Samsung Galaxy M51 Review — Brilliant display and long battery life

[Tahirbhat]

Samsung launched the Galaxy M51 smartphone in the ‘M Series’ in India last month, soon after the launch of M31s. This comes with the same cameras as the M31s, but has a larger 6.7-inch Infinity-O AMOLED display, replaces Exynos 9611 with the Snapdragon 730G and has whopping 7000mAh battery with support for 25W fast charging. Specifications look great on paper. Is the phone worth the price? Let us dive into the review to find out.

• Samsung Galaxy M51 8GB RAM, 128GB storage version in Electric Blue colour
• 2-pin 25W charger with Adaptive Fast Charging (5V-2A/9V-1.67A/12V-2.1A)
• USB Type-C to Type-C Cable
• Quick Start Guide and Warranty information

Display, Hardware and Design

The phone comes with a 6.7-inch Full HD+ Infinity-O Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1080×2400 pixels at about 392 PPI, aspect ratio of 20:9. The display looks bright, thanks to 420 nits brightness, offers good color reproduction and the sunlight legibility is good as well. Since it has an AMOLED panel, it offers true blacks. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

Similar to the other Samsung phones, there is Blue light filter that is said to reduce eye strain by limiting the amount of blue light emitted by the screen, You can set it for sunrise to sunset and also set a custom schedule. You can change font size and style and select apps that you want to use in the full screen aspect ratio. There is also dark mode, which looks great on the AMOLED screen. The phone doesn’t have DC dimming or low brightness anti-flicker mode that is present in some AMOLED screen phones in the price range. I didn’t notice any screen flicker issues in low brightness on the phone

It doesn’t have notification LED, but there is Always on display with tap to show option that shows the AOD screen for 10 seconds after you tap the screen. You can also set a schedule. There are a lot of options to choose from such as clocks, GIF or you can download any AOD from Themes section.

On the top, there is an 32-megapixel camera in the tiny punch-hole and the earpiece is present on the top edge. Even though it has the same 32-megapixel sensor as the M31s, the punch-hole is slightly bigger, but it is not intrusive. There is also a tiny space in the top left corner for the proximity sensor and the phone also has an ambient light sensor. It has gyroscope and magnetic sensor, otherwise known as magnetometer for VR. There is a small chin below the screen.

The phone has shiny plastic frame which attracts fingerprints, but it is not slippery. On the right side, there is a fingerprint sensor, which doubles up as a power button, just below the volume rockers. On the left side there is a single tray that houses dual nano SIM slots and a microSD card slot that accepts cards up to 512GB. At the bottom, there is a 3.5mm audio jack, USB Type-C port, loudspeaker grill and the primary microphone.

On the back, there is a quad camera module arranged in a rectangular array. There is single LED flash next to the camera module. Even though the phone has a huge 6.7-inch screen, it is compact to hold. It is 9.5mm thick slightly thicker than the 9.3mm M31s and weighs 213 grams, compared to 203g M31s. The glasstic back attracts fingerprints and is also prone to scratches with day-to-day use, but it is not as bad as earlier M series phones. It is recommended to get a case since Samsung doesn’t provide one in the box. The overall the build quality is decent, but it can’t be compared to some Samsung’s A series phones that have a glass back. It is not splash resistant like some phones in the price range.

It has a 64-megapixel rear camera with Sony IMX682 sensor, 0.8μm pixel size and f/1.8 aperture, compared to Samsung GW1 ISOCELL Bright sensor in the predecessor. The secondary camera is now a 12-megapixel ultra-wide sensor, compared to 8-megapixel ultra-wide lens in the M31. The 5-megapixel depth sensor and a 5-megapixel macro sensor with f/2.2 aperture is retained. The phone has a 32-megapixel camera on the front with Sony IMX616 sensor with f/2.2 aperture. There is Live Focus that makes use of the 5-megapixel depth sensor. You can also adjust the bokeh effect before or after the shot. There is selfie portrait option for the front camera that uses software to blur the background. There is also a wide-angle option for the front camera.

It has Auto mode, Food, Night, Panorama, Macro, Pro, Live Focus, Super Slow-mo, Slow motion and Hyperlapse as well as Pro mode to adjust ISO, shutter speed, focus, white balance and exposure manually. You can choose 64MP option from the aspect ratio settings on the top. It also has AR stickers that lets you add stickers. It also has scene optimizer, which is AI mode that automatically detects modes and you can also enable auto HDR option. There is Single Take feature that takes 7 photos and 3 videos with a tap for up to 10 seconds footage. The phone has full Cam2API support and there is also RAW support since it is powered by Snapdragon SoC.

Coming to the image quality, daylight shots are good, and the camera captures a good amount of detail, creates well exposed photos with good dynamic range and detailing, and dynamic range can further be improved enabling HDR mode from the settings, which automatically turns on HDR when needed. Even though the phone has a 64-megapixel sensor, the final output has 16-megapixel resolution, which is common in phones with large sensors. Autofocus speeds are fast and accurate. Ultra-wide shots from the 12MP camera is good in daylight. Even though the edges look a bit curved due to the ultra-wide lens, ‘Shape Correction’ is automatically applied that automatically crop the edges, still some images look a bit curved at the corners, which is common in wide-angle lenses.

Macro shots from the main camera is good, and there is a dedicated macro camera mode, but there is no touch to focus option in this mode since it is fixed focus, so you have to keep it in 5cm distance. Live focus is good at detecting the edges. Low-light performance is good, which can be improved further with Night mode that offers more details, but you need to keep your hand steady, since it takes two to three seconds to process. However, images shot using night mode are zoomed, and are captured in 8-megapixel resolution compared to 16-megapixel. 64-megapixel shots have good amount of details, but the colours are not vibrant, and the images are about 10 to 12MB in size. Images with flash is good and is not overpowering.

The 32-megapixel front camera is good in most cases. Wide-angle mode takes images in 12-megapixel resolution after pixel binning, while the normal mode takes images in 8-megapixel. Software blur in the live focus mode doesn’t have good edge detection which is common in most phones with a single camera.

It can record videos at maximum 4K resolution at 30 fps from both front and rear cameras. There is also 1080p 30fps both in main and wide-angle camera, but there is no 1080p 60fps option. It can shoot slow motion at 720p at 480fps and there is also super slow motion, which shoots an 8-second video with 6 seconds of slow motion, and also lets you add custom music for the slow motion part. You can also enable EIS for 1080p videos. Video quality is good, and the audio crisp since it has a secondary microphone.

https://www.fonearena.com/blog/325896/samsung-galaxy-m51-review.html/amp

[Tahirbhat]

in settings. there is option device care, optimise that.

[CT-BLZ]

does it have the PWM screen flickering issue as all AMOLEDs in M series, when dimmed?

Are you all aware that Samsung implemented the cheapest way to dim the AMOLED screens?
They do it via Pulse Width Modulation PWM: basically the display is switched on and off in a certain frequency to reduce brightness.  175-225 Hz is the frequency... it's unbelievable how they endanger our well being with this cheap trick - the health of our eyesight and brain is on the line!
see 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Why-Pulse-Width-Modulation-PWM-is-such-a-headache.270240.0.html

[animeshmodi]

But no ca

[Anonymous]

Samsung