Samsung's cheapest 5G smartphone gets a release date (Updated: Oct. 12)

Update: October 12, 2020 (5:36 AM ET): Samsung has announced the UK price and availability details for the Galaxy A42 5G. The phone will cost £349 (~$454) and will become available starting November 6.

Samsung has also confirmed that the Galaxy A42 5G houses the Snapdragon 750G chipset and is its most affordable 5G phone to date. This was the one detail that was missing from Samsung’s previously released infographic about the phone. The 5G SoC was announced just last month and claims to deliver a 20% performance bump over the Snapdragon 730G that powers phones like the Google Pixel 4a and POCO X2.

Samsung has already confirmed all the other specs of the Galaxy A42 5G. You can read about them in the original article below.

Original article: October 9, 2020 (2:47 AM ET): Samsung confirmed the existence of the Galaxy A42 5G in early September but shared little details about its price, specs, or availability. Now, an infographic from Samsung has shed light on the phone’s credentials.

Upfront, the Galaxy A42 5G features a 6.6-inch HD+ AMOLED display with a notch. It’s one of the bigger Galaxy A devices in the lineup, measuring 164mm long and nearly 9mm thick. It’ll weigh down your pocket by 190 grams, too.

Internally, Samsung’s going with an unnamed octa-core CPU with two 2.2GHz cores and six 1.8GHz cores. The cores or architecture aren’t mentioned so we can’t confirm the exact chipset used in this device. It’s possible Samsung could employ the Snapdragon 750G, as it fits the clock speeds and core arrangement mentioned. Either way, the phone will arrive in 4GB, 6GB, or 8GB RAM varieties. This is mated to 128GB of storage with a microSD card slot, too.

What else should you expect?

A quad rear camera array hosts a 48MP f/1.8 primary camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide snapper, a 5MP depth sensor, and a 5MP macro snapper. A 20MP sensor is in charge of selfie shots.

Finally, to keep it juiced while buzzing along on high-speed networks, the Galaxy A42 5G sports a 5,000mAh battery with 15W fast charging.

Prism Dot Black, Prism Dot Gray, and Prism Dot White are the colorways on option, with all three flaunting that four-tone horizontal stripe design.

Samsung’s infographic doesn’t shed any additional light on US availability, but it’s likely this device will be Samsung’s cheapest 5G model available when it launches.

In a press release put out by Samsung Germany in September, we know the Galaxy A42 5G will retail for €369 (~$437) when it releases in Europe in November. This makes it cheaper than the current lowest-priced Samsung 5G phone — the Galaxy A51 5G — which starts at $500.

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