Samsung Galaxy M40: Stunning display, better chipset

In a bid to eat into Xiaomi's mid-segment market share in India, South Korean tech giant Samsung has brought the fourth smartphone in its "Galaxy M" series to the country.

Galaxy M40 is the first M-series device to come with a punch-hole display and Android 9.0 out of the box.

Priced at Rs 19,990 and goes on sale next week, this is also the first "Galaxy M" phone powered by a Qualcomm 675 chipset which makes it more up-to-date as far as the software is concerned.

The M40 sports 6.3-inch FHD+ LCD display with a tiny circular cutout to house the selfie camera. The overall quality of the display was beyond expectation.

This is the first Galaxy M phone to house an Infinity-O display and the most affordable device with a punch-hole display camera (or in-display camera) in the Indian market, which makes the phone stand apart from its competitors.

In addition, the device has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 screen protection.

The rear panel is made up of a 3D-curved plastic with a glossy finish, which made the device look decent.

The power and volume buttons are placed on the right of device. To the left of the device is SIM tray which has two Nano-SIM slots while USB Type-C port and loudspeaker are placed at the bottom.

The triple-camera setup is vertically placed on the top left corner, giving the back of the smartphone a subtle look.

Under the hood, Galaxy M40 gets Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 SoC with Adreno 612 GPU and 6GB RAM - the first Galaxy M-series smartphone to get a Qualcomm chipset instead of an indigenous Exynos processor.

There is 128GB internal memory onboard which can be further expanded up to 512GB via a microSD card.

With these combinations, the performance of the device was better then its predecessor. While performing day-to-day tasks, the smartphone showed no sign of slowing down or any hassles while playing games like PUBG Mobile.

The fingerprint scanner is placed at the back of the phone which acts quick to unlock the smartphone and there's also face recognition which uses the selfie camera to unlock the phone.

Going ahead with the trend of triple camera set up, Samsung has used the very same formula out here. The camera set-up includes a 32MP telephoto, an 8MP ultra wide-angle camera and a 5MP depth sensor. Up front, the M40 gets a 16MP selfie camera housed within the cutout.

In addition, the rear camera is backed by Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based auto scene recognition.

The colours and brightness captured by rear cameras were appreciable. They worked well in presence of good-lighting conditions but faced difficulties to produce same results in the absence of natural light.

The 16MP front-facing camera also has wide-angle and regular modes to choose from.

The device houses 3,500 mAh battery - around 1,500mAh less in capacity than M30. Despite smaller battery, the smartphone delivered a decent battery time of around eight to 10 hours on normal usage.

Conclusion: The Galaxy M40 is a power-packed device with a fresh look and good performance. At the Rs 19,990 price point, the device is set to further challenge rivals like Xiaomi.

(Md Waquar Haider can be contacted at waquar.h@ians.in)

--IANS

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