Samsung Galaxy A52 (A52 5G) common issues and how to solve them

Samsung, the current industry leader, is best known for making high-end flagship devices. Until they decided to start competing in the mid-range and budget segments and did that with great success. The “A” series smartphones are the best-selling devices and, in 2021 they got their third iteration. With both 4G and 5G devices included. Somewhere in the middle are the Samsung Galaxy A52 and Samsung Galaxy A52 5G, with competitive prices and a whole lot of improvements over their predecessors.

But, besides new hardware improvements, there are also a few issues that emerged since the phones became available worldwide. We made sure to list the most common issues and, when possible, provide some solutions. Check the list below and don’t forget to tell us if you have (or had) any of these issues.

Note: All the issues mentioned in this article are individually reported cases, which doesn’t mean any of the problems will occur on other devices. If you’re looking to buy this phone, DO NOT consider these problems.

Table of contents:

1. Battery drain
2. Wi-Fi connectivity problems
3. Samsung Galaxy A52 won’t update
4. Sluggish performance, stutters, and freezing
5. Fingerprint and face unlock issues
6. Samsung Galaxy A52 Bluetooth issues
7. Sound issues and low in-call volume
8. AOD is gray instead of black
9. Dual SIM issues on Samsung Galaxy A52
10. Can’t receive text messages
11. SD Card issues on Samsung Galaxy A52
12. Power Saving mode bug
13. Common troubleshooting steps for Samsung Galaxy A52

1. Battery drain

This is the first entry in the Samsung Galaxy A50 series with a high refresh rate AMOLED screen so it’s understandable that the battery consumption would increase. Not to mention that 5G will eat a lot of your battery on the 5G model. But, Samsung increased the battery size, making its autonomy close to the top of the mid-range segment.

Now, don’t get us wrong, on paper, the Samsung Galaxy A52 should have a great battery. Based on some tests, it should get around 8-10 hours at least. More is expected. However, some users have had a hard time reaching that Screen-on Time due to big battery draining. Especially, when the device is idle. And the number of users who experience this is by no means small.

If you are among Samsung Galaxy A52 users that experience low battery longevity, check the steps below to improve the battery life. It might not fix your problems but it will at least mitigate them.

• Disable background apps.
• Disable Wi-Fi, Location Services, and Mobile Data overnight.
• Ensure that the network signal is strong. If the device is constantly searching for network coverage, it will deplete the battery quickly.
• Disable Auto-brightness and set the brightness manually.
• Keep your device up to date as updates usually address issues on Samsung devices.

2. Wi-Fi connectivity problems

Besides the evident battery drains, Wi-Fi issues are the next most-reported problem on a variety of different forums. These reports talk about frequent disconnecting from the network, others can’t connect to Wi-Fi networks that use 5 GHz frequency. Updates fixed some of the issues but only to some extent as reports are still coming in.

We have an in-depth article that tackles Wi-Fi issues on Android that you should check out. In the meanwhile, here are some quick tips before you move to some additional troubleshooting steps presented in the aforementioned article:

• Enable the Airplane mode and disable it.
• Change router channel. Ideally, it would be 40 MHz or 80 MHz.
• Restart your phone and router.
• Reset Network Settings.
• Disable Bluetooth.

3. Samsung Galaxy A52 won’t update

Samsung upped their game with the introduction of competitive mid-range devices but what goes in their favor is the decision to provide longer software updates even for the most affordable devices from their lineup. But all that is of no purpose if users can’t install security and feature updates on their devices.

Some Samsung Galaxy A52 users are experiencing issues with system updates. They are certain that their device should be updated but there are no updates available. We suggest contacting your carrier as carriers push updates to Samsung devices in some countries (USA).

If you have any other, unrelated issues with updates on the Samsung Galaxy A52, try restarting your phone or wiping the cache partition. Have in mind that patience is important in these matters and that some regions get updates sooner and some later.

4. Sluggish performance, stutters, and freezing

The “push hardware on time, fix bugs later” approach is dominant in this highly competitive industry. And, although the A52 has solid specs, the out-of-the-box software optimization (or lack of it) made some people doubt its long-term performance capabilities.

We are optimistic that remedies will come as soon as you update your device. Android 12 is expected in a few months and we hope that Samsung is going to adopt it quickly into a new release of OneUI. That’s the promise they made, at least.

Until that happens, we’ll probably keep getting reports about sluggish performance on more than capable chipsets, weird UI stutters, and freezing while scrolling and doing some minor tasks. Not to mention gaming performance. These are, strangely enough, especially prominent on the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G for some reason.

So, until Samsung sorts things out with software patches, we have a few things to recommend that should help you speed up your device. Here’s what you can do:

• Reboot your device.
• Try booting into Safe Mode and look for improvements. If the device performs better, limit the number of background apps. You can do so by force-closing the ones you don’t use at the moment.
• Lower the Animation scale in Developer options from 1 to 0.5 or disable them altogether.
• Limit the number of background apps in the Developer options.
• Update the firmware.
• Reset the device to factory settings.

5. Fingerprint and face unlock issues

The Samsung Galaxy A52 series, like its predecessors, comes with an under-the-display fingerprint sensor. It’s a neat way to utilize fingerprint biometrics but not as reliable or precise as the classic capacitative fingerprint reader. And that exactly seems to be an issue for some users.

Most of the concerned parties have issues with precision. Sometimes, the phone won’t unlock after multiple tries and they need to enter a pattern or pin to unlock it. Here, we suggest enrolling the same finger couple of times to improve the precision. Also, if you use any screen protector, make sure that it supports under-the-screen fingerprint sensors.

On the other hand, some users have a hard time utilizing the Face Unlock feature that uses face recognition to, you guessed it, unlock your phone. It seems that some of them, regardless of how many times they enrolled their face, can’t seem to make Face Unlock work reliably. Some users suggest disabling the Faster Recognition option in Face Recognition settings. Also, make sure that your face is fully visible when enrolling.

If none of these steps help, consider resetting your device to factory settings, and don’t forget to send a bug report to Samsung.

6. Samsung Galaxy A52 Bluetooth issues

We were on the matter of connectivity issues with Wi-Fi and, after a short detour, back to connectivity issues, we go. Bluetooth on the Samsung Galaxy A52 is sometimes hit or miss for some users. Based on reports, the most prominent problem is Bluetooth audio playback on wireless speakers that simply don’t work.

Also, for those that manage to connect, the Bluetooth volume is too low. Other reports talk about frequent disconnections and overall instability when it comes to pairing their headphones, earbuds, car stereo systems, etc. Like with all other issues on this list, these Bluetooth issues are reported by a small number of people but we still run into a few cases.

What can you do to resolve this is to try and remove pairing then re-add the paired device again, check if the Audio toggle is enabled in Bluetooth Device settings, or just reset the network settings.

7. Sound issues and low in-call volume

The stereo speakers pair on the Samsung Galaxy A52 series should give it an edge over the single-firing loudspeaker on earlier iterations. However, some users run into crackling sounds while others have had an awful in-call experience where they are well-heard on the other side but they can barely hear anything.

There are no viable solutions for this but you can navigate to Advanced Sound settings and try and mitigate them to some extent. Make sure to report the problem to Samsung and, more importantly, to keep your device up to date. We hope that Samsung addresses these issues with future updates.

8. AOD is gray instead of black

This one is rare but, oh boy, it is quite a strange occurrence. As all of us know Always On Display is a nifty option on AMOLED screens that allows you to have essentials presented on your screen even when the screen is off and your phone is in sleep mode. Thanks to AMOLED technology capabilities, the black color doesn’t require any power, and a small portion of the screen shouldn’t affect the battery all that much. Not the case with LCD as this is strictly an option for AMOLED displays.

AOD usually shows clock and notification badges, just to give you an idea of what’s going on without the need to go to the Lock Screen or unlock your phone. That’s the main purpose of the AOD mode.

• How to Bypass Android Lock Screen

And, due to the aforementioned handling of black pixels, there’s no such thing as gray Always On Display. This makes us believe that this is a system bug and we firmly suggest resetting your device to factory settings to address it.

9. Dual SIM issues on Samsung Galaxy A52 5G

The dual SIM option is more than welcome these days, especially the hybrid option that makes you choose between the secondary SIM and SD card. This gives the Samsung Galaxy A52 an edge as expandable storage is good in this day and age when many devices don’t have that luxury. But, it seems that the Dual SIM Mode just doesn’t work for some users with certain carriers. The device simply can’t recognize the secondary SIM card.

With that in mind, make sure that you placed the card properly. Also, keep your device up to date as there are some remarks that the software doesn’t support the Dual-SIM mode in certain regions and carriers. We can’t attest to this, but it’s worth noticing what we found on the support forum.

10. Can’t receive text messages

Another issue we have run into concerns text messages. Some users don’t get text messages and, to be honest, that’s more often than not a carrier problem and concerns configuration for the SMS center. You can try reaching your carrier to get the SMS Service Center number and then navigate to Samsung Messages > Settings and look if the right SMSC number is properly set.

Alternatively, you should try restarting your phone, checking permissions, or uninstalling updates from Messages. Making sure that your firmware is up to date and that your SIM card is properly placed is also important.

11. SD Card issues on Samsung Galaxy A52

While on the subject of hybrid SIM cards, we can’t omit to mention the (strangely enough) quite a prominent issue users reported on various forums. This time, it concerns the SD card. Users who inserted an SD Card perpetually keep getting the “Card is removed unsafely” error as the system advises them to restart their phones.

If this happens to you, try removing and adding the SD card, or try formatting the card and start from a clean slate. Also, keep your device up to date and report the problem. Seemingly, it all started with a system update for affected users, so there’s a good chance that the issue is purely software-related.

Of course, if you tried different SD cards and the above-mentioned steps and the issue persists, consider taking your device for repair since everything points towards faulty hardware.

• How to move apps to an SD card

12. Power Saving mode bug

This is a peculiar bug but affects the user experience. Namely, after a regular monthly update, some users started seeing Power Saving mode kick in on, believe it or not, 70%. Power Saving modes are usually disabled by default and, when enabled, start saving your battery under 20% or even 15%.

The best way to address this bug, in case you encountered it on your Samsung Galaxy A52 is to, primarily, try disabling the option in System Settings. Updating your phone might help as Samsung hopefully got the bug report and worked on fixing it. If the issue persists, the factory reset is the only thing we can recommend.

13. Common troubleshooting steps for Samsung Galaxy A52

Enable Developer options

1. Open Settings.
2. Open About phone.
3. Then tap on the Build number 7 times until the prompt informs you that the Developer options are unlocked. You might need to enter your PIN or Password.
4. The Developer options should appear in the main Settings menu.

Reset Network Settings

Note: If you’re not sure what resetting Network Settings do, check this article for more info.

1. Open Settings.
2. Choose General management.
3. Tap Reset.
4. Then select Reset Network Settings.
5. Confirm the selection.

Boot into Safe Mode

1. Press and hold the Power button until the Power menu appears.
2. Tap and hold on to the Power Off icon until you see the Safe Mode prompt.
3. Tap again to restart your device into Safe Mode.
4. To exit Safe Mode, just reboot your device again.

Reset the device to factory settings

Note: If you’re not entirely sure what you’re doing, check our article about resetting an Android phone to factory settings.

1. Back up your data from the internal storage (photos can be saved to Google Photos, and other media can be saved to an external storage or a PC).
2. Navigate to Settings > General management > Reset.
3. Select Factory data reset.
4. Follow the instructions to reset your device to factory values.

That should do it. Thank you for reading and feel free to share your questions, concerns, and additional issues we forgot to mention in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Editor’s note: This article was initially published in August 2021. We made sure to revamp it for freshness and accuracy.