Design & Display

Design is, of course, subjective but if you like the looks of the Samsung Galaxy S20, you’ll probably feel the same way about the Galaxy A41. It’s a nice-looking phone that manages to hide its modest origins by borrowing design elements from its flagship siblings. Actually, the A41 is almost identical to the Galaxy S20 sizewise, and the main camera system on the back looks strangely familiar too. It’s a pretty compact phone that weighs just 152 grams.The frame and the back of the phone are made of plastic, but you could hardly tell by looking at the device or holding it in your hand. Samsung did a great job adding some premium elements to the design, namely the subtle geometrical pattern on the rear panel and a cool rainbow effect (it’s called Prism Crush) which fortifies the glassy impression.

Moving to the front of the Galaxy A41, we find a 6.1-inch Super AMOLED display with a delicate teardrop-sized notch in the upper bezel. Speaking of bezels, they’re pretty subtle on the A41, symmetrical on the sides and the top, with a tad wider chin at the bottom.

The display itself is excellent. Samsung has mastered the AMOLED technology and now these gorgeous panels have found their way into much more affordable phones. No corners have been cut here, as the display of the A41 is very bright, with accurate colors and balanced color temperature right out of the box. If you want a bit more pop, you can use the “Vivid” setting, and there’s also a color temperature slider to finetune your viewing experience. The resolution is 1080 x 2400 pixels, resulting in a crisp and detailed image.

Camera & Audio

The main camera system on the back of the Samsung Galaxy A41 consists of three shooters in a quite familiar setup. There’s a 48-megapixel wide-angle camera, an 8MP ultra-wide snapper, and a 5MP depth sensor. In good lighting conditions, the phone takes decent images but don’t expect groundbreaking detail or dynamic range.

There’s no dedicated Night Mode but a smart Scene Optimizer is doing some magic with the settings, detecting low-light conditions, people etc. Night shots are far from ideal with a generous amount of noise and not much detail, but considering the price of the Galaxy A41, we’re more than satisfied with the camera performance. Video recording is capped at 1080p, though, which is a bummer, but the Helio chipset takes its toll.

The 25MP selfie camera produces quite pleasant results. There’s a Live Focus feature that gives you the sought after bokeh effect, and when there’s enough light, the selfie shots display good contrast and detail.

The Galaxy A41 features a single bottom-firing loudspeaker, which, despite the name, isn’t very loud. Sound quality is mediocre and there is hiss and pop at full volume. Luckily, the phone sports a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and even using the bundled earphones results in a vast improvement.

Software & Performance

By now you must be wondering how Samsung managed to slap such an affordable price to the Galaxy A41. There’s one compromise that answers the question and it’s the chipset. We would’ve loved to see a Snapdragon mid-ranger inside the A41, but unfortunately, the Mediatek MT6768 Helio P65 is the main act on that stage. And its performance is quite a mixed bag.

Synthetic benchmarks aside, the Galaxy A41 sometimes feels a little lazy scrolling or switching between apps. It’s not the end of the world and, quite frankly, the MTK chipset tackles everyday tasks quite well. The 4GB of RAM is more than enough to handle power-browsing with a dozen tabs while the 64GB onboard storage is expandable via a microSD card slot.

There’s an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, which is quite slow at picking up your prints, maybe due to the mediocre chipset. On the other hand, Face Unlock gets the job done and if you want that extra layer of security, it is the better option.

On the software side, we’re talking about Samsung’s UI2.0 on top of Android 10. That’s a pretty sweet combo, and if it wasn’t for the occasional hiccups here and there, the Galaxy A41 would’ve offered a really nice package. But then again, expecting a flagship performance out of a €250 phone is not fair. The Samsung Galaxy A41 is not a gaming phone by any means, and if you want a device that will tackle graphics-intensive apps easily, you should look elsewhere.

Battery life

Even though the Samsung Galaxy A41 is quite compact and thin (only 7.9 mm), it boasts an ample 3500 mAh battery. When we take into account the modest chipset and the energy-efficient AMOLED screen, we should expect great battery life out of this device. And that’s exactly the case.

You can get two full days between charges with moderate usage or a comfortable day of heavy usage. The phone supports fast-charging and with the 15W brick included in the box, you can get from 0 to 50 percent in 41 minutes. There’s no sign of wireless charging but at this price range, that’s to be expected. All in all, the Samsung Galaxy S41 doesn’t disappoint in the battery department.

Best Samsung Galaxy A41 alternatives

Sony Xperia 10 II
If you’re on a hunt for a compact and affordable phone, the Sony Xperia 10 II is a great option. It’s around $400 but in return, you get an excellent AMOLED screen, decent battery life, 128GB of storage, and a pleasant design. It’s just a great package that more than makes up for the higher price.

Motorola One+ Fusion
If the budget is a priority, there’s the Motorola One+ Fusion and it costs just $230. Yeah, it’s quite heavy and the display is of the LCD variety, but you’re getting a huge 5,000mAh battery, a motorized pop-up selfie camera, a dedicated macro camera, and a strong mid-range chipset – the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730.

Samsung Galaxy A51
You can stay with the Samsung family and opt for the Galaxy A51. It has a bigger screen, faster performance, a dedicated macro camera, and costs around $300. It’s one of the best-selling Samsung smartphones and for a good reason.