So, you’ve decided to get one of Samsung’s popular A3X midrangers and are now wondering whether to spring for the new Galaxy A36 model or stick with last year’s Galaxy A35? It’s a fair question since the two phones offer a similar experience.

In the States, the Galaxy A36 costs as much as the A35 so getting the newer model is really a no-brainer. In the EU, the situation is almost the same if you shop around, even though if you go by the MSRP, the A36 should be around €50 more expensive than the A35.

In the UK, the A36 is only available in a 256GB tier, while the A35 is only available as a 128GB model. Additionally, Samsung seemingly has much better control over the A36 retail pricing there so the current price difference between the old and the new model is a whopping £150. Ouch!

In any case, let’s check how much better the A36 really is.

Table of Contents:

For starters, you can compare the complete specs sheets or directly continue with our editor’s assessment in the following text.

Size comparison

The two phones have a similar overall footprint. However, the A35 is slightly thicker and slightly heavier than its successor.

All the while, the display on the new Galaxy A36 has grown a tiny bit from 6.6 inches on the A35 to 6.7 inches. It’s a small difference, hardly noticeable in practice, but it does translate to thinner display bezels on the new model.

Overall, it’s fair to say that the A36 offers a more refined design.

Construction-wise, both phones feel solid and very well made, with practically no flex to the chassis. They both employ a plastic middle frame sandwiched between two glass sheets with Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the front.

The new addition to the A36 this year is Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the back side as well.

Both phones offer the same excellent IP67 ingress protection rating, which should allow them to survive for up to 30 minutes in up to one meter of fresh water.

This is as good a place as any to discuss controls and connectivity. Both phones have a very standard button layout. Both use an under-display optical fingerprint reader, have a similar hybrid stereo speaker setup and, unfortunately, use virtual proximity sensors. Wireless connectivity is practically identical across the two, though the newer A36 does have an additional eSIM card support for a total of two, compared to one on the A35 and Bluetooth 5.4 compared to Bluetooth 5.3.

However, one potentially massive difference in favor of the Galaxy A35 is the presence of a microSD storage expansion slot, which is missing from the Galaxy A36.

Display comparison

The display on the Galaxy A36 is slightly bigger, though not really noticeably so in practice. Both phones offer the same FullHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate without LTPO or any other fancy adaptive switching.

What has changed rather noticeably for the better is the max display brightness. The Galaxy A36 puts out notably higher brightness numbers. Both phones are usable in sunlight, but the A36 is definitely more comfortable.

Even with the newfound increase in brightness, the Galaxy A36 still lacks any HDR video support like the A35 before it.

Battery life

Both phones have identical 5,000 mAh battery packs and pretty similar overall battery endurance. However, last year’s A35 has a noteworthy edge, particularly when it comes to gaming. Apparently, the Exynos 1350 inside the A35 can game for longer on a single charge than the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 inside the A36.

Charging speed

The newer Galaxy A36 supports Samsung’s 45W PD charging, while the A35 is stuck with the slower 25W variant.

In practice, the difference in actual charging rate is not colossal, but it is there and favors the A36. According to our tests, the A36 charges faster at the beginning of the charging cycle, reaching a higher percentage at the 15 and 30-minute marks, and it takes 12 minutes less than the A35 to reach 100%.

Neither phone comes with a charger, but for the A36, you’d also have to get a 5 Amp cable too if you want the fastest charging possible, as the one in the box is rated at 3 Amp only.

Speaker test

The two phones have a very similar hybrid stereo speaker system, with a dedicated bottom-firing speaker on one end and an amplified earpiece on the other. This inevitably leads to some output imbalance, but it’s not too bad in practice.

Our standardized testing revealed that the speakers on the two phones are tuned very similarly, with clear mids and dialogue and mostly undistorted highs. The A36 perhaps has a slightly better bass response, but it’s not something you should be able to actually hear and appreciate in real-world use.

What is nice and does come in handy in actual use is the GOOD loudness rating that both phones managed in our testing.

Performance

While the two phones technically use very different chipsets, the two chips are actually quite similar. The Exynos 1380 inside the Galaxy A35 is made on a 5nm node and has an octa-core CPU configuration.

As for the Galaxy A36, it uses a Qualcomm chip – the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3. It is made on a technically more efficient 4nm node but has a remarkably similar CPU configuration.

The Galaxy A35 is available in a trio of storage and memory options – 6GB/128GB, 8GB/128GB and 8GB/256GB. The speeds that storage benchmarks return suggest it uses UFS 2.1 chips.

The Galaxy A36 is widely available with 6GB LPDDR4X RAM, 128GB UFS 2.2 storage, and 8GB + 256GB storage versions. There is also a limited higher-tier model with 12GB RAM.

Once again, we would like to mention the fact that the Galaxy A35 has expandable storage, while the A36 does not.

In terms of software, the Galaxy A36 launched with the latest One UI 7 and Android 15 combo, plus a whopping six major OS updates in its future. The Galaxy A35 is still running One UI 6.1 and Android 14 as of writing this and only has the promise of 4 major OS updates. So, software and support definitely go out to the Galaxy A36.

Benchmark performance

The Galaxy A36 offers roughly the same burst performance as the Galaxy A35, with only a minor increase in observable GPU scores.

Both phones offer excellent sustained performance and manage heat quite masterfully. It’s not like their respective chipsets run particularly hot, to begin with, but even so, the surface of both phones rarely gets more than lukewarm, even after intense stress testing.

Camera comparison

Samsung has switched around the camera setup on the new Galaxy A36 a bit compared to its A35 predecessor. You are still getting the same basic setup as the A35 – a 50MP main cam, an 8MP ultrawide, and a 5MP dedicated macro as a third cam. There is a new 12MP selfie camera here, replacing the 13MP one that the A35 had.

Image quality

Looking at the main cameras of both phones first, it is hard to spot any major differences in overall quality. Samsung has certainly tweaked some things in the processing, but overall, the cameras are really neck-to-neck in quality. Neither is what you would call “flagship grade”, but the quality is solid nonetheless, with plenty of detail, nice dynamic range and solid color reproduction.

Regarding differences in processing, we would say that the A36 tends to apply a bit more sharpening and contrast than the A35, which tends to favor a slightly softer and more natural aesthetic. The shadows in the Galaxy A36 photos often come out darker.

As mentioned, the ultrawide camera is the same across both phones. Expectedly, so is the overall quality of the shots it captures. Once again, there are some small differences in processing. The Galaxy A36 seems to apply less aggressive processing and tends to leave a bit more noise behind than the A35, but alongside that, often, there is a bit more fine detail left as well.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x

Samsung Galaxy A35: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x

The cameras on the Galaxy A36 do slightly better in low-light conditions. The difference once again isn’t massive, but the A36 seems to have more detail. Its dynamic range is also seemingly a bit better, and so is the contrast.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x

Samsung Galaxy A35: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x • 0.5x • 1x • 2x

While the selfie camera on the A36, we’d give the nod to the Galaxy A35 selfie camera. We like both the level of detail and the skin tones and hair rendition better. The difference is not massive but it’s there, especially if you are into pixel peeping.

Samsung Galaxy A36: selfies

Samsung Galaxy A35: selfies

As for the selfie cameras in low light, it’s a bit of a toss-up. We tend to like the detail on the A35 a bit better, but the A36 certainly has the better colors and dynamic range.

Video quality

Both phones can capture 4K video from their main cameras and can only do 2x digital zoom and ultrawide video at 1080p. Honestly, the overall quality across the samples we got is very similar. We can’t definitively point to one of the phones and give it even a slight edge over the other.

Below we have a few framegrabs from the videos taken by the two phones at each focal length so it’s easier to compare to one another.

Samsung Galaxy A36: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • low-light

Samsung Galaxy A35: 0.5x • 1x • 2x • low-light

Verdict

The Galaxy A36 and the A35 are both excellent, well-rounded mid-range devices. Over the years, Samsung’s Galaxy A3X line has arguably positioned itself as the best value proposition within Samsung’s lineup.

The Galaxy A36 and A35 are not drastically different in any meaningful way. Samsung hasn’t tweaked the familiar formula that much this year. In terms of upgrades, you basically get a brighter display, which is certainly nice but not game-changing. The upgrade from 25W to 45W charging is practical but marginal at best. So is the change in the chipset, which only offers slightly better GPU performance but at the cost of gaming battery endurance. The longer software support for what it’s worth, is also on the side of the A36.

All in all, keeping the confusing pricing situation in mind, our verdict would be the following. In markets where the Galaxy A36 is priced closely or equally to the A35, we’d definitely say – go for it, unless you are a die-hard microSD slot fan.

In markets where there is a huge price gap between the two, the A35 will definitely be the better deal as it offers pretty much the same experience and level of performance for less money.