Samsung Galaxy M35 review: Better than you think

The Galaxy M35, as you may have guessed if you're a long-time Samsung fan, is designed to offer some of the best specs of an A-series phone, the A35 in this case, at a cheaper price. To sweeten the deal, the M35 boasts a 6,000 mAh battery, 1,000 mAh larger than the A35.

As always, the M-series variant has a different and less premium design, and it also misses out on features like water and dust resistance. But it's considerably cheaper as well, and in this review, you will find out if the complete package is worth your hard-earned cash.

The Galaxy M35 offers great value. It has an excellent display, stronger Gorilla Glass protection, good performance (and good cooling thanks to a large vapor chamber), great battery life, and a promise of four major OS upgrades.

The design and camera quality are nothing to write home about. The display bezels are too big, and battery life is not as fantastic as it should be for a 6,000 mAh battery. But none of that is a deal breaker for the asking price. The positives outweigh the negatives, and you should give the M35 serious consideration if you're in the market for a new mid-range phone and have a limited budget.

The Galaxy M35 has excellent battery life, as you would expect from a phone with a 6,000 mAh battery. It can last a full day even with lots of gaming and use of 5G mobile data. Over the course of the review period, I never had to charge the phone before early afternoon on the second day.

However, the Exynos 1380 chipset lacks the efficiency of newer mid-range Exynos chips and the latest flagship Snapdragon processors. Samsung claims up to two days of battery life, but the M35 doesn't live up to those claims. Or at least it didn't for me.

The M35 supports 25W charging if you have the right charger (Samsung doesn't offer any charger in the box, unsurprisingly), and a full charge can take anywhere from 90 to 100 minutes. Half an hour of charging takes the battery from 0 to around 45%.

The Galaxy M35 is powered by the Exynos 1380 chipset, which was introduced with the Galaxy A54 last year and is also used on the Galaxy A35. It was paired with 8GB of RAM on our review unit, and overall, the Galaxy M35 performs well.

The user interface is generally smooth and quick, and gaming performance is good for the price. Thanks to a larger vapor cooling chamber, something that has become a trend on both mid-range and flagship Samsung smartphones these days, temperatures are kept in check and the chipset isn't throttled as quickly during long gaming sessions as older devices.