Galaxy S20 too expensive? This Samsung 5G phone will be a lot cheaper

If you can’t afford a Samsung Galaxy S20 but you want a 5G phone that uses many of the same Samsung features, the Galaxy A51 5G may be just what you’re looking for.

SamMobile has found the A51 5G’s certification page on the WiFi Alliance‘s website, which means we’ll probably be seeing this phone launch in the near future. Given that the normal A51 costs £329 ($404 converted), the A151 5G should be considerably cheaper than the Galaxy S20 (£899/$999) 

Aside from working with all the usual Wi-Fi standards, the A51 5G will also run Android 10. This will presumably be wrapped in Samsung’s One UI 2.0, like we’ve seen on the S20 series and on updated Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10 handsets.

Based on the standard A51 launched in December 2019, the A51 5G will feature a 6.5-inch AMOLED FHD with the same Infinity-O central punch-hole display as the Note 10 and S20 series. The phone will feature 4GB or 6GB of RAM along with 128GB storage, with the option for SD card expansion. The processor will be Samsung’s own Exynos 980 CPU, which includes a 5G modem.

For cameras, we can expect the same setup as the normal A51: a quartet consisting of a 48MP main sensor, 12MP ultrawide sensor, a 5MP macro sensor and a 5MP depth sensor on the back. There will also be a 32MP selfie camera on the front.

The battery will be a 4,000 mAh capacity model. Since this is a cheaper phone, Samsung has kept a headphone jack alongside the USB-C charging port, and the fingerprint scanner is an optical model rather than the ultrasonic version used on the Galaxy S20. However, unlike the standard A51, the frame here will be made of metal rather than plastic, likely giving the phone a more premium feel.

In our Galaxy A50 review from last year, we found Samsung’s midrange phone to deliver impressive performance for its price even if the battery and cameras weren’t great. The A51 5G sounds like it should be a solid successor for the money.

However, it has competition for the cheap 5G crown. The recently revealed Xiaomi Mi 10 Lite, due to arrive in May, will also be a reasonably priced 5G phone with some enviable specs of its own.