The Samsung Galaxy A27 proves budget phones are about to be more expensive and less capable

Samsung just let us know all of the details and release date for its budget-priced Galaxy A27 phone.

The Galaxy A27 will sell for $349.99 and be available on July 14 in the US. It will be available in only one color, black, in the US, though Samsung’s splashy graphics for it show the dark blue, light blue, pale pink, and mint that are for other markets.

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Posts By  Tom Bedford

A budget phone but at a bigger price with some drawbacks

There’s a $50 price bump from last year’s model, the Galaxy A26, but it’s not because of upgrades.

In fact, there are a couple of downgrades.

The Galaxy A27 has a 12MP front-facing camera, 2MP macro camera, and 5MP ultra-wide camera. That’s compared to the Galaxy A26’s 13MP front-facing camera, 2 MP macro camera, and 8MP ultra-wide camera.

And the Galaxy A27 is less water-resistant than its predecessor, with an IP64 rating vs. an IP67 one. An IP67 means the Galaxy A26 can withstand immersion in 1 meter of water and a Galaxy A27 can stand up to only splashing water.

Like the Galaxy A26, the Galaxy A27 has a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 5,000mAh battery.

As far as upgrades go, the Galaxy A27 has a faster processor with the Snapdragon Gen 3 chipset, compared to the Galaxy A26’s Exynos 1380.

A sign of pricing to come

Getting less for more when it comes to electronics is something consumers are being forced to adjust to at a rapid speed. The RAM shortage is hitting the industry hard.

Ever the bellwether, Apple today announced price hikes to its MacBooks and iPads.

“We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable,” Apple Cook said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week.

It’s a similar sentiment to one given yesterday by Commodore CEO and President Peri Fractic in response to customer complaints that its Callback 8020 phone was priced too high.

Fractic laid the majority of the blame for the phone’s price on the RAM shortage. Commodore lowered the price of the phone by giving customers the option to choose post-consumer, high-speed memory chips that are “rigorously stress-tested.”

The shortage is quickly changing just how budget budget phones can be and the Galaxy A27 is one of the first real victims.