Although it is a minor upgrade from the Galaxy M30s, the Galaxy M31 offers a healthy mix of design, features, specifications, and cameras. It still has a large screen and a high-capacity battery. There’s a quad-camera setup at the rear and it comes preloaded with Android 10. These upgrades are enough to make an otherwise good mid-range phone even better.
Design
The design of the Galaxy M31 is quite similar to that of its predecessor, the Galaxy M30s, most of the changes are on the inside. The phone still uses a plastic chassis and a ‘glasstic’ back. The 6.4-inch screen of the phone is covered by Gorilla Glass 3 for resistance from scratches and scuffs. The phone weighs upwards of 180g and is 8.9mm thin.
At the rear, the phone has a capacitive fingerprint reader alongside its rectangular-shaped quad-camera setup. The phone has a loudspeaker and a 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom. All of its buttons are on the right side. The overall design of the phone resembles most other Galaxy M series phones. It comes in Ocean Blue and Space Black colors.
Specifications
The Galaxy M31 comes equipped with the Exynos 9611 (10nm) processor, which is the same chipset that’s used in the Galaxy M30s and the Galaxy A50s. The phone also features 6GB LPDDR4X RAM and 64GB/128GB UFS 2.1 storage. There’s also a dedicated microSD card slot for further expanding the storage space by up to an additional 512GB. A 6000mAh battery separates the Galaxy M31 from most other Samsung and non-Samsung phones. It comes with support for 15W fast charging.
The phone features a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED Infinity-U display with Full HD+ resolution and 420 nits of peak brightness, which is great for watching videos, viewing images, and browsing the web. It has a dual-SIM card slot with LTE and VoLTE features for both SIM card slots. The phone also comes with most modern connectivity features such as A-GPS, dual-band Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 5.0, and a USB Type-C port.
Camera
A 64MP quad-camera setup is one of the headline features of the Galaxy M31, and Samsung has used a 64MP sensor (1/1.7-inch) as its primary rear-facing camera, while the other cameras include an 8MP ultrawide-angle camera, a 5MP macro camera, and a 5MP depth sensor. There’s a 32MP selfie camera at the front. The phone can capture 4K videos using both front and rear-facing cameras.
Other camera features of the phone include ab ability to record slow-motion and super-slow-motion videos, AR Doodle, AR Emoji, ultrawide-angle videos, HDR, Panorama, and Night Mode. Night Mode can be used to capture images in low-light conditions, and the special mode brightens images, reduces noise, and widens the dynamic range.
Software
The Galaxy M31 runs the Android 10 operating system with One UI Core 2.0 enhancements. The phone might get two major Android updates, which means those who buy the smartphone would most probably receive the Android 12 update on their phones in the future. The phone would also receive Android security patches every few months.
It is to be noted that One UI Core 2.0 is slightly different from One UI 2.0. While features like better UI navigation gestures, updated iconography, enhanced Dark mode, more detailed Device Care section, a smaller pop-up menu for incoming calls, and more are a part of the package, it lacks a built-in screen recorder and some other features that are a part of One UI 2.0. It comes with Widevine L1 certification so you can watch HD videos in Netflix and Prime Video.
Price and Availability
The 64GB variant of the Galaxy M31 is priced at Rs 14,999 (~$200) in India. The variant of the phone with 128GB internal storage costs Rs 15,999 (~$210) in the Indian market. The phone will be available starting March 5 through Amazon.in, Samsung e-Store, Samsung Opera House, and leading retailers across India in two colors: Ocean Blue and Space Black.
