-end Galaxy A and S series smartphones than to a typical budget-mid-range handset. The build quality feels solid for the segment, with a flat-edged design language that Samsung has carried consistently across its recent A-series devices. The colour options on offer, spanning Black, Blue, Light Green, and Light Pink, give buyers reasonable choice between a more understated look and something with a bit more personality.

Display
The Galaxy A27 5G sports a 6.7-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED Infinity-O display with 1080×2340 pixel resolution. The screen is protected with a coating of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ and offers 120Hz refresh rate and up to 1400 nits peak brightness levels. Samsung has maintained its generosity with the screen size and it is ideal for both content consumption and gaming. The high refresh rate of the screen makes scrolling smooth and the animations also appear smoother. The AMOLED display of the Samsung Galaxy A27 offer punchy colours and the contrast is also deep. For everyday use, streaming, and browsing, the display already feels like one of the most convincing reasons to consider this phone over competitors at a similar price.

Hardware and Software
Samsung Galaxy A27 is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chipset paired with up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB internal storage. Users can further expand the storage by adding a microSD card of up to 2TB. Tt comes paired with LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 3.1 storage, which should keep day-to-day performance feeling responsive even if the chipset itself is not chasing flagship-level benchmarks. The Qualcomm chipset easily manages to offer a smooth performance. During our little time with the device, the smartphone comfortably handled multitasking, causal gaming and everyday tasks. The navigation also felt smooth and switching between apps was also fine. Also, we did not notice any lag in the performance. However, we will reserve final judgement on sustained performance for the full review.

Where the Galaxy A27 genuinely stands apart is software longevity. The handset comes with six generations of Android and One UI upgrades alongside six years of security updates, one of the longest in this segment. Running on Android 16-based One UI 8.5 out of the box, the phone also brings Samsung Knox, Knox Vault, and Samsung Wallet for security, alongside a healthy serving of AI features. The Galaxy A27 5G includes several Galaxy AI features, including Circle to Search, Google Gemini, Perplexity integration, Bixby, real-time voice transcription, and Live Transcription for calls and voicemail in English, Hindi, and Gujarati.

Battery life is the one area that raised an eyebrow on paper. The handset packs a 5,000mAh battery with 25W fast charging support, and the battery capacity seems quite modest, with rivals offering 6,000mAh to 7,000mAh as the standard these days. We will need extended testing to see how this plays out in daily use, but on specification alone, it looks like a step behind the segment's current trend toward larger cells.

Camera
For photography, the phone offers a 50MP primary camera with OIS, a 5MP ultra-wide sensor, and a 2MP macro camera. On the front, it has a 12MP HDR selfie camera. The inclusion of optical image stabilisation on the primary sensor is a welcome addition at this price point, and should help with low-light shots and steadier video capture, areas where budget and mid-range cameras typically struggle the most.