Samsung’s budget Galaxy A27 is here, and you’ll notice the biggest change instantly

After launching the Galaxy A57 and the A37 back in March, and the Galaxy A17 and A07 (with 5G and 4G models) before that, there was only one phone left to complete Samsung’s current A series generation. It was the Galaxy A27, which had leaked several times in the past few weeks. Today, however, Samsung is putting those speculations to rest by officially launching the device across multiple markets at once.

The launch of the Galaxy A27 was rather subtle, and Samsung announced the details via a press release. That does not mean the new phone brings minimal changes, and the biggest one to come to our attention is the new hole-punch display, which finally replaces the Galaxy A26‘s (and older A2X models’) obsolete teardrop notch display. With this, Samsung also switches to more uniform bezels at the top and bottom, making the previous chin less apparent, though not eliminating it entirely. The display is still a Full HD+ AMOLED with a 120Hz.

The design itself hasn’t changed much, but you will now find body-colored and seemingly metallic accents around the camera island on the back. Samsung also brings new colors, including a new deep navy blue, alongside pink, black, and a light green.

Internally, the Galaxy A27 now adopts a Qualcomm chip. Moving on from the Exynos 1380 of the previous generation, the Galaxy A27 now gets a Snapdragon 6 Gen 3, the same chip as the Galaxy A36 from last year. Although both chipsets use a similar core architecture, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 is expected to be slightly more efficient, as it is built on a 4nm process.

Samsung is also increasing the minimum RAM, moving from 4GB to 6GB on the base variant with 128GB of storage. Other options include 8GB+128GB and 8GB+256GB.

The Galaxy A27 uses a triple camera setup featuring a 50MP primary, 5MP ultrawide, and a 2MP fixed-focus macro sensor. Apart from the ultrawide being downgraded from 8MP, the other two sensors look the same. However, Samsung says the new 12MP front camera “captures a wider range of brightness and richer colors” than the previous 13MP snapper. It also retains the same 5,000mAh battery with 25W of charging.

Software is where the Galaxy A27 could have the longest-lasting impression. It comes with One UI 8.5 out of the box, and is promised to get six generations of Android and One UI updates, along with six years of security updates. It also gets Galaxy AI features, such as Object Eraser in Gallery, automatic transcription in the Voice Recorder app, a reenergized Bixby, and Perplexity as the third AI assistant pre-installed.

The Galaxy A27 goes on sale in the US starting July 14 for $350. That’s a noticeable but justified jump over the Galaxy A26’s $300 launch. What does make things a little complicated, however, is that the Galaxy A37 is currently yours to buy for just $314 on Amazon, and that makes the Galaxy A27 far less tempting. We’ll see how Samsung adapts to that challenge when the phone becomes available.