Samsung's new Galaxy A16 budget phone with premium firmware support is available in Vietnam starting today, November 1, in both LTE and 5G flavors. Prices begin at VND 5,890,000 ($232) for the LTE model and VND 6,090,000 ($240) for the Galaxy A16 5G.
A few weeks ago, Samsung quietly unveiled the Galaxy A16 and A16 5G, sans pricing and release date details, in the Netherlands, France, and possibly other markets. The phone was also unveiled in India along with local pricing information.
That is when we found out that this cheap phone will benefit from a whopping 6 years of OS updates and 6 major Android OS upgrades, unlike any other budget phone we've seen before.
Certainly, this budget phone punches up, and there's even more to it than meets the eye.
First Galaxy A1x with a decent IP rating
So, aside from being the first in its lineup to promise One UI updates for more than half a decade, the Galaxy A16 is also the first to adopt an IP54 dust and water resistance rating, which gives it a bit of survivability.
Although the IP54 rating isn't enough to keep the phone watertight — hence Samsung does not recommend using it at the beach or by the pool — the Galaxy A16 is essentially splash-proof and can survive a 10-liter spray for 5 minutes.
More specs after the video
Samsung's new budget phone is equipped with a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED FHD+ display that is 0.2 inches larger than last year.
In its official announcement for Vietnam, Samsung didn't mention any details about the choice of chipsets. Generally speaking, the Galaxy A16 LTE features the MediaTek Helio G99 chip, and the 5G model is powered by the Exynos 1330 in some markets and the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 in others.
Either way, both Galaxy A16 variants feature 50MP + 5MP + 2MP camera systems and are powered by 5,000mAh batteries with 25W charging. They also have side-mounted fingerprint scanners and benefit from Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity.
