Samsung M30s Review: Insane Battery Life to Kill the Competition

Samsung’s revitalized mid-range and budget series: M-series has been a charm. M-series phones provide great value and has been a great alternative to Xiaomi’s ever dominating Redmi series.

While their M-series phones are looking good, they have decided to come up with an upgraded version of their older M-series phones. And, one of those phones is the Samsung M30s. The phone comes with massive 6000mAh battery and triple camera setup. So, how good is this phone? Can it be your next daily driver? Let’s find out in our Samsung M30s Review.

(Pricing: The Samsung M30s comes in two variants – Samsung M30s price in Nepal for 4/64GB variant is Rs. 27,990 and 6/128GB variant is Rs. 33,590.)

Samsung M30s Review

Build & Design

Since the M30s is the updated version of the Samsung M30. It’s no surprise that it looks like the M30. A waterdrop notch, minimal side bezels, and the chin make it look exactly like the M30. However, it does look slightly different from the back.

M30s has the same polycarbonate back but it comes with a gradient finish this time. However, our review unit was a simple white one. There are triple cameras on the back but the camera module is wider than it was on the M30. And, to be honest this design choice is somewhat a downgrade from the M30.

An increase in battery capacity has allowed the phone to be thicker and the edges are more curved as well.

The polycarbonate back surely looks and feels cheap but it’s also prone to scuffs and scratches. The white variant doesn’t pick up many fingerprints but be sure to slap on a case to protect it from scratches.

Buttons are on the right and since they are made with plastic, the feedback is not great.

On left, we have a sim slot that can accommodate two nano-sim cards and a micro sd card at the same time. Down the bottom, we can find speaker, USB Type C port, and headphone jack.

Display

Something Samsung always does right is the display. There are hardly any Samsung phones with bad displays. Thus, the Samsung M30s also sports a 1080p Super AMOLED display. Not many manufacturers can boast this feature at this price tag.

The 6.4 inches AMOLED display is impressive with slightly saturated colors, good contrast, and excellent viewing angles. The brightness is more than enough for indoors however the peak brightness of 420 nits does seem slightly low in outdoor conditions.

ALSO READ: Samsung Galaxy A70 Review: Better option than the A50?

Since it’s an AMOLED display we do get features like Always On Display and Night Mode. Also, if you’re not used to the notch, head on to “Advanced Settings” of “Fullscreen Apps” under Display settings.

Performance

Samsung M30s is equipped with Exynos 9611 SoC. It consists of an Octa-Core CPU (4×2.3 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.7 GHz Cortex-A53) and Mali-G72 MP3 GPU along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. There’s also an option for 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage variant.

Exynos 9611 is a very minor upgrade over the Exynos 9610. During 1 week of heavy testing period, I did notice a slight lag once or twice during general use but it has been fixed after the recent update. The device is smooth when opening apps, switching between apps, and multitasking as well.

For games, PUBG and Call of Duty Mobile can run in high settings. However, the games run smoothly on medium settings. A long period of gaming does generate slight heat on the camera module but it’s not alarming.

Camera

Samsung M30s has a triple camera setup: 48MP Main sensor, 8MP Ultrawide sensor, and a 5MP depth sensor.

By default, the images will be captured at 12MP but you can opt to shoot at 48MP from the camera menu.

Lot’s of phones now have a 48MP sensor and i haven’t been quite impressed with a single one of them. So, how does the M30s fare? Well, it’s the same. The 48MP images certainly have more detail as they should but it’s not massive. The details from the 12MP images are just fine unless you’re someone whole like to zoom in on the images.

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As expected the images have saturated colors and the sharpness is just fine. The dynamic range of the camera is quite average, it’s good but it is not the best at this price tag.

The 8MP Ultrawide angle lens is also good. The color profile remains consistent with the primary sensor and it’s great for landscapes. But, the Ultrawide images do lack details and sharpness.

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The image quality is sure to degrade in lowlight situations. And so it does. But, M30s does offer the night mode to improve your low light photos. It works just fine, helps to control noise and makes images sharper. One thing to notice though, the images captured with night mode will be cropped in than normal.

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On to the front camera, M30s can capture good selfies in daylight There’s a good amount of details and HDR works well as well. However, selfies at low light are pretty bad.

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Moving on to videos, M30s can capture up to 4k 30fps. Videos captured at 4k 30 fps are sharp and have good quality. However, you don’t get the EIS option.

ALSO READ: Xiaomi Mi A3 Review: Good UI, Even Better Camera & Best Battery!

Videos captured at 1080p look noisy even outdoors but these footages are more stabilized.

You also get a super steady option at 1080p which crops in from Ultrawide angle sensor. The video quality is not great but the stabilization is better.

Software

Samsung’s UI was one of its key weaknesses before its new ONE UI. However, the ONE UI has brought a vast amount of improvement and smoothness to the Samsung devices.

The big icons and throughout UI elements are extremely good for one-handed usage on a big phone like these.

There are not many features exclusive to the M30s. We get the usual night mode, digital wellbeing, always-on display, and others.

There are some preloaded apps from Samsung and Microsoft. Some of them can be removed while some of them can’t.

Biometrics

Talking about security, M30s has the option for both fingerprint unlock and face unlock. The fingerprint sensor works as expected, it’s fast and consistent. Face unlock is fast as well, but you might know as well that it’s not secured.

Battery

The highlight feature of the M30s is its battery. M30s has a huge 6000 mAh battery that will last for two days under moderate usage. For me, I was able to make it last for 2 days and 17 hours during which I got the screen on time of a whopping 7 hours 50 mins.

During this usage period, I mostly watched YouTube videos and used social media apps. I was on WIFI most of the time, so I did not use cellular data as much as I would normally.

While it’s mammoth battery gives you crazy battery life. It does take some time to charge the battery from 0 to 100. Even though it comes with a 15W fast charger, it takes around 2 hours and 30 mins from a full charge.

Conclusion

Samsung M30s thrives in terms of Display and Battery life. The combination of good display and a massive battery makes it a perfect phone for multimedia consumption.

It’s not a slouch in other areas too. The camera is quite average and will do just fine for social media. Performance is okayish but you can play games for longer with the massive battery if you’re into games.

However, there’s only one reason why I wouldn’t buy this phone. The build quality is fine given it’s made up of plastic but it feels cheap and doesn’t look as appealing as some of the competitors in this price bracket.

Nonetheless, Samsung M30s is a good phone for the price and I enjoyed my time with it. So, if you’re looking for a phone under Nrs. 27,000, do go for it!