The Galaxy A53 is here, and it brings plenty of interesting features, even if most of them were already seen on the many Galaxy A52 models Samsung launched last year. In fact, the only truly new thing the A53 brings is Samsung’s new Exynos 1280 chipset, which is built on a 5nm process and is touted by Samsung as one of the best in its segment.
As we said in our review, the Galaxy A53 isn’t optimized very well for day-to-day use, with random stuttering that we didn’t see any on the Galaxy A52 models (which were powered by Snapdragon chips) and something we hope will get fixed with software updates. When it comes to gaming, however, it’s actually pretty good, at least in games that are already fully compatible.
The Exynos 1280 is brand new, and developers are yet to update their games to support it
But what about games that aren’t compatible? Yes, there are many of those at the moment since the Exynos 1280 is a new processor and developers are still in the process of updating their games to properly support it. And for that reason, if gaming is one of your priorities, you might want to wait a bit if you’re planning on buying the Galaxy A53.
For example, at the time of this writing, Call of Duty doesn’t let you select any graphical preset above the medium setting. And if you decide to play at the highest frame rate, you’re actually just limited to the low graphics preset by the game.
That is despite the fact that the Exynos 1280’s GPU is perfectly capable of running Call of Duty at higher graphics settings. And it’s all down to the fact that its developers haven’t gotten around to releasing the necessary update. The same applies to many other games.
Of course, there's a good reason for this. In fact, there are two: In addition to the fact that the Exynos 1280 is a brand new chip, the Galaxy A53 isn’t even on sale in most markets yet, so it’s not surprising game developers aren’t paying it any attention just yet.
But given the popularity of the Galaxy A series, that should change soon after the Galaxy A53 actually starts making its way into the hands of customers. And don’t worry, we’ll be keeping an eye on how popular gaming titles run on the phone in the next couple of weeks and update this article with our findings, so if you decide to wait before buying the Galaxy A53, be sure to bookmark this page and check back later.