Samsung is bringing the $200 Galaxy A16 phone and the $60 Galaxy Fit 3 fitness tracker to the United States, with the A16 getting six years of updates. This makes the Galaxy A16 one of the lowest-cost phones to get a software and security update commitment longer than five years, which could be a benefit for someone looking to buy a simple phone that will be updated.
Samsung’s Galaxy A16 has already been released in other territories, but it’ll start selling in the US on Jan. 9, according to the company’s Thursday announcement. The phone costs £129 in the UK and AU$349 in Australia. This year’s phone gets a slight refresh over last year’s A15, including a larger 6.7-inch display (compared with the A15’s 6.5-inch display) with a 90Hz refresh rate. It’ll also move to using Samsung’s own Exynos 1330 processor, instead of a Mediatek processor like the one the Galaxy A15 included.
The Galaxy A16 appears to have a similar camera system to the A15, including a 50-megapixel wide lens, a 5-megapixel ultrawide, a 2-megapixel macro lens and a 13-megapixel front-facing camera. Also carrying forward from last year will be a 25W wired charging speed, a 5,000mAh battery and 128GB of storage alongside 4GB of RAM. A microSD card slot allows for expanding storage up to 1.5TB.
The Galaxy A16 continues Samsung’s line of entry-level handsets, which are among the most popular phones sold in the states. Last year’s Galaxy A15 ranks as the fifth best-selling smartphone in the US as of Sept. 2024, according to research firm Counterpoint Research, behind four of Apple’s iPhone models. In my Galaxy A15 review, I was particularly impressed by the promise of four years of software updates and five years of security updates, but I did find the phone to run slowly. We’ll have to test the Galaxy A16 to see if its new Exynos 1330 processor can speed things up, but the promise of a longer software and security update window does set a new support standard among phones in the $200 price range.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy Fit 3 fitness tracker is being touted as a lower-cost, simpler way of tracking fitness and health than the $300 Galaxy Watch 7 or $650 Galaxy Watch Ultra. Samsung said the Fit 3 is rated for 13 days of battery life and includes exercise and sleep tracking along with an always-on display option and 100 digital watch faces.
Source: CNET
