It is the season for affordable smartphones to duke it out among one another. We had Apple, we’re expecting Google, and Samsung just threw its roster into the ring. The Galaxy A-series is set to be refreshed next month. It starts with the Galaxy A36 starting at $400, then the Galaxy A26 at $300. The Galaxy A56 starts at $500 and will also get a bump, though there’s no expected release date yet. All three devices have “Awesome Intelligence,” which seems to be Samsung’s rebranding of Galaxy AI for its lower-cost devices.
The Galaxy A56, A36, and A26 all come with the same size screen, though they each offer a different tier of essentials. Each phone has a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate—not a standard spec at this price point—and a 5,000 mAh battery to accommodate it. All phones start with 128GB of storage. Samsung’s Exynos 1580 chipset powers the Galaxy A56, while the Galaxy A26 and A26 run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 platform. Only the Galaxy A56 offers 8GB of RAM, while the A36 and A26 are stuck with 6 GB. It’ll be interesting to see how Awesome Intelligence works, considering the flagships have all gone the opposite way in adopting more RAM to accommodate AI. Software updates are also locked in here; Samsung promises six years of support and Android OS updates.
The camera systems in the A-series all vary, but only bit by bit. The Galaxy A56 considered the “highest” tier of the trio, has a 12-MP ultrawide camera, a 50-MP primary camera, a 5-MP Macro camera, and a 12-MP front-facing camera. The Galaxy A36, starting at $300, has the same primary camera but is dialed down to an 8-MP ultrawide camera and a 5-MP macro camera. There’s also a 12-MP front camera. The Galaxy A26, the cheapest at $300, has all that except a 20-MP macro camera and a 13-MP front camera.
Awesome Intelligence
What exactly is “awesome intelligence,” you are likely asking yourself? It’s Samsung’s attempt at rebranding artificial intelligence for its budget lineup of phones. It’s good for Samsung to come up with a way to differentiate its product from Galaxy AI, as that sounds more “forward-thinking” than being “awesome.” Awesome Intelligence will let you use key Google Gemini abilities, like Circle to Search, including the new ability launched to the Galaxy S25 series that helps you identify a song. It’ll also give you access to Galaxy AI features like Object Eraser. Beyond a few other key Samsung features, like Nightography algorithms in the camera app, that’s about it. It’s enough Awesome Intelligence to make you say, “Awesome!” or something like that.
This is a slightly different approach from Apple and Google, which use the same processor for their flagship and lower-cost devices to offer parity of software across the ecosystem. Samsung chose instead to lean into where its manufacturing prowess remains strong. That’s why you’ll see killer screens and bigger batteries on Samsung’s budget-friendly phones. It’ll be interesting to see how Samsung continues paring down AI features from flagships to the lower-cost subset and what it will deem “essential” features for Awesome Intelligence.
