Samsung Galaxy M33 5G (Mystique Green, 6GB, 128GB Storage) | 6000mAh Battery | Upto 12GB RAM with RAM Plus | Without Charger

With 5G connectivity, a 120Hz display and solid performance, the Galaxy M33 5G is Samsung’s best-value smartphone yet under 20K segment

Pros 

Almost half the price of Galaxy A53

Exynos 1280 is a solid performer

Excellent 120Hz display with smooth experience across the board

Huge performance uplift over M32

One UI 4.1 based on android 12 has tons of good features to love, none of the flagship grade features are skipped here (apart from dex mode and spen features), Zero lag or stuttering in 120 hz mode with ease of use and seemless switching of apps without any crash or reloading  of apps, makes using one ui pleasure to surf across

You get features like a screen recorder, video call effects, Game Launcher, Link to Windows, Dual Messenger, Quick Share, Music Share, and Secure Folder, along with many others. Some of the fancy Android 12 features, like the ability to change the color palette of icons and menus based on the wallpaper and dim the screen for easier reading in the dark, are also included.

Voice focus for calls is excellent feature, phone call quality is really good even in nosiy and crowded areas

I had no issues with GPS or connectivity while using Google maps to navigate,  signal stays strong even in rural areas, thats a positive point with good accuracy

4g Volte with carrier aggregation works flawlessly

Wifi connectivity on the Dual band 5ghz router is strong and performs  more than satisfactorily with low latency response

Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity is strong and has good range  no worries of disconnection even as far as 15 meters

Audio quality via 3.5 mm jack is excellent compared to Redmi note 10 pro, much more defined and well rounded

For media consumption widewine L1 support is present, Good AV experience on ott platforms, I have no serious complaints about color reproduction in videos considering TFT LCD this panel does a good enough job .

Main Camera 50mp is on par and better than Redmi note 10 pro in almost all conditions, retains colors close to reality with good dynamic range and handling of exposure with HDR in photos as well as videos, it is able to handle extremely bright conditions well
Even in shadows during day time it was able to maintain good colors

Good Stable videos at 1080p

4k video recording is available at 30 FPS is available

Many cool camera features , boasts AR fun mode, single Take, Object Eraser and Video TNR (Temporal Noise Reduction) which makes it fun to use camera

Selfie camera has good punchy colors, Samsung’s way of boosted colour processing some may like it ,some may not

Excellent battery life, got 9 hours of SOT despite the heavy usage. It takes around 1.5 hours to go from 0-100, and half an hour of charging can take the battery percentage to around 45% provided you have 25 watt Samsung’s charger

Despite summer time, phone has managed to stay relatively cool, 5nm architecture helping its cause here

12 5G Bands

Dedicated SD card slot is a plus here

PD 3.0 25 watt fast charging support reasonable for price segment but we have seen faster charging speeds with other OEMs

Promised 2 major android OS updates and 4 years security updates is a huge plus above its competitors, making this device more value for money in long run

Cons 

Ultrawide camera is on softer side , lacks details compared to its primary sensor but manages to frame good shots that one can post on social media, macro camera is good with colors and edge detection but lacks depth of field and details , Note 10 pro which is brilliant in this case

Night shots are above average mostly grainy and muddled but better than most smartphones in its segment

Lacks some stability in Video recording at 4k 

Amoled display could have made it unbeatable

Lacks stereo Speaker, but audio quality on single speaker is quite good

Pre-installed bloatwares like Moj, dailyhunt, sharechat, byju’s are mild and uninstallable but makes mature one UI experience looks immature out of the box

Currently device is not tunned for high gaming performance as limited FPS in popular games like BGMI and COD deters it away from being a gamer friendly device, but we  can expect exynos 1280  to resolve over time and be more optimized for more games in future updates

Slightly cheap design , Chunky in size, carries some heft, Dated notch display

Lack of charger in the box is a bummer, which adds up to the value cost proposition

Wifi and Sim network not working properly

This phone is overpriced for even discounted price (12,999/- for 6 GB variant). I purchased it because of past good experience with Samsung (Galaxy On6) but this phone cannot match the legacy. Samsung has done too much unnecessary cost cutting on this phone.

Camera: It has an average camera. It clicks decent photos and records good videos up to 4K 30fps, fhd 60. Only the main 50 MP sensor is usable, all others are present just for count. Camera has serious bug that it captures washed out colours if its AI detects a human face while using flash. If we remove human from frame, it captures just fine colours. Also, colours are just fine while clicking without flash.
Front camera is pathetic from today’s standard, it will just get you with video calls and nothing more, do not expect to use it for selfies with clarity. I do not click many pictures so I am okay with its camera.
You can see this issue in the attached images, both the images were captured in low light with flash, the first one came out fine with colours close to actual object while the second one has completely washed out colours because the AI in phone detected human there. This unnecessary processing ruins the joy and there is no option in camera settings to turn this off. I have spent many hours trying to avoid this with different combinations of camera settings but it cannot be turned off. This bug might be embedded deep in the phone hardware as even third party camera apps ( I tried with OpenCamera) also give the same results.

Battery : It can last for around 2 days with light to medium usage. It struggles to last one full day with high usage. Exynos 1280 is not efficient considering it is 5nm chipset. Also, the phone gets warm even with normal usage ( browsing etc) and gets somewhat hot during gaming.
Idle battery drain is around 8-10% per night.

It charges from 8% to 100% in 4:50 hours with 5 watt charger.
With 7.5w (5v 1.5a) charger, it takes around 2:55 hours.
Charges in around 2:15 hours with 15 watt charger (shows as fast charging).
With 25 watt charger, the phone shows as super fast charging and charges from 5% to 100% in 1:24 hours.

Display : Display seems smooth with 120 Hz, obviously not punchy as super amoled but it is okay and has good brightness for sunlight use and sufficiently low brightness for comfortable night use. Viewing angles are good. I did not face any issue with display and am okay with it.

Buggy Auto brightness: Samsung has a habit of using cheap virtual sensors on its devices. This phone has virtual light sensors which is just a software solution to set screen brightness according to light present in room and using front camera as the light source. But this is seriously buggy in this phone, the phone does not understand difference between complete dark and dimly lit room. So, it will apply same brightness settings to both of these situations resulting unnecessarily bright screen in dark and uncomfortably dim screen in dimly lighted room. This sensor works poorly in outdoor as well. Most of the time, the brightness it applies to screen is not adequate.

Software and UI: Samsung had installed may bloatware apps which are removable, One UI as everyone knows, is pretty user friendly. So, that is okay, however, Samsung should mention that this phone does not support some of the features such as S secure, bixby routines and sound assistant which are useful for some. Otherwise software experience is good, lag free.

WiFi: It supports 2.4 ghz and 5 ghz wifi at 1×1. So max of 72 mbps in 2.4 ghz mode and max 433 mbps in 5 ghz mode. This is the most basic wifi configuration possible. It can share wifi over hotspot which is nice. Although basic, wifi will not give any issue and has good range. So, wifi is okay.

Bluetooth: I did not test bluetooth range but found it sufficient for my use. It can connect to two different devices simultaneously. However, can play music in one device only. Did not find any issue with bluetooth.

Mobile network: It has good 5g support with 12 bands but supports only 1 5g sim at a time. If we set one of the sims to 5g mode, the other one drops to 4g/3g/2g mode.
It supports carrier aggregation and when tested, it was working with 3 band carrier aggregation with Jio.
Call clarity is good and it can record calls without announcing to other person. virtual proximity sensor is not too bad.

Fingerprint reader: For this price, the performance of side mounted fingerprint reader is good enough.
We can register up to 3 fingerprints only which is limiting and not appreciated, at least 5 should be given.

Face unlock: I guess it has AI based face unlock which works good even in low light condition. Although I do not know how secure it is.

Storage and Memory: It has 6 to 8 GB of Lpddr4x RAM which is good for this price.
128 GB storage used is UFS 2.1 which is not justified at this price in 2022 and lacks in performance when compared to UFS 2.2, apps take more time to install.

Gaming: I installed call of duty mobile and it allowed settings up to medium graphics with very high frame rate and low graphics with max frame rate. In both settings, game was lag free and frame rate was always below 60 fps. So below average gaming. However, I do not play games, so, did not test with other games and do not care about gaming performance.

Multimedia: Display quality is okay and single bottom firing speaker is average and audio from headset jack is fine, no complaints here.
The chipset used in this phone supports h.264, h.265 video codecs only and does not support VP9 and AV1 codecs which is the most annoying downside. This means that it can play youtube only till 1080p and not in 2k or 4k because youtube supports h.264 up to 1080p only and we need vp9 and av1 support if we want to play higher resolution videos and if in future youtube removes h.264 support then this phone will not be able to play youtube at all. This is a very serious issue with this device. In future, all the streaming services will eventually switch to vp9 and av1 codecs as they provide better streaming efficiency and are royalty free, but as this phone does not support those, we cannot say this will be good for multimedia in future. So, 0 points for this in multimedia.
Also, if we play youtube videos in browser like brave, it runs in software acceleration mode ( again, due to lack of vp9 and av1 capability) which loads up cpu and drains battery fast. Use youtube in either Youtube app or Newpipe to prevent unnecessary battery drain (as these apps play videos with hardware acceleration, which saves power). All this nonsense applies to other OTT apps (Hotstar, Prime etc) as well as almost all of them use VP9 codec for streaming which this phone plays in software mode, which shoot up the cpu usage and causes fast battery drain ( around 15-18% per hour).

GPS and navigation : Works just fine. Has compass support.

Pros:
Two promised android updates and 4 years of security updates.
Sufficiently good display with high refresh rate, feels really smooth.
Good audio, WiFi and Bluetooth.
dedicated memory card slot.
base variant with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB storage which is good.

Cons:
Samsung cheaping out with no charger/cover/screen protector in box while competitors provide those.
5g on single sim only. Competitors provide dual 5g in even cheaper phones.
inferior UFS 2.1 storage is not good at this price, UFS 2.2 should be there.
only up to 3 fingerprints.
Buggy camera algorithm.
cheap virtual proximity sensor.
buggy camera light sensor.
Exynos 1280 chipset claims to be having 5nm lithography which is good on paper, but in reality, its efficiency is on par with some 12-14 nm chipset and it heats under general use. Also, I don’t understand why Samsung had to omit useful VP9 and AV1 codec which wouldn’t even have costed them more as they are royalty free and Mediatek Dimensity 920 with same Mali G68 GPU supports those codecs. This has resulted the phone to be not able to play 4K and 2K resolutions on youtube.
No HDR playback support.

Nice smart phone and user friendly .
With 2days battery back and getting 100% changer in 85 mins .