The Samsung Galaxy A27 lands with several key upgrades over the A26 — but one core feature has surprisingly gotten worse

• Samsung has announced the Galaxy A27
• This budget phone has a faster chipset than the A26 along with a refined design and an improved selfie camera
• However, it has worse water resistance and fewer megapixels in its ultra-wide snapper

Samsung has just launched a new budget phone, with the Galaxy A27 arriving to take the place of last year’s Samsung Galaxy A26. But while there are some worthwhile upgrades here, there are also at least two downgrades.

Most notably, while the Galaxy A26 has an IP67 rating, the Galaxy A27 is instead stuck with a lesser IP64 rating, meaning it’s less water resistant.

At least one of the cameras also looks to be a downgrade, as while both phones have a 50MP wide camera and a 2MP macro one, the Galaxy A27 pairs those with a 5MP ultra-wide, whereas the Galaxy A26 has an 8MP ultra-wide snapper.

Looking purely at megapixels, the front-facing camera may seem a slight downgrade too, as it's 12MP on the Galaxy A27 and 13MP on the Galaxy A26. But overall, this is probably actually an upgrade, as Samsung claims the new camera can capture “a wider range of brightness and richer colors” for more natural-looking selfies.

A faster chipset and smaller bezels

As for things that are clear upgrades, there’s a more powerful Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chipset, a punch-hole camera in place of a notch, and smaller bezels. The Samsung Galaxy A27 also has improved AI capabilities, such as multi-object recognition in Circle to Search, and more precise results from Object Eraser.

Beyond that, most of the specs are the same as last year, including a 6.7-inch 120Hz screen, up to 8GB of RAM, up to 256GB of storage, and a 5,000mAh battery with 25W charging.

The Samsung Galaxy A27 also runs Android 16 and comes with the promise of six generations of Android updates and six years of security updates.

It’s launching in the UK on July 3 and the US on July 14, starting at $349.99 and £319, respectively. We don’t have official confirmation of whether it’s coming to Australia, but reports online suggest it will also launch there on July 3, starting at AU$499.

It will be sold in black, blue, light green, and light pink, but not all regions will necessarily get all of those colors — we know, for example, that in the US, it’s only going to be sold in black.