Samsung Galaxy F54 Review: A rock

We used the Samsung Galaxy F54 as our daily driver for a week, here is our in-depth review.

After releasing the premium Galaxy S23 series in February, Samsung turned its attention to other price brackets. In the last few months, the company made new additions to the Galaxy A and M series. Next in line is the F series, which specialises in camera-centric smartphones with big batteries and affordable pricing. Samsung Galaxy F54 was launched this week at a price of Rs 27,999 and is available on Flipkart, Samsung.com, and select retail stores. We’ve been using the smartphone as our daily driver for the last week. We ran the device through a series of tests and extensively used the 108MP primary camera in different conditions. Here is our in-depth Samsung Galaxy F54 review.

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Table of Contents

The Galaxy F54 ships in a standard rectangular box with the smartphone, USB Type-C cable, SIM ejector tool, and some reading material inside. There is no power adapter or clear plastic case inside either. The smartphone does not have any protective covering on the display. You get two colour options for the F54 – Meteor Blue and Stardust Silver.

If you’ve been paying attention to Samsung releases this year, you’d have noticed a uniform design language across all of the products. Samsung Galaxy F54 is no different. The smartphone gets the all-too-familiar vertical array for the three cameras at the back. The Galaxy F54's form factor makes the best use of this design. Sure, it is entirely made out of plastic, but the material used here feels a cut above the Galaxy A34 (which is priced similarly). The curved back along with the curved edges give the device a nice in-hand feel. Galaxy F54's frame is sleeker than its A series counterparts. The plastic back panel is a bit of a fingerprint magnet but there's nothing a quick wipe of a micro fibre cloth can't fix.

The right edge of the frame houses the volume rocker and the power key. This power key also doubles as a fingerprint scanner. On the bottom edge, you will find the microphone, a USB Type-C port, and the speaker grille. The hybrid SIM slot has been placed on the left edge of the smartphone and a secondary microphone has been mounted up top. Samsung Galaxy F54 does not have stereo speakers.

The 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display is surrounded by slim bezels on all sides. The punch hole cutout for the selfie camera is slightly larger than what we are typically used to, but it is an improvement over the waterdrop notch any day. The Super AMOLED display has a refresh rate of 120Hz. It is extremely fluid to use and the touch response is absolutely stellar. Samsung rarely ever misses when it comes to displays.

Watching content on the Samsung Galaxy F54 was an enjoyable experience. The 1080 x 2400p display provides HDR support for apps like Netflix and YouTube. The image quality is sharp and the punchy colours bring the videos to life. We were satisfied with the viewing angles on offer. The lack of a stereo speaker does hurt a bit, especially at this price point. The Galaxy F54 does not get an IP rating either.

Powering the Galaxy F54 is Samsung's in-house Exynos 1380 SoC. This is the same chip that powers the more expensive Galaxy A54 (review). The smartphone comes in a single 8GB RAM + 256GB storage variant. On the Geekbench test, it returned a single-core score of 991 and a multi-core score of 2,551. In comparison, the Galaxy A54 scored 1,010 and 2,761 points when we ran the Geekbench test on it. Samsung Galaxy A34 (review) which sports the Dimensity 1080 SoC and is currently priced in the same range as F54 scored 734 and 2472 points.

Benchmarks don't tell the full story. What really matters is how the smartphone handles routine tasks and how far you can push its performance. In our daily usage, the Galaxy F54 delivered a decent performance. Shooting the odd mail, browsing social media, streaming movies, and other ordinary tasks presented no issues. The smartphone tends to warm up a little when it's used outdoors, but we didn't face any extreme overheating.

On the gaming front, the Samsung Galaxy F54 fails to leave a mark. We can cut it some slack since it is not a gaming phone nor marketed as such. While playing Call of Duty Mobile, we encountered frequent frame drops. Sometimes, the phone created a weird buzzing noise at the start of every round. We also faced some connection issues while gaming, although such instances were very rare. All these issues aside, the smartphone did not heat up a lot even during extended gaming sessions. If you’re only casually interested in gaming, the F54 is still a good choice.

While our gaming experience may have been lukewarm, the Samsung Galaxy F54 thoroughly impresses with its OS. The smartphone runs on Android 13 skinned with One UI 5.1. You get the full One UI experience on the F54 and not the limited ‘Core’ version. You will find features like Private Share, Maintenance Mode, and Secure Folder here. Still no Samsung DeX, as it is reserved for the flagship S and Z series. There is very little bloatware on the device, and you can choose to not install most of the apps while setting up the device.

The Samsung Galaxy F54 is equipped with a massive 6,000 mAh battery. While many are quick to brand this a 2-day phone, the Galaxy F54 still lasts a day for heavy users. With a Screen On Time of 5 hours, we were left with a 20% charge by the end of the day. Our daily tasks included an hour of gaming, two hours of social media usage, taking calls, and sending messages on WhatsApp. Upon more moderate usage (but similar Screen On Time), we went to bed with a 40% charge still left on the device. The Galaxy F54 supports 25W charging and takes almost two hours to fully charge.

Samsung's F series is all about impressive camera specs. The Samsung Galaxy F54 gets a 108MP primary shooter, an 8MP ultrawide lens, and a 2MP macro lens. Up front, you get a 32MP selfie camera. The 108MP can record 4K videos at 30fps but not at 60fps, due to the limitations posed by the Exynos 1380 SoC. The selfie camera can also shoot 4K videos at 30fps.

The main 108MP camera on the Galaxy F54 produces stellar results in daylight conditions. We were very impressed by the richness of the colours and the level of detail captured by the main sensor. The camera bins down to 12MP by default, but you can manually set it to 108MP for more detailed pictures. However, even with pixel binning, the results are fantastic. The camera exposes the subject very well and the image processing brings the best out of the images.

The 8MP ultrawide lens delivers a great performance as well. We were expecting softer images with this sensor, but it managed to surprise us. The images did not compromise the colour profile and retained a good amount of detail. We found ourselves using the ultrawide sensor a lot more than we do on other smartphones.

In limited lighting, the Samsung Galaxy F54 powered through and put out good results. We were happy with the way that the smartphone lit up the subject and processed the important details. There was still a fair bit of grain to be found on the images, but we didn't mind it too much. The camera app on the smartphone has a bunch of cool features to play around with. The ‘Fun Mode’ offers all the new Snapchat filters on the native camera app itself. Upon further exploration, you will find the Hyperlapse feature that lets you record the motion of the stars. Of course, it will require putting your phone on a tripod throughout the night.

The 8MP selfie camera performs pretty well. The camera does a good job of processing the natural skin tone and not messing with it too much. The smoothening effect on the skin has also been kept to a minimum, so the texture of the skin is appropriately reflected in the images. The Portrait Mode does a good job of separating the subject from its background.

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At Rs 27,999, the Samsung Galaxy F54 is a great deal. We really like the design, form factor, and in-hand feel of the smartphone. The display is fluid and bordered by very slim bezels. What it lacks in gaming, it more than makes up for in camera performance. Samsung Galaxy F54 will appeal to casual users that demand a good camera setup but aren't necessarily gonna push the processor to its absolute limit.

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