The Galaxy A12 is among the cheapest members of Samsung's A-series and has been a frequent feature in our trending chart since its launch in December. It's quite different from most of its siblings since it's one of the few Samsung handsets to feature an IPS panel instead of AMOLED, the latter clearly being too expensive a part for the targeted budget.
And while the panel didn't get the OLED upgrade the Galaxy A12 still brings quite a few upgrades over its predecessor. For instance, there's a slight bump in the display size - up to 6.5". The Snapdragon 450 has been replaced by the MediaTek Helio P35 SoC, which significantly ups the clock speed on four of the Cortex-A53 cores. Memory configurations are aplenty ranging from 3GB/32GB up to 6GB/128GB. This gives you more choice in addition to the 1GB increase in the base RAM.
We expect the biggest improvement to be in the camera department. The 13MP sensor has been replaced by a much lager 48MP imager. These 48MP Quad-Bayer (or Tetracell to use the Samsung term) sensors helped significantly improve image quality in the mid-range and it's great to see it trickle down to the entry level now.
The 5MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and 2MP depth sensor are carried over from the Galaxy A11 and there's a new addition even if it will hardly make much difference - a 2MP dedicated macro shooter.
The waterdrop notch on the front houses an 8MP f/2.2 selfie camera. It's somewhat surprising to see Samsung shifting from a punch-hole to a notch appearance, but it's performance that matters more and we'll make sure to examine it in detail in the review.
