Blackview has achieved great success and wide resonance during the last period, thanks to the leadership and efficiency of its phones and tablet in the market, which it puts on the market from time to time with amazing specifications and high capabilities, whether in accuracy or efficiency, in addition to its appropriate prices compared to other phones Most importantly, its commitment to building the latest in elegantly designed technology to deliver great smartphone experience for a budget. The latest of these devices is the Blackview A52 from the A-series. This phone is in the entry-level segment featuring a slim design, an octa-core processor, a 6.51-inch display, a 5,180 mAh battery, and a fingerprint scanner on the side. Here are our hands-on and first impressions of the A52.
Blackview A52 Features
- Doke 3.0 system Based on Android 12
- UNISOC SC9863A Octa-Core SoC
- 2GB RAM + 32GB ROM
- 6.5″ HD+ Display
- 13MP Rear Camera, 5MP Front Camera
- 5180mAh Battery
- Dual 4G Network, GPS
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Unboxing Video
Design And Build Quality
At first acquaintance, the Blackview A52 makes a good impression and has got a rendition of the entry-level phone design. The smartphone has a practical design with an interesting texture that fits comfortably in the hand and does not try to slip out, and the finish is extremely thorough. All of the parts have been superbly put together. As a result, the phone appears tough. All the elements fit perfectly, the materials feel reliable, and everything is fine in this regard. Despite its plastic frame, it feels super solid when you hold it in your hands. The edges, ports, buttons, and all the other exterior components have a precise finish, which further boosts the feel-good factor.
The design of the Blackview A52 is beautiful with some touches that make it look more eye-catching and more premium. it features a large screen on the front of 6.5 inches and a plastic body on the back with a length of 165mm and a width of 62mm with a frame that gives a kind of thickness of 9.05mm a wonderful feeling when held in your hand, despite its weight of 183.6g. If you ask me about the quality of the manufacturing, there is nothing to complain about it, because Blackview is always working to provide high-quality products to users all over the world at an affordable prices. So, The design and build of the A52 are very satisfying.
On The Front
In front of the device, you have a full screen of 6.517 inches takes 88.7% of the body. The bezels around the screen are neat, but with a prominent bottom edge. The notch for the front camera is classic Dot Drop with a 5MP camera on the middle of the top for taking selfies and video chats, which we will talk more about soon. What kind of glass is used in the Blackview A52 is unspecified.
On The Back
On the backside, you have a curve and clean panel from plastic with a premier look and came in three colors, Black, Blue, and Purple, we got the Stripe Blue color variant as you can see in the images below. what catches your attention is the island cameras with a camera setup and a flashlight, and all this with a rather bump that literally rises a millimeter above the body and an embossed Blackview logo at the bottom.
Ports And Buttons
As for the ports, the phone comes with a USB Type-C port from the bottom with a microphone, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and speakers. The buttons are, as usual, the power button integrated with a side-mounted fingerprint scanner which is surprisingly good at this price. Also the volume button, and the dual SIM with the memory slot.
Blackview A52 – Display Quality
The display on the Blackview A52 is similar to what you get with almost every other entry-level smartphone nowadays, with a 6.5-inch LCD with HD+ resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate with an aspect ratio of 20:9 and a modest screen resolution of 1600 x 720. Despite the low resolution and pixel density, the Text and graphic information are very legible. Not always perfect, but quite good.
The first thing that caught my eye was the colors on this display, which look more vibrant than you’d expect from an entry-level phone. Even the black levels are pretty good for the price, and that very well explains why the screen has a good contrast ratio and vibrant colors, and the content on the screen doesn’t look very sharp. But that’s what you get for the price.
While on a sunny day the screen does not fade and remains readable. Of course, this does not apply to direct sunlight. At certain angles, you can notice color distortion and a decrease in contrast, viewing angles aren’t great either. However, during standard work with the device, everything is quite fine and there are no issues. In short, with the A52, I will say that it’s one of the best screens in this category, you will get the best value for what you pay, a large and high-quality screen suitable for media consumption, whether you are watching video, playing games or browsing the social media.
Blackview A52 – Cameras
Rear Camera
The Blackview A52 has a single rear camera with a 13MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and an LED flash. That is typically what you get with any entry-level smartphone nowadays and maybe not be capable of capturing the details, colors, or ranges to produce high-quality images. So, you should not expect too much in terms of photo quality.
In spite of very basic camera hardware, the Blackview A52 manages to capture pictures with decent image quality, at least in daylight. The images look bright, vibrant, and quite detailed for the price. But, Low-light environments bring out the limitations of this camera. Although the pictures look bright, they have a really bad dynamic range and lots of noise. The level of detail is also low, which makes the image look soft and unimpressive. Suffice it to say, if you are expecting better camera performance then perhaps you should consider spending a bit more.
Turning on night mode helps the camera drastically. The phone manages to capture images with a much wider dynamic range, significantly less noise, a lot more details, and more vibrant colors.
Video Recording
The Blackview A52 can record videos at up to 1080p resolution and 30fps. Although that looks good on paper for a smartphone of this price tag, the quality of the videos is really bad. The amount of detail in 1080p videos is so low. The videos also come out very shaky and have poor colors and dynamic range.
Front Camera
Thankfully, the front camera of the Blackview A52 was in the acceptable range provided there is a lot of light. Selfies taken with the phone look bright and have a healthy amount of details. The colors look slightly washed out, but that’s something that other similarly-priced smartphones also suffer from. So, the A52 gets a pass here. The images taken with the front camera in daylight are certainly social media worthy.
But, selfies captured in low light have significantly fewer details and contain a lot of noise. But you have to keep in mind that other similarly-priced smartphones also suffer from those issues. Fortunately, the images at least look bright and have good color reproduction.
Blackview A52 – Overall Performance
If we talk about performance, then in normal use, the Blackview A52 is quite nimble and perfectly copes with daily tasks – messengers, mail, web surfing, social networks, videos, etc. As for games, given the characteristics, you should not expect anything spectacular. Although Asphalt 9 does run quite well, albeit at medium graphics settings, without friezes and any problems.
CPU Performance
Okay, let’s talk seriously, the phone has a Unisoc SC9863A processor, Although is not the most powerful chipset among low-cost phones, it is going to handle all the basic tasks including multi-tasking. But it would have been better if it was a MediaTek Helio G25 at least which is usually considered to be a very powerful option for an entry-level device. This SoC has been used in only unknown phones on the scene, the most famous are Samsung Galaxy A04 and the Realme C30s or even Blackview Tab 12. Before I tell you how this chipset performs in the Blackview A52, I’ll walk you through its specs to give you an idea about it.
For starters, it is built on the age-old 28nm fabrication process and doesn’t come with any high-performance CPU cores either. Instead, it uses eight Cortex-A55 CPU cores. That’s fine for a low-end SoC. However, what really bothers me here is that all the CPU cores are clocked at only 1.6GHz. I wish it was better and on around 2GHz clock frequency on at least four of the eight high-efficiency CPU cores.
Then there’s the PowerVR GE8322 GPU, for gaming, and graphics apps, but it depends on the type of game and its requirements, and sometimes there is a kind of delay, although it did not constitute an obstacle, and this is in games such as CoD mobile or PUBG. However, all you have to do is play on the settings Low, more than that settings, don’t think about this phone. which is weak but acceptable at this price point.
The Blackview A52 comes with 2GB RAM and 32 GB storage, and if that is not enough can be expanded the storage via a microSD card up to 512GB, and even RAM can be expanded up to 1GB RAM expansion from 2GB to 3GB without extra cost by memory expansion technology.
Those specs are a recipe for below-average performance, and that’s indeed what you get with the Blackview A52. Expect performance to be suitable for basic use, it’s an octa-core CPU, so you will be able to use it for calling, messaging, video streaming, lite gaming, listening to music, and so on, but don’t expect anything better as it’s a weak processor, some minor lags are seen while using the phone. Opening applications takes more time than it should. The phone stutters while switching between apps. Web pages load slowly. Honestly, You take for what you pay.
Playing Content
Playing the content on YouTube, was very smooth. You can play videos at a maximum of 720p at 30FPS without any problems or lag, And this is the highest quality you can get. Next, let’s take a look at the DMR information and Widevine security. I can tell you I’m a little disappointed with this because it’s only Level 3, so you won’t be able to get HD on Netflix or other streaming services. and this level maybe not be found on all budget smartphones without exaggeration. However, you can still enjoy Netflix and all other streaming services in 480p resolution.
Doke 3.0 system Based on Android 12
Blackview A52 is shipped with the 12.0 version, bringing new features like chat bubbles, conversation-prioritizing, screen recording, one-time permission, privacy dashboard, and some interesting customization additions with UI that has better gesture navigation controls, a dark theme, and contains most of the features that come with the system, the most important of which is the presence of all Google services, Making the tablet experience smoother and more personalized.
Doke OS_P 3.0 system based on Android 12 renders its extreme fluency experience and elegant UI interface that amuse you and saves you time and it is well appraised by users. This operating system is the fruit of the persistent effort of the Blackview software team to design a more customized and fluent OS for a more intelligent user experience. For example, Doke OS_P 3.0 comes with a bunch of self-developed apps such as Cold Room, and System Manager.
And for office workers and students, the good news is that A52 will be loaded with the WPS office set that will allow users to open word files, excel sheets, and powerpoints all in one app, improving the running efficiency of the OS.
Connectivity & Call Quality
Using an ultra-low-end and outdated processor has not only caused the Blackview A52 a great deal of loss in terms of performance but also its connectivity. While every other entry-level smartphone nowadays has Bluetooth 5.0, the A52 gets the age-old Bluetooth 4.2 version, because that’s what the Unisoc SC9863A supports. Bluetooth 4.2 will not only cause you audio latency issues with modern TWS earbuds but also lower audio quality compared to Bluetooth 5.0.
All the other connectivity options on the Blackview A52 work fine. The phone offered me good cellular network reception and call quality during the entire review period. I used the phone’s Bluetooth to play music and had no issues with it (apart from high audio latency). Wi-Fi reception had no issues either.
Blackview A52 Battery And Charging
Entry-level smartphones nowadays offer a great battery life. The Blackview A52 has a large 5180mAh battery pack as well as a display and a processor that consumes very less power. Yes, the processor is not as efficient as that of its rivals, but it certainly consumes less energy than mid-range or high-end SoCs, owing to its low clock speeds.
This is very nice for an inexpensive device and goes around 8 to 10 hours of screen-on time without any worries of continuous use for surfing the Internet, Google, YouTube, and following social media, of course, the time is less when playing games. And with moderate use, it will stay with you for a whole day on one charge it mostly takes about 3 hours to fully charge using Type-C with 10W charging speeds. However, I can say that the battery was not bad.
Final verdict
Blackview A52 is a good phone that has the potential to beat its competitors in the price range it belongs to. And it will be perfect for your kids that want to get a phone or as a secondary phone, or even for yourself if you are on a tight budget. So, it’s a good smartphone, and this is due to the experience that it will give you, given that it is a low-cost smartphone and the price does not exceed $80 with a stylish design and a fingerprint scanner, excellent battery life for most people, and a competitive price tag.
And all this does not mean that it is flawless because the cameras are mediocre, with slow performance making it only to perform basic tasks. but for an ultra-budget device, all these issues are forgivable. For this price, the Blackview A52 is a good choice and will not disappoint you.
Blackview A52 Price & Availability
Usually, better performance means a higher price, but not in the case of Blackview A52. The smartphone is now only priced at $78.99 on the Aliexprees. So, don’t miss the chance to snatch up at one. And to view its price or buy it, you can access the offer by clicking on the store icon.
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What’s in the Box?
- Blackview A52 Phone
- Screen Protector (pre-applied)
- Phone Case
- Type-C Cable
- Power Adapter
- SIM Tray Ejector
- Quick Start Guide
Blackview A52 Specifications
