Samsung Galaxy M30s review

Introduction

With pressure coming on from all sides in the mid-range market, Samsung is looking to better its rather successful Galaxy A and M lineups to be able to compete with the great all-rounders from Xiaomi, Realme and other Chinese manufacturers. And not long ago (at the beginning of this year), Samsung released its first phones from the M-series. And since 2019 is almost over, it's time for a hardware refresh because apparently, this is how we roll now in the smartphone industry. Hardware refreshes are even more common than the ones in the laptop/PC market.

And even before we begin the review, it's probably safe to say that the M30s poses a significant upgrade over its immediate predecessor. Almost everything has changed under the hood with the overall design and display staying the same. Which, of course, is a good thing because the screen was the centerpiece feature of the original M30. We were pretty happy with the performance of the 6.4-inch Super AMOLED panel on the M30 and we are pretty sure this one right here will deliver as well.

As far as the rest of the specs go, the M30s boasts a newer, more powerful and more efficient in-house Exynos 9611 chipset based on the efficient 10nm FinFET manufacturing process.

Additionally, the battery has been upgraded from 5,000 mAh to 6,000 mAh and the same goes for the cameras - more capable 48MP main shooter and better - at least on paper - ultra-wide camera.

Samsung Galaxy M30s specs

• Body: Glass front, polycarbonate back and side frame
• Screen: 6.4-inch, 19.5:9, FHD+ (1080 x 2340px), Super AMOLED
• Rear camera: Primary 48MP, 1/2" sensor size, 0.8µm pixels, f/2.0 aperture; Ultra wide-angle: 8MP, f/2.2 aperture, 1/4" sensor size, 1.12µm pixels; 5MP depth sensor; LED flash; 2160p@30fps video recording
• Front camera: 16MP, f/2.0 aperture
• Chipset: Exynos 9611: octa-core CPU (4x2.3 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4x1.7 GHz Cortex-A53), Mali-G72 MP3 GPU
• Memory: 4/64GB or 6/128GB UFS 2.1; dedicated microSD slot for up to 1TB expansion
• OS: Android 9.0; Samsung One UI on top
• Battery: 6,000mAh, 15W charging
• Connectivity: Dual SIM (4G), Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, USB-C; 3.5mm audio jack
• Misc: Rear-mounted fingerprint reader, no NFC

The Galaxy M30s is somewhat different than the rest of its siblings in the family. It's the only model from the series being released worldwide as an Amazon exclusive handset whereas previously, the M-series consisted of phones manufactured in India for the local market. And with the M30s out in the wild, Samsung is risking the phone cannibalizing some of the A-series sales because at first glance, the handset offers more while asking less in return.

It's no wonder the Galaxy M30s is the top pick in our Smartphone buyer's guide this year. And it looks as if the M30s rights all wrongs from the M30 and potentially fixes almost everything we didn't like about the first iteration. So let's dive deep to see how the phone handles in real-life use.

Unboxing the Samsung Galaxy M30s

The phone comes in a rather thin carton box containing the user manuals, the USB-A to USB-C cable for data transfer and charging and the charging brick rated at up to 15W. There's also a pair of wired earphones instead of a protective case, which you'd usually expect in a budget phone's retail package.

When it comes to look and feel, the M30 and the M30s are pretty similar. Given the price of the device, you can't expect premium materials to make it to the final cut nor can you expect a flawless design. Still, there are a couple of options out there built with glass, such as the Redmi Note 8 Pro.

Nonetheless, Samsung has made an effort to design the phone to stand out. And we are talking about the paint job. The fresh gradient that we received is called Sapphire Blue and has that summer vibe to it. It's pretty nice but fingerprints and smudges are fairly visible. Only at a certain angle, though, it's nothing you can't wipe off with your sleeve. The white model is supposedly better at hiding these smudges.

The back has gone through some small changes that are more than welcome. With the previous model, we had an issue with the fingerprint reader being a tad higher than it should be so users with average or smaller hands could have problem reaching it. The M30s fixes that with slightly lower fingerprint scanner placement. Also, the camera module is a bigger glass piece housing the flash as well. Maybe it's unnecessarily big as it holds the same amount of cameras as the old version but the good news is that it doesn't protrude and lies almost flush with the back panel.

On the front, there are no visible changes - the panel is the same, bezels are okay, the chin is a tad thick and the notch is pretty small and unobtrusive. No complaints here.

In terms of size and weight, the newer model is understandably heftier - 188g vs 174g and the M30s is also 0.4 mm thicker. Then again, it does offer a substantial increase in battery capacity (1000 mAh more) compared to its predecessor so in relation to that the increase in weight and thickness is negligible.

The edges around the handset are round and since the back is made of a whole plastic piece, there are no gaps or protrusions and feels nice in the hand. The round edges and corners help with the grip and the plastic itself is somewhat grippier than the usual glass sandwich designs nowadays. Another advantage of the plastic build is the rigidity of the material - it won't break when dropped but it would probably get scratched.

And as for connectivity, the SIM card slot is located on the left side while the bottom houses the USB-C connector and the 3.5mm audio jack. The right side is reserved for the volume rocker and the power button while the loudspeaker grille is right next to the connector.

Excellent Super AMOLED panel

We meet the same tall 6.4-inch Super AMOLED panel with 1080 x 2340px resolution and a small notch on the top. Samsung calls this design Infinity-U. We are expecting the same performance as the M30 screen.

The maximum brightness we recorded is 441 cd/m2 but when the adaptive brightness toggle is switched on, the controller can boost the panel up to 642 cd/m2. We find the Max Auto brightness comparable to that of modern flagships and it's enough to overcome the bright sunlight outside.

Display test	100% brightness
	Black,cd/m2	White,cd/m2	Contrast ratio
Samsung Galaxy M30s	0	441	∞
Samsung Galaxy M30s (Max Auto)	0	642	∞
Samsung Galaxy M30	0	437	∞
Samsung Galaxy M30 (Max Auto)	0	641	∞
Samsung Galaxy A50	0	424	∞
Samsung Galaxy A50 (Max Auto)	0	551	∞
Xiaomi Mi 9T	0	449	∞
Xiaomi Mi 9T (Max Auto)	0	646	∞
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro	0.347	460	1326:1
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro (Max Auto)	0.486	640	1317:1
Realme 5 Pro	0.273	512	1875:1
Motorola Moto G8 Plus	0.317	477	1505:1
Motorola Moto G8 Plus (Max Auto)	0.395	581	1471:1

Color accuracy in the default Vivid mode, however, isn't stellar. The average dE2000 is 4.9 with the maximum deviation reaching 14.1. The usual suspects are to blame - white and gray looks blue-ish and reds and greens are way over the top.

Switching on the Natural mode fixes all of the issues mentioned above. The average dE2000 falls down to 1.5 and the maximum is 3.8 - excellent results. This is definitely the mode to use if you are looking for accurate sRGB reproduction but honestly, Vivid looks better for day-to-day use.

Battery life

Expectedly, battery life on this thing is amazing. The efficient 10nm Exynos 9611 SoC combined with the humongous 6,000 mAh battery will probably be enough to last you through at least two full days of normal use. And our tests prove that the handset's battery endurance is among the best we've tested in the office. We got excellent readings on the on-screen and off-screen tests.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Samsung Galaxy M30s for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.

Unfortunately, though, we can't say the same for the charging speeds. The standard 15W charging brick provided in the box isn't nearly enough to provide juice for a decent amount of time. It took 30 minutes to fill up 0% to 21% of the battery. It's the unfortunate mix of slow charging and huge battery capacity that has resulted in this low number.

Audio quality

Moving on to evaluating the output from its 3.5mm audio jack, the Samsung Galaxy M30s put in a great performance when hooked to an active external amplifier. Its scores were excellent and the loudness was nicely high too.

The volume dropped to just above average with headphones, though and the output lost some of its accuracy. A bit of intermodulation distortion and a slight nervousness to the frequency response appeared along with an average-sized hike in stereo crosstalk. A decent showing for the class, but not one that will make you reach for your wallet on its own.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung Galaxy M30s	+0.03, -0.05	-93.7	93.5	0.0008	0.0078	-93.2
Samsung Galaxy M30s (headphones)	+0.17, -0.26	-93.0	92.9	0.075	0.248	-54.9
Samsung Galaxy M30	+0.03, -0.05	-90.5	90.4	0.0057	0.016	-90.0
Samsung Galaxy M30 (headphones)	+0.26, -0.20	-92.9	92.4	0.095	0.249	-59.1
Redmi Note 8	+0.02, -0.02	-94.0	94.0	0.0019	0.0067	-93.3
Redmi Note 8 (headphones)	+0.35, -0.26	-91.3	90.9	0.015	0.445	-45.4
Motorola Moto G8 Plus	+0.02, -0.01	-93.2	93.2	0.0017	0.051	-94.2
Motorola Moto G8 Plus (headphones)	+0.02, -0.01	-93.1	93.0	0.0035	0.037	-83.8
Realme X2	+0.03, -0.06	-92.6	92.6	0.0020	0.0080	-88.1
Realme X2 (headphones)	+0.30, -0.37	-87.2	91.0	0.0081	0.356	-48.4

Samsung Galaxy M30s frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.

Android 9 Pie-based One UI

It's been a while since Samsung transitioned over from Samsung Experience to the so-called One UI so we are pretty familiar with the new looks and features. And in this handset, One UI shines bright as the design is primarily focused on one-handed use and it's quite useful with this tall 6.4-inch display.

The notification shade, for example, brings down the quick toggles upon a second swipe down so it's easier to reach all the shortcuts with your thumb. All of the system apps and menus are designed the same way - most of the UI elements with which you can interact are within thumb's reach and placed in the lower half of the screen. The same goes for the Settings menu as well - when you open the general settings menu, you can bring down the upper rows down to the bottom for easier reach.

Home screen, notification shade, app drawer and recent apps menu

Anyway, one of the first things we've noticed is that the Galaxy M30s offers an Always-on display feature. This is one of those rare occasions where a mid-range handset packs the highly sought after functionality. It's found in the Lock screen menu and it doesn't offer all of the customization options the flagship models do but the basics are there. You can set it to be always on, or show at current time or show upon a single tap on the screen. The so-called FaceWidgets offer a few other options such as weather, alarm, music or today's agenda - they can be shown on the lock screen and on the always-on display.

General settings menu, always-on and FaceWidgets

The Display menu lets you tinker with brightness, blue light filter, color calibration and touch sensitivity. The usual stuff. Perhaps you'd be more interested in the system-wide dark mode toggle as well as the Navigation bar sub-menu. The latter lets you choose between the good old software buttons and Samsung's full-screen gesture-based navigation.

Display settings and gesture navigation options

A single swipe from the middle takes you back to the home screen, swipe up from the left summons the recent apps list and if you swipe up from the right of the center acts as a back button. Pretty straightforward. You can swap the position of the recent apps and back buttons if you are used to the other way around.

As far as biometrics go, the face unlock is decently fast and accurate but, of course, less secure. We have one small complaint about the fingerprint reader. The reader is of the cheaper kind and requires you to swipe your fingertip when enrolling one. It feels as if the scanner is fast enough to unlock the phone but the screen takes a bit more time to light up. It could be due to some software optimization or the chipset isn't fast enough to read the fingerprint data. One thing is for sure - there's a bottleneck somewhere in there and we've seen better fingerprint reader implementations at this price. It's not a deal-breaker by any means but it's something worth considering as well.

Fingerprint setup

If you feel the software sluggish or you are not a fan of animations, Samsung has put a neat toggle that reduces animations. The phone would feel speedier, although we'd like to note that the at no point the phone felt sluggish or choppy. We had a snappy and fluent experience overall with no hangs or freezes.

In the same Advanced features menu, you will find some useful gestures like lift-to-wake, double-tap-to-wake, smart stay (keeps the display on while you are looking at it) and a swipe on the fingerprint reader can bring up or down the notification shade. We found the gestures to be reliable enough.

Advanced features, gestures and motion

At the end of the day, if you are coming from a much older Samsung smartphone, you will find the newer One UI a lot whole different. It would take some time getting used to but compared to other custom skins of Chinese competitors, for example, Samsung's skin is considerably more mature in a sense. And there are plenty of features to go through with most of them being a rare sighting in this price range such as the always-on display feature.

Performance

One of the biggest, if not the biggest, upgrade the M30s has to offer over its predecessor is the chipset. The new Exynos 9611 inside offers better power efficiency than the old Exynos 7904 thanks to the refined and efficient 10nm FinFET manufacturing process. The new Exynos is should be notably more powerful as well due to 4x higher clocked Cortex-A73 cores ticking at 2.3 GHz and the 4x low-energy Cortex-A53 cores working at 1.7GHz. The improved Mali-G72 MP3 GPU on board should also offer better raw performance graphically-intensive tasks.

The M30s comes in two flavors, 4GB/64GB and 6GB/128GB and our review unit is of the first kind and features UFS 2.1 storage.

And here's how the chipset fares against the competition.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  6999
• Xiaomi Mi 9T
  6863
• Realme 5 Pro
  6106
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  5641
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  5566
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  5396
• Samsung Galaxy M30
  4188

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 9T
  2537
• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  2472
• Realme 5 Pro
  1913
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  1715
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  1530
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  1489
• Samsung Galaxy M30
  1311

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  1622
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  1334
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  1325

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  493
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  350
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  314

AnTuTu 7

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  224759
• Xiaomi Mi 9T
  211915
• Realme 5 Pro
  182765
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  152075
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  144574
• Samsung Galaxy M30
  101651

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  279355
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  180321
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  168699

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  29
• Xiaomi Mi 9T
  27
• Realme 5 Pro
  27
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  16
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  14
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  13
• Samsung Galaxy M30
  8.1

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  24

title="Chipset: Qualcomm SDM730 Snapdragon 730 (8 nm), GPU: Adreno 618, Display: 6.39″, 1080 x 2340 px" rel="tooltip">Xiaomi Mi 9T
24

Realme 5 Pro
22

Samsung Galaxy M30s
14

Samsung Galaxy A50
13

Motorola Moto G8 Plus
12

Samsung Galaxy M30
7.3

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  18
• Xiaomi Mi 9T
  16
• Realme 5 Pro
  15
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  10
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  9.2
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  7.1
• Samsung Galaxy M30
  5.2

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  14
• Xiaomi Mi 9T
  13
• Realme 5 Pro
  12
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  8.7
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  8
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  6.5
• Samsung Galaxy M30
  4.6

3DMark SSE 3.1 Unlimited

Higher is better

• Redmi Note 8 Pro
  2439
• Xiaomi Mi 9T
  2329
• Realme 5 Pro
  2253
• Samsung Galaxy M30s
  1477
• Samsung Galaxy A50
  1353
• Motorola Moto G8 Plus
  1128
• Samsung Galaxy M30
  645

As you can see, there are more powerful alternatives in the price range. The Exynos 9611 is more powerful than the Exynos 7904 inside the M30 and does alright most of the time. It still stuttered in certain game titles so if you plan on doing a lot of gaming you might want to look either at rivals with more capable chipsets or at one of Samsung's more premium offerings.

Upgraded main camera and new ultra-wide snapper

One of the biggest upgrades the M30s has to offer over its recent predecessor is the camera setup. The main camera gets a huge bump from the 13MP sensor to the more up-to-date 48MP unit paired with an f/2.0 lens. The sensor itself is also significantly bigger - 1/2" and has 0.8µm pixels. We've seen what the sensor can do in numerous other phones, but it all boils down to software optimization.

The ultra-wide snapper has also been swapped with a better 8MP unit coupled with an f/2.2 lens. The old one was 5MP, so we expect minor improvements overall. The depth unit remains at 5MP.

On the notch lies the same 16MP snapper with f/2.0 aperture and 1.0µm pixels.

Camera menus

The camera menu isn't new by any means. Swiping left and right switches between modes and swipe up and down switches between the back and the front-facing camera. On the top of the viewfinder you will see the general settings menu icon, the desired resolution (if you are in Photo mode or Pro) and the various filters and beauty effects. Speaking of the Pro mode, it lets you tinker with just the ISO, white balance and exposure. The shutter speed and the manual focus options are missing.

Camera menus

There's a quick switch for the scene recognition option, and it's turned on by default. You can also do that in the general settings menu, which gives you pretty much all the options you'd typically expect to be there. The setting we found to be pretty interesting is the floating shutter button, which is pretty self-explanatory but still not something you see every day.

With the camera settings out of the way, let's dive into the photo samples.

Daylight samples

We expected that the new 48MP sensor on the M30s would perform much better than the old one on the M30, and we were right. Somewhere between the better hardware and the refined software, the M30s produces excellent daytime photos, and we are hard-pressed to complain about anything.

Images look sharp, dynamic range is impressive, and colors are punchy. Okay, maybe a bit over the top compared to real life. Let's just say that the colors make the pictures look instagrammable. Also, the level of fine detail isn't amazing, but this is just us nitpicking. For a phone that costs €230, those are some nice-looking photos.

12MP samples

The photos by the ultra-wide camera, on the other hand, disappoint a little by being a bit too soft. However, Samsung did a pretty good job of making its output similar to the main camera's. The processing of the ultra-wide camera is pretty similar when it comes to saturation, contrast and dynamic range. Although, the latter isn't as good as on the main camera.

Ultra-wide samples

Color fringing isn't as prominent as on some competing ultra-wide cameras on the market, and the edge softness isn't a thing we consider to be an issue at this price point.

Low-light samples

When the light goes down, the main camera retains the good dynamic range and handles light sources very well. Exposure is even and accurate, and colors are punchy. Upon closer inspection, though, there is some general softness and visible noise, but those are somewhat expected.

Low-light samples in default mode

The interesting thing is that the night mode didn't do anything for those images. In fact, in some cases, the night mode proved to be detrimental to the photos. The night mode images turned out softer - granted, with less noise - but didn't do much for highlights and shadows. The active HDR algorithm in the standard Photo mode is doing its job. And when you consider the fact that the software crops the night mode images down to around 8MP - probably due to some processing limitations of the ISP - it's hard to recommend using this mode. You won't be gaining anything, just use the default Photo mode.

Low-light samples using Night mode

At night, the ultra-wide camera loses all of its advantages that we pointed out - the dynamic range is severely lacking, the colors are dull and contrast is non-existent. In addition, the softness that we observed during the day is more prominent with some added noise on the side. You will find it challenging to make a good-looking photo with the ultra-wide in the dark.

Ultra wide-angle low-light samples

Now let’s take the time to compare the phone to some of its competitors in a more controlled environment.

Galaxy M30s against the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 9T in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

Portraits are quite good given the price of the handset. If there's enough light, you can expect good level of detail and natural-looking skin tone. But when conditions are suboptimal, image quality deteriorates fast as you start to lose some fine detail and sharpness. Also, we found the dynamic range a bit lacking.

Portrait samples

But edge detection is rather impressive. Even with a more complex background, the software does a pretty good job of differentiating the subject from the background elements. It handles hair nicely as well, as long as the background is uniform.

Seflies

To be honest, these are not the best 16MP selfies we've seen. The detail is okay but dynamic range isn't the best around. Also, going for low-light selfies will result in soft and underexposed stills. Then again, you can't expect much from a midranger like the M30s and here's a tip: take a couple of selfies from various lengths because the fixed focus could be a limiting factor and we found that some of the selfies come out of focus.

Selfies: Normal • Portrait • Normal • Portrait • Normal • Portrait

Video recording

The Galaxy M30s is capable of recording 4K videos at 30 fps or 1080p videos at 30 fps. Additionally, the handset supports Samsung's Super Steady video recording that was introduced with the Galaxy S10-series, buy it can only be used at resolutions up to 1080p. Oh, and Super slo-mo is also available at 720p@480fps. Now let's get to the sample videos.

The 2160p footage we took pretty nice with punchy colors, good contrast, wide dynamic range while noise is kept well under control. The level of detail isn't impressive for 4K resolution but it's not too bad either.

The sharpness and detail on the 1080p are understandably not on par with the 4K footage but the overall rendering remains the same with good contrast, punchy colors and wide dynamic range.

Recording with the ultrawide camera is also possible but we don't recommend doing so. The video is super soft and with limited dynamic range.

And here’s a handy comparison to other rivals in a more controlled environment.

2160p: Galaxy M30s against the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 9T in our Video compare tool

Competition

As we've already established, the Galaxy M30s is not like the others in the series. It's the first "of its kind" to officially go outside of India and China and the upgrade over the original Galaxy M30 is so big that it's hard to just call it a hardware refresh. It seems like something more. It's closer to a full-fledged Galaxy A midranger than any other handset from the M lineup. Which brings us to the first alternative.

For roughly the same price you can find the Galaxy A50. Besides being arguably prettier, the Galaxy A50 drags behind the M30s in almost every possible aspect - performance, camera, and even battery life. They both offer large 6.4-inch Super AMOLEDs, though but don't be fooled by the cool gradient of the A50, the M30s is by far the more sensible solution.

Samsung Galaxy A50 • Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro

Price-wise, the Galaxy M30s is flanked by two popular Xiaomi-made phones - the Redmi Note 8 Pro costing a little less and the Mi 9T asking a little more than €250. But no matter which one you choose, it would deliver better overall user experience and build quality. Even the cheaper Redmi Note 8 Pro carries Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and the back, has a more reliable fingerprint reader, a better camera performance (mostly in low-light), and offers at least some form of fast charging. It fails to deliver the screen experience you'd normally get from a Samsung-made AMOLED, though, and battery life although excellent, doesn't even come close to the M30s endurance.

As for the Mi 9T, it may be a bit more than the M30s right now, but the extra bucks are definitely worthwhile. We are talking full-screen design with a comparable AMOLED, far superior camera performance, faster chipset, and faster charging. It's as if the Mi 9T is in a different class. And this is exactly the case in India.

A quick market research shows that the Redmi Note 8 Pro and the Mi 9T (also called Redmi K20 in India) are pricier than the M30s in India - INR 20,000 for the K20 and INR 15,400 for the Note 8 Pro. And since users in India are familiar with the M-series, having these specs, the M30s is a much easier recommendation. But outside of the country's borders, Samsung's contender has to deal with fierce competition.

Xiaomi Mi 9T • Realme 5 Pro

The Realme 5 Pro is another similarly-priced alternative for the Indian consumer ranging from INR 12,000 to INR 13,000 while beating the M30s in terms of performance and charging speed. The camera experience is comparable, though, and the M30s has the upper hand with far better Super AMOLED display and outstanding battery life. Since recently, you can find the Realme 5 Pro on the European market as well, and it turns out to be significantly cheaper than the M30s too.

Verdict

The Galaxy M30s proved to be quite different from its siblings by getting closer to the Galaxy A-series. It's one of the easiest recommendations to make from Samsung's low- to mid-range portfolio. Moreso on some markets than on others.

But no matter the region, the Galaxy M30s has some universally compelling selling points - good overall camera performance, outstanding battery life, excellent OLED screen and decent performance thanks to the modern Exynos 9611 chipset. We didn't have any slow-downs or performance issues at all, despite the rather heavy Samsung One UI.

Our only serious complaint is about the fingerprint reader's performance - it's slow and unreliable, which is unacceptable even for a phone that cheap. Capacitive fingerprint scanners are already super cheap and the technology has matured enough to be implemented in all price categories. Seeing this one struggling to meet our reasonable expectations is a bummer.

Pros

• Excellent 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display with an Always-On Display
• Outstanding battery life
• Much improved camera compared to Samsung midrangers from early 2019

Cons

• Unreliable and slow fingerprint reader
• The Night mode needs more work and the and the ultra-wide camera takes bad photos in low light

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