Samsung Galaxy A51 5G Prism Cube Black Android Smartphone, SIM Free Mobile Phone (UK Version)

It is a good phone but the optical fingerprint reader is not as good as other types of fingerprint readers. It can be pretty annoying sometimes especially if you put a screen protector on your phone. Update: if you do not use a screen protector, the finger print works perfectly. Generally it is a very good phone.

face recognition is not the best and the fingers read if get better the phone would same as s20

Purchased direct from Amazon, not 3rd party, for £235. Good value at that price. Replacing an A5 which was becoming too slow to be usable (built-in obsolescence?), A51 seems fine. Allowed it to update to Android 11. Samsung Smart Switch makes setting it up easy. Only drawback so far is the new optical thumbprint reader, which is pretty rubbish: even recording a fingerprint is difficult, it'll keep complaining that you're not covering the whole sensor, and my fingertips aren't small. Once recorded, fingerprint unlocking is hit-and miss at best. Add a screen protector and forget it completely; some people recommend re-recording the fingerprints once the screen protector is fitted but it's even worse. If you're happy with pattern, pin or face unlock, you'll be fine. But it's a step back from the A5, which had none of these problems (maybe it just wasn't very secure?).

Finger print recognition works great built into the screen the battery is fantastic will last all day it's comes with a fast charger nfc works as it should for a medium end phone it's well worth the money

2026 update: I've had this phone for 5yrs, daily use and it's still going strong. On battery saver it lasts 2-3 days. Biometrics are sound. Love it! Excellent phone. Looks slick and feels premium. Great battery life, fast charging (1.5hrs), clean display, lots of storage, top camera - even free headphones. I consciously avoided the flagship Samsung 'S' series - my work phone is an s8 and the curved screen is v frustrating (too many mis-touches), fingerprint reader is pants and the phone way too slippery to hold. The A51 is larger but ironically much more comfortable to hold. Also proper headphone jack - not all of us are interested in wireless buds. In all much better phone than the s10 and tonnes better value than the s20 for almost the same spec. Only niggle is the two stage phone start-up protocol which I guess is a security feature but feels a bit overboard.