Samsung Galaxy M31 hands-on review

Introduction

The Galaxy M31 is the latest in Samsung's lineup of affordable online-exclusive smartphones designed specifically for Asian markets like India. The M31 is an iterative upgrade over the Galaxy M30s launched late last year and features mostly camera related changes to differentiate itself.

With the Galaxy M31, Samsung has swapped the 48MP camera on the Galaxy M30s for a new 64MP unit and has also added a dedicated macro camera. The 16MP front camera has also been replaced with a 32MP sensor. The new M31 also ships with the latest Android 10 out of the box. Apart from that, the two phones are nearly identical.

Samsung Galaxy M31 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 64MP, f/1.8 aperture; Ultra wide-angle: 8MP, f/2.2 aperture; 5MP f2.4 Macro camera; 5MP depth sensor; LED flash; 2160p@30fps video recording
• Front camera: 32MP, 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: 6/64GB or 6/128GB UFS 2.1; dedicated microSD slot for up to 1TB expansion
• OS: Android 10; Samsung One UI 2
• 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, FM radio

We reviewed the M30s recently and were reasonably happy with it. For the price, it was a good phone and offered almost everything you can expect in that price range. Of particular note was the massive battery capacity.

With the M31, Samsung's goal was to merely bump up the camera to 2020 standards. This means we get an even higher resolution main sensor on the back and the increasingly fashionable macro lens. Samsung isn't discontinuing the M30s, so you get to decide how much the higher resolution and macro photography matter to you.

Packaging

The Galaxy M31 ships with fairly basic packaging. Apart from the device itself, you get a 15W fast charger and a charging/data cable.

For a budget device, we can't really expect a lot but we would have liked to see the phone come with a protective case, which is pretty common for phones in this price range or even lower. The case is especially necessary considering how easy it is to scratch the plastic back of the phone.

Design

The Galaxy M31 has a pretty simple and minimal design. The front of the phone has the display going right up to the top edge with a notch for the front camera. At the bottom is a small chin that's not too distracting and serves as a place to rest your thumb while watching videos in landscape mode.

Samsung recently rethought its strategy when it comes to side buttons. The extra button for Bixby is gone and the volume button is now on the right above the power button. Whether you prefer this layout is up to you but we did find the volume buttons placed far too high up to be used comfortably. The only time they are easy to access is while holding the phone sideways. On the plus side, the buttons are firm and feel good to operate.

On the left side is a tray that holds two nano SIM cards and a microSD card slot. It's good that you don't have to sacrifice one of the SIM slots if you wish to use a microSD card.

The bottom of the phone houses the headphone jack, a USB-C port and a single loudspeaker.

The back of the phone houses the camera in the top left corner. The design is similar to that of the M30s but with an extra lens thrown in there. The camera cluster is the only major visual difference between the two phones. Next to the camera module is a fingerprint sensor, which, like the volume buttons, is placed a bit too high. Perhaps Samsung things people hold their phone in the middle, like they do in product shots, and not at the bottom supported by their pinkie finger, as they generally tend to do.

We mentioned in our Galaxy M30s review that the fingerprint sensor on the back was substandard. It required you to swipe your fingers to register your print and the phone took much longer to unlock than expected. The fingerprint reader on the Galaxy M31 is excellent. You can just tap the finger to register your print and the phone unlocks lightning fast with just the lightest tap on the sensor. It's good that Samsung chose to take feedback on the lackluster sensor on the M30s and implement a better one on the M31.

The build quality of the Galaxy M31 is fine. There is no dust or water resistance but the phone feels sturdy in hand. The plastic body also makes it more durable than glass phones. However, the plastic body also has a few downsides.

The back of the phone is a massive fingerprint magnet, especially on our black model. You can clean it but it never cleans thoroughly and it only takes seconds for it to get greasy again. The plastic is also soft so every time you wipe it it also picks up hairline scratches.

The other annoyance with the plastic is that the surface of the back is uneven. You can see this when light hits it and just gets warped. The plastic is especially bumpy around the fingerprint sensor and the area between the camera module and fingerprint sensor was also slightly raised on our unit, which doesn't look very pleasing. This is not a premium-looking device by any means and if that's something that matters to you then you will be disappointed.

Display

The Galaxy M31 has a 6.4-inch, 2340x1080 resolution Super AMOLED panel. Samsung likes to call this their Infinity U Display, due to the U-shaped notch at the top.

The display on the Galaxy M31 is good, if not perfect. Out of the box, it comes set to the Vivid preset, which has wildly oversaturated colors that throw color accuracy out of the window and makes you feel like you're on psychedelics if you are used to calibrated displays. We prefer to use the device on the aptly-named Natural mode, as it tracks the standard sRGB color space more accurately.

The display has good brightness and good legibility outdoors. If you leave the auto brightness turned on, the display can get even brighter than what the brightness slider will allow manually. At night, however, we noticed that the brightness slider wasn't linear in manual mode and at lower levels tends to ramp up suddenly with smaller adjustments, making it harder to achieve the correct brightness level if you're using the phone in the dark.

The viewing angles are adequate but not as good as what we see on AMOLED panels on more expensive devices. Even when viewed slightly off axis, the colors tend to lose their warmth as the reds in the image desaturate. The image also gets a very distinct green tint to it, most noticeable in the whites. This isn't easy to notice outdoors or in bright light but in the dark it's hard not to notice.

The display on the Galaxy M31 announces itself as an HDR panel in software, even though Samsung doesn't market this feature. YouTube and Amazon Prime Video apps switch to showing HDR versions of their content wherever possible but Netflix doesn't see the device as HDR. However, the HDR performance isn't good, not just because the display doesn't get bright enough for HDR but also because it lacks wide color support. Due to this, HDR content just ends up looking like SDR content, and at times even worse because it's dimmer. Samsung should not have set the screen to announce itself as HDR in software.

These issues aside, we were generally pleased with the display on the Galaxy M31. It's a great display for the price and most people would just be satisfied with the fact that they are getting an AMOLED panel instead of a LCD.

Software

The Samsung Galaxy M31 runs on Samsung's latest One UI 2 on top of Android 10. Our review unit came with the latest February 2020 security patch, which means at the time of writing, this is about as current as the software can get on an Android device.

Samsung released One UI 2 alongside Android 10. The latest version makes a host of changes to the UI across the OS, most of which are centered around improving the user experience and ease of use rather than just making things look different. As such, some of the changes won't even be noticeable unless you have been using the previous version for a long time or compare the old and the new version side by side.

User experience has improved considerably over the years and the latest One UI 2 is extremely easy to use with well thought out UI and feature-set. One UI 2 also incorporates all the new Android 10 features, such as the new permission options as well as some of the updated UI design paradigms.

One UI 2 Launcher

We do wish that Samsung would ease up a bit on the bloatware on these devices. While these things depend on region, our Indian review unit came with a bunch of pre-installed apps. Some of these can be uninstalled but others can only be disabled. One particularly notorious app is Facebook, which comes with three other apps that are buried under system apps. Even if you disable the main app, these other services will keep running in the background unless you dig around and disable them individually.

Samsung AppCloud

Samsung also has another app, whose whole point is to cajole you into downloading even more bloatware on your device. Called AppCloud, this app will keep nagging you after you've set up your device to install additional apps and you can't disable its notifications. You have to go through its setup, which involves giving it personal information which it then uses to recommend you groups of apps to batch download on your phone. You can choose to unmark all the apps and install nothing to finish the setup and it's only then does it stop bothering you.

We also noticed multiple Samsung apps offered to show us promotional content (read: ads). Unlike Xiaomi, these aren't enabled by default and you can deny them permission, after which you will neither see the ads nor get prompted about it. However, we wish manufacturers didn't indulge in these practices in the first place.

These annoyances aside, we really had no issue with the software on the Galaxy M31. Samsung has done a good job over the years balancing the design, features and usability of its One UI to a point where we think it's close to being the best software experience on Android and it is easily the best among the non-stock looking interfaces.

Performance

The Galaxy M31 runs on the same Exynos 9611 that we have seen on a few Samsung devices so far, including the Galaxy M30s. It's an octa-core chipset based on the newer but not quite the latest 10nm process. Our review unit also had 6GB of memory and 128GB of storage space.

The performance on the Galaxy M31 is decent. Most of the time the phone seems fast and fluid while scrolling through or switching between applications. Occasionally, however, there is some hitching and we also noticed animations stuttering while opening and closing apps. This is usually solved by restarting the phone but we hope Samsung fixes whatever is causing this issue. The UI was also noticeably stuttery when the battery got low, as the phone switches automatically to a low performance mode. Aside from that, the phone also takes quite a while to install applications once they are downloaded and performance when using AR filters in apps such as Instagram and Snapchat isn't great, either.

Multimedia performance on the Galaxy M31 is also decent. The single loudspeaker isn't ideal but it sounds decent and gets loud enough. You also get a headphone jack for wired headphones, which is always great. You also sort of need it on this phone because it also comes with an FM radio. Of course, you can always use Bluetooth headphones and if you have the Galaxy Buds or the new Galaxy Buds+ then you can also use Samsung's optimized scalable codec with them. However, if you have aptX HD headphones you're out of luck, as the Galaxy M31, like other Samsung phones, only supports aptX and not aptX HD.

The Galaxy M31 also includes Dolby Atmos feature. However, we can't help but feel this feature is half-baked. It does upscale stereo sound into the 3D surround sound that Dolby Atmos promises, but the device itself does not support the Dolby Atmos codec, which means you want watch files that already include Dolby Atmos audio track on this phone. You will get a codec not supported error while playing these files and then you won't have any audio.

We tested this with multiple Dolby Atmos files and none of them were compatible with this device. The Tidal app also does not support its Dolby Atmos feature on this device. Usually, when a device claims Atmos supports, it supports both, upscaling of stereo as well as actual Atmos encoded content but the Galaxy M31 just does the former.

Camera

The Galaxy M31 has a new quad camera system on the back. This includes a 64MP f1.8 primary camera with a Quad Bayer array (or as Samsung likes to call it, Tetracell). Next is an 8MP f2.2 camera for ultra-wide shots, which is identical to the one on the M30s. A new addition is the 5MP f2.4 macro camera. The fourth and final camera is a simple depth sensor for portrait images.

The Galaxy M31 ships with the updated Samsung Camera app that's part of the new One UI 2. The app is well-designed with a customizable and intuitive layout and a decent feature set, even for a budget device. The bottom bar to change camera modes can be customized to add or remove modes, and we recommend adding the macro and night mode here so you don't have to go hunting for them in the menu. The top bar also has handy controls for things like flash, timer, resolution and filters.

Camera app

We do, however, have some complaints with the app. First of all, the HDR option is buried under Settings, which isn't ideal. Granted most people will never bother with this setting at all but if you do want to use it, you have to abandon the viewfinder screen and scroll through settings to find it. Secondly, we would have liked the resolution button to just be a toggle to enable 64MP mode instead of also being an aspect ratio control. We never found ourselves adjusting the aspect ratio even once but used the 64MP feature often. Enabling 64MP mode also hides the option to switch to the ultra-wide lens. This means you cannot switch to the ultra-wide lens at all unless you switch the main camera resolution back to 16MP, which really makes no sense. Lastly, there is no zoom control on screen by default. The zoom presets (0.5x, 1x, 2x, 8x) only appear on screen when you pinch to zoom and promptly disappear. We understand this phone doesn't have any zoom lenses but if someone has to zoom anyway, it's easier to tap a button than to use two hands to pinch to zoom.

Photos

We will talk about the zoom more later but first, let's talk about the basic image quality. For the purpose of this test, we left the HDR mode to Auto and the Scene optimizer to On, which were the default settings. Both can be disabled from the Settings and the HDR can also be forced enabled all the time.

First, let's start with the

main 64MP camera. As is usual for Quad Bayer sensors, the camera by default shoots in quarter resolution, which in this case is 16MP. Image quality in daylight is good but not excellent. Color accuracy is good but there is a slight tendency to over expose. Dynamic range is decent by default without HDR but you'll rarely see it as the HDR is almost always on, even in Auto mode. The depth of field is also quite shallow, owing to the large size of the sensor and the relatively wide aperture. When shooting things up close, often only part of the image is in focus. While this is better aesthetically, it's also possible to miss focus if you're not careful.

Daylight samples - 16MP mode

Where we would have liked to see the camera do better is in detail. It's decent but not 16MP decent, especially when you consider it's being downsampled from a 64MP sensor. The problem is that Samsung tends to overcook its JPEG images, particularly with the HDR, which causes fine detail to be smudged and then oversharpened. The oversharpening causes ringing, especially in high frequency detail regions, such as grass or foliage. This is most noticeable when you zoom in or crop into an image.

Speaking of 64MP, you can shoot in the sensor's native resolution. Now, Quad Bayer sensors aren't ideally suited to shooting in native resolution due to their pixel structure, so zooming in 100% in a native 64MP image will leave you unimpressed by the soft and blurry detail. However, the images still pack far more detail than the downsampled 16MP files and if you intend to crop and reframe the shot later, it's far better to shoot in 64MP than 16MP.

Daylight samples - 64MP mode

Shooting in 64MP also disabled most of Samsung's post processing. It's not the same as in Pro mode, where seemingly all processing is disabled, but you primarily lose out on HDR and also the scene recognition. However, in many cases, we found the image processing on the 64MP files more pleasing and although the dynamic range was worse in some cases, the images look more realistic with less crushed highlights and ringing artifacts. Plus, there's tons of additional details, so for daylight shooting, we actually recommend using the camera in 64MP mode.

We were not thrilled with the way the camera handles zoom. Instead of putting the surplus native resolution available on the sensor and just cropping in, the phone instead upscales the 16MP images when you zoom in. This results in far worse looking images than if you just captured a 64MP image and cropped in manually. Unfortunately, most people won't do that, which is why we wish Samsung had implemented it that way by default.

1x • 2x • 8x • 64MP

In low light, once again we were more impressed by the 64MP images. Sure, the default 16MP images look better at first glance due to the enhanced color processing and dynamic range but the 64MP images have so much more detail that if you are willing to edit the image manually you are once again better off shooting in full resolution.

16MP • 64MP

The 64MP mode is really where the M31 trumps over the M30s. The default 16MP images are more detailed than the 12MP M30s images but it's really the 64MP images where the M31 shines.

The ultra-wide lens is identical on both phones. Once again, you are looking at relatively soft images with very little usable detail once you zoom in. You are really only using this lens for the additional coverage it offers and not for sharper images. The good thing about this camera is how well matched it is to the main camera in terms of color and exposure, at least when the subject filling the lenses are similar. However, since the ultra-wide can often expose additional areas, things such as the scene optimizer and HDR can occasionally change the color and exposure drastically from the main lens depending upon the subject.

Ultra-wide samples

Low-light image quality is even worse. The images are even softer and you can see the noise reduction algorithm had to try hard to keep things clean. The images are also darker because there really isn't much dynamic range to glean out of this sensor. Once again, you really need to crave that wider perspective to have to use this lens.

Finally, we come to the last usable lens on the rear, which is the new 5MP macro lens. Now, we aren't really big fans of macro lenses here as their value is dubious at best and the image quality often leaves a lot to be desired. So we approached the macro lens on the Galaxy M31 with some trepidation.

In terms of image quality, the macro lens on the M31 isn't bad. In fact, it's easily one of the best we have seen so far and doesn't make us cringe when we use it. However, there are some limitations with using this lens. When Samsung says macro, it really means Macro. The lens is usable only 3-5cm from the subject, which is really close. There's no autofocus so if you're a bit further away things are simply not in focus. This leaves a bit of a no man's land between the minimum focusing of the main camera and the maximum focusing distance of the macro camera, as the minimum focusing distance of the main camera is much larger than the maximum focusing distance of the macro camera. If you are in that range, you either have no choice but to move in closer or further away.

Macro samples

Getting that close to the subject also has problems. For one, you tend to cast shadow on the subject when you're that close. This makes the subject darker and less photogenic. You can use the flash, which in macro mode is permanently on as a lamp rather than a flash, but it looks far too unnatural and because you're so close to the subject, the light looks like it's coming from further away rather than where the lens is. If you're photographing a glossy subject, then you just have your own reflection on the subject and no amount of angling can fix that when you're this close. Lastly, 5MP is not really an impressive or usable resolution and you could very well just shoot from a distance from the main camera and crop in, which will also take care of the shadow and reflection issues.

All of this again puts the macro lens' usability in the dubious category. It's not unusable and can work quite well in some niche situations, especially since the actual image quality isn't terrible. But to have an entire camera dedicated to these niche situations seems wasteful. Oh well, at least the depth sensor now has some company in the category of relatively pointless cameras.

Videos

The video quality on the Galaxy M31 is decent. You can shoot in full 4K resolution at 30fps but that results in losing digital image stabilization. The image quality is good but the lack of stabilization and the jerky autofocus snapping can be distracting.

The 1080p video is the best option overall. You lose some of the detail and resolution but the image quality is still good and the stabilization helps out a lot.

The Galaxy M31 also has Samsung's Super Steady mode, which shoots using the ultra-wide lens and a heavy crop to get super stable footage. However, as we have already established, the ultra-wide camera on this phone isn't really good at all, so while you do get stable footage, the image quality takes a big hit and isn't really usable.

The phone also supports slow motion and super slow motion modes. The super slow motion mode mostly works well and has good image quality but the video does have some stuttering occasionally. The regular slow motion wasn't usable on our device; for whatever reason, it was stuttering a lot while capturing and in the final video. We restarted the device and tried again but it didn't help. The phone also doesn't support 60fps recording at any resolution so you can't even slow down that to get slow motion videos.

Battery

Like the Galaxy M30s, the Galaxy M31 comes with a massive 6000mAh battery. We already have battery life numbers in our Galaxy M30s review, which you can refer to for more details, as the two phones are basically identical.

To summarize the results, the battery life on the Galaxy M31 is terrific. During our initial testing, we spent an entire day using the phone and even after 24 hours since charging the device, the phone still had 24% left in the tank. It is genuinely difficult to kill the battery on this phone within a day and with more frugal use you should even be able to get through two days of use on a single charge.

When it comes to charging, the Galaxy M31 is in no hurry. The phone ships with a 15W charger, which supports Samsung's Fast Charge standard, although the phone can also fast charge from Qualcomm Quick Charge or USB Power Delivery chargers. Unfortunately, regardless of the charger, the phone can only accept up to 15W of power, so you can't really charge it any faster, even if you have a faster charger lying around.

The charging is relatively slow. 30 minutes of charging gives you about 21% of charge from 0%. After an hour, you're only at about 40% charge. A full charge takes in excess of two and a half hours.

It's clear then that this is not a particularly fast charging phone. Even if you consider the fact that the phone has a larger battery than most other phones in this price range, the other phones tend to charge a lot more in the same amount, which means they end up giving you more usable power at the end of a quick 30 minute charge.

The M31's strength is in the sheer capacity of its battery. For charging, we recommend you do it overnight. Samsung also provides a handy option to disable fast charging to reduce stress on the battery, which is a recommended option if you only charge overnight and don't require it to charge quickly.

Conclusion

The Galaxy M31 is a well-made device with a good, usable feature set and good performance. We were impressed by the overall quality of the display, the performance, the software experience and especially the terrific battery life. The 64MP camera also takes good quality pictures and this is one of those rare times where we do recommend people shoot in the full native resolution at all times.

What we weren't so impressed by was the somewhat plasticky look and feel, especially in a market saturated with glass bodies. While more durable in case of a fall, the plastic body on the M31 is an absolute fingerprint magnet and also gets scratched very easily, mostly while simply cleaning the device. The impressive 64MP camera on the back is also outnumbered by its lackluster siblings, whether it's the soft and mediocre ultra-wide lens or the largely useless macro and depth cameras. UI performance was also spotty at times and is in need of further optimization.

Despite these flaws, we did enjoy our time with the Galaxy M31 and would recommend it as one of the options to consider when purchasing a phone in this price range.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: