Samsung's next big mid-range phone leaks with hole punch display and four rear cameras
Although Samsung described its Galaxy Note 10 sales as "robust" in the company's latest quarterly financial report, the mid-range Galaxy A family is widely credited with boosting overall global shipment figures in Q2 and Q3 2019 after a few quarters of decline.
Galaxy A-series devices have gone through a radical transformation of late, borrowing a number of premium features and design elements from their high-end cousins while also expanding their presence in key markets like the US. Stateside, the Galaxy A50 has proven particularly popular over the last six months, providing pretty great bang for your buck in both unlocked and carrier-specific variants.
As such, we're obviously intrigued about a potential sequel unsurprisingly dubbed Galaxy A51. This looks even sleeker than its "notched" 6.4-inch predecessor in a bunch of high-quality factory CAD-based renders revealed earlier today by Steve Hemmerstoffer, aka @OnLeaks (who else?), in collaboration with the folks over at Pricebaba.
A large hole punch display on a budget
Just in case it wasn't abundantly clear after the introduction of the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 families, the future of premium smartphone designs is... perforated. And while Samsung continues to work towards a more distant future of completely bezelless, notchless, and hole-less flagships with both in-display fingerprint scanners and in-display selfie cameras, the hole punch design will naturally expand to the mid-range segment and cover more and more price points as the screen-drilling technology becomes easier and cheaper to use on a wider scale.
We can probably expect most 2020 A-series releases to adopt either a hole punch or a pop-up camera design as the industry moves slowly away from divisive notches. Of course, the Galaxy A50 sports a small and largely unobtrusive screen cutout, but we're pretty sure you'll agree the Galaxy Note 10-style centered hole punch of the A51 looks better. Especially in combination with a tiny chin and razor-thin bezels all around a flat 6.5-inch Super AMOLED panel of an unspecified resolution most likely circling the Full HD mark.
At 158.4 x 73.7 x 7.9mm, the Samsung Galaxy A51 would be roughly as tall, wide, and thin as the A50, although a protruding camera bump is expected to increase the thickness number to 8.5mm around it. Nonetheless, this is a decidedly premium design that could be extremely accessible to the masses at a price point of around $400 (just an assumption, don't get too excited there.)
Four rear-facing shooters, an invisible fingerprint sensor, and a headphone jack
Moving over to the back of the mid-end handset as depicted by Steve H. today, we expect quite a bit of controversy around that L-shaped quad camera arrangement. Whether you like the look or not, you should definitely be excited about the actual photography upgrades prepared by Samsung compared to the Galaxy A50. That wasn't exactly the world's top camera performer, but with a setup purportedly consisting of a 32MP primary lens, a 12MP wide-angle snapper, a 12MP telephoto sensor with 2x optical zoom, and a 5MP depth camera, the A51 could absolutely shine in its price bracket.
Meanwhile, you probably won't be surprised to hear this (hopefully) budget-friendly bad boy will come with an in-screen fingerprint reader (just like the A50), as well as a 3.5mm audio jack (unlike the Note 10 and Note 10+), and a USB Type-C port (duh).
Other rumored but far from confirmed specs and features include a 4,000mAh battery (just like the A50), a reasonably powerful Exynos 9611 processor (just like the A50s), a 32MP front-facing shooter (also borrowed from the A50s), as well as at least 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage space. All in all, that doesn't exactly sound like a radical upgrade over the Galaxy A50, but if the price is right, it might be enough to capture the attention of cash-strapped lovers of "modern" smartphone designs.
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