The Samsung A26 has been out for just over a year now. The anticipated successor, the A27 is currently late, with no release date announced as of yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In that year I’ve purchased at least 8 of them as work phones for my colleagues. I’ve not had a single complaint about them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Samsung sell them for \u00a3339 which I’d say is overpriced, however I’ve never paid more than \u00a3200 for one. At that price, they’re a steal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I listed the specs of 256GB of base storage, 8GB RAM, a 120Hz OLED screen I wouldn’t blame you for expecting me to be detailing a device costing upwards of \u00a3500. The only giveaways are the slightly larger bezels, a teardrop camera cutout and the Micro SD slot which is almost always reserved for budget devices these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At 1 year old these phones will still have an additional 5 years of OS and security updates which is more than is currently offered on the Nothing Phone 4a Pro (offering 3 years OS) which costs \u00a3499 with no offers in sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only thing that lets the phone down is its Exynos 1380 chipset. It’s by no means a slouch, but it lags behind its competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might wonder why I’m spouting about a 1 year old phone? Well I have a theory that it may well be the last of it’s kind. The upcoming Samsung A27 is rumoured to use the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3, which was used last year in the Samsung A36. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, however the fact that the A36 didn’t have a Micro SD slot is. It can semi safely be assumed that they will reuse the board from this phone in the A27, meaning no Micro SD for that either. The leaked benchmarks are also hinting at the device having 6GB RAM, a 25% downgrade on the A26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If having expandable storage is important to you (it is to me) this may be your last chance to get a Samsung device with a Micro SD slot and have 8GB RAM. The A1x series are the bestselling devices, but in the UK at least we only ever get offered them with 4GB RAM. I find this to be painfully limiting in day to day use, causing regular slowdowns and background apps closing prematurely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am fortunate enough to have an A26, which I received on a low enough revision of Android 16 (OneUI 8) that I could downgrade it to Android 15 (OneUI 7). This is the update I’ll keep the phone on for now, for one I prefer it over OneUI 8 and secondly I retain the option of unlocking my bootloader should I choose to in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While you may initially overlook the A26, as it wasn’t a major upgrade on the A25, and lost it’s headphone jack, it is still most likely your cheapest way to get a phone with big storage capabilities in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Samsung A26 has been out for just over a year now. The anticipated successor, the A27 is currently late, with no release date announced as of yet. In that year I’ve purchased at least 8 of them as work phones for my colleagues. I’ve not had a single complaint about them. Samsung sell them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions\/401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.sm1th.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}