Samsung Galaxy M31: Huge battery, upgraded camera
<br>Galaxy M31 is the newest addition to the popular Galaxy M series. Till date, the company has launched six models — Galaxy M10, M20, M30, M40, M10s and M30s — under the M series in 2019.
With a completely new design, Galaxy M31 comes with 64MP quad-camera, 6000mAh battery and company’s signature Infinity-O Super AMOLED display.
The new Galaxy M31 comes in two memory variants, (6GB+64GB) priced at Rs 15,999 as well as (6GB+128GB) for Rs 16,999 and available in two colours, ‘Ocean Blue’ and ‘Space Black’.
With the massive battery unit and upgraded camera setup, the Galaxy M31 can be the best option for the ones who love spending most of their time using a smartphone.
We reviewed the (6GB+128GB) ‘Space Black’ colour variant. Let’s see how it fared.
Like its successor M30s, the Galaxy M31 houses 6,000mAh mega monster battery. As smartphone user hates the low battery sign this device aims to deliver a two-day battery life on a single charge.
In terms of design, battery and cameras, this device has ticked all the right boxes.
On the backside of the device, there’s rectangular camera block with quad-camera setup on the rear’s top left corner and a fingerprint sensor at the centre back, which worked well.
It features an advanced 64MP main camera, 8MP Ultra Wide lens along with the 123-degree field of view making, 5MP Macro lens for close-up shots and 5MP depth camera for portrait shots with live focus.
While using features like, Photo, Live Focus, Video, Slow-mo, Super Slow-mo, Pro, Panorama and Night and Food, the camera produced good and sharp images. As the device captured detailed images in bright light, however, in low light photography, the images produced were not sharp.
The device offers video capability with 4K recording, hyper-lapse, slow-mo and super-steady modes. While recording videos, the device did produce some good videos.
Despite packing in a mega battery, the smartphone is just 8.9mm thick and weighs only 191 grams, making it lightweight and comfortable to grip.
While the right edge of the device has the volume rocker and power buttons, the left one hosts a dual-SIM slot.
The lower edge of the phone houses a 3.5mm headphone jack, primary microphone, USB Type-C port, and speaker.
On the front, the M31 has a punch-hole camera in the top centre of the screen with a 6.4-inch FullHD+ AMOLED display and has a Gorilla Glass 3 for protection.
The smartphone offers 32MP front camera and also supports 4k video recording and slow-mo selfies. The front camera managed to capture decent selfies in the proper light but lacked in low lights.
Powered by Exynos 9611 chipset, the device comes with Samsung’s own UI 2.0, on top of Android 10 OS.
The device performed smoothly during daily usage, daily apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram worked well.
Thanks to the 6000mAh battery, the smartphone comfortably lasted for over three days on normal usage.
With the massive battery, the smartphone offered decent performance. Basic tasks like playing games, watching videos, switching between apps, using multiple social media applications were smooth.
While playing games like PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty, we didn’t find any problem. The Galaxy M31 ran without glitch or slowdown. The quality of graphics while gaming was also good.
Conclusion: We did not find any major flaw in the Galaxy M31. With a huge battery and quad-camera, this device can be a good choice for youths. Like the M30s, the M31 is capable of creating a distinguished place.
(Bharat Upadhyay can be reached at bharat.u@ians.in)
–IANS<br>bu/wh/dpb
