Samsung Galaxy F62 first impressions: A little bit of everything

Samsung Galaxy F62 is here. It is the company’s second smartphone in the F-series, which debuted in India in October last year with the Galaxy F41. Samsung’s new smartphone bets big on performance with a 7,000mAh battery and its Exynos 9825 SoC. With the price starting at ₹23,999, it also aims at the mid-range segment, which of late has seen some attention by every OEM.

At the first glance, Samsung’s Galaxy F62 looks quite attractive with a shiny back panel that features a pinstripe pattern. As we have seen with several other panels with a glossy finish, it’s also a fingerprint magnet. You may need to keep wiping the phone from time to time to retain the original gloss, or you can just slap on a case on it.

With a screen size of 6.7 inches, the Galaxy F62 is unapologetically big. At 9.5mm, it’s quite thick as well. It also weighs over 200 grams but doesn’t feel cumbersome to use for its size and weight. It may be because we’ve finally started to use larger screens. For example, I’ve been using the Galaxy A71 which has the exact same screen size.

The smartphone has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor embedded in the power button. If you are used to on-screen fingerprint sensors, it may take a bit of time to get accustomed to the new system. The side-mounted fingerprint sensor unlocks instantly but might be a little hard to reach if you have a smaller palm. The built-in facial recognition is fast and has a useful option to check if your eyes are open before unlocking.

The phone is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the front, which feels a little dated in 2021 and Samsung could have probably included Gorilla Glass 5 support instead.

The front is dominated by the display with very small bezels, while the chin on this phone is practically negligible. The 6.7-inch Super AMOLED full HD+ display is sufficiently bright, and content looks good on the large display. The device is Widevine L1 certified and will play all your HD content without issues. When using the phone outdoors, the auto-brightness responds fairly quickly and the visibility is good with the light theme enabled.

The Galaxy F62 has a square-shaped camera array at the back, with a 64-megapixel primary sensor, along with a 12-megapixel ultrawide sensor and the phone takes shots almost instantly. Samsung’s camera interface has also packed in all the camera modes from its flagship phones - except Director Mode from the Galaxy S21 series. The phone also comes with a 5-megapixel macro camera, while the front of the device sports a 32-megapixel selfie shooter.

As said earlier, Samsung’s new F-series phone aims to offer superior performance. The 7,000mAh battery should theoretically be big enough to last you a couple of days or more on basic usage. The 25W charging is also a welcome addition. Another highlight is the Exynos 9825. You might be interested to know that the Exynos 9825 is the same capable processor that shipped on the Note 10 series, which means this phone should be able to handle anything that is thrown at it. Samsung is shipping this device with Android 11 out-of-the-box, and it comes with the company’s One UI 3.1 skin on top of it, with the February security patches. It also has Knox and Samsung Pay.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy F62 looks like a solid mid-range phone. The mid-range segment isn’t as crowded as the budget or the above ₹30,000 segment, so seems like the odds are in favour of the Galaxy F62 - the company has also included offers of cashback of ₹2,500 on ICICI Bank cards and EMIs. The success, however, will depend on how the phone performs in the longer term. We will be back with more insights on the Galaxy F62 in our detailed review. Until then, stay tuned.