We got our hands on the Samsung Galaxy A7 and Galaxy A5 and here’s what we noticed.
Samsung is about to launch a pair of smartphones from the A-series slated for February 18, exclusively on Snapdeal, priced at Rs 29,400 for the the Galaxy A5 (2016) and the Galaxy A7 (2016) Rs 33,400. We happen to get our hands on one of each of these smartphones pre-release and here’s what we think.
First up, after unsealing and opening the package, we noticed the phones were both both the Galaxy A5 and the Galaxy A7 were lopsided in their packaging. With an an increasing amount of importance being accorded to first-impressions, we found this rather unsightly, given the fact that these phone are priced among the upper range of devices.
Both phones look almost identical, except for the extra 2-inches of display the Galaxy A7 has over the A5, so for the most part I will be talking about the phones in the same light unless I mention specific differences. Both phones look solidly build, but are comfortably light, while the metal and glass body add an elegant and premium touch.
The rear camera sits within a housing that protrudes a bit, which I am not a fan of, although this construction causes the glass in the front of the lens to be protected with the phone placed on its back. The headphone jack, USB port and speakers occupy the bottom of the phones.
The fingerprint sensor can handle up to three fingerprints, like most other scanners it works extremely fast.
Apart from the added two inches, an apparent difference between the Galaxy A7 and the A5 is the higher-capacity 3300mAh battery in the former that supports fast charging, compared to the 2,900mAh battery on the Galaxy A5 (which also supports fast charging.)
The SIM and microSD trays are top notch: not only do nano-SIMs fit perfectly in the tray but Samsung decided to partition the trays as well making quick work of inserting the cards. The two tray are situated on the top and right of the A-series smartphones. The SIM tray located on the top is dedicated to one nano-SIM while the tray on the right can be fitted with one nano-SIM and one microSD card. I also noticed that the SIM tray on the right, has a ridge that separates the nanoSIM and microSD card, making to very easy to insert.
Once I switched the phone on, there was the usual slowly-animated Samsung logo (seriously Samsung get with the times) but the interface looked quite intuitive. Fortunately, the smartphones were virtually devoid of pre-loaded apps, leaving that much more free space in the internal storage: aside from the 4.97GB of system memory, only about 210MB is used for pre-installed apps.
The camera has features like Panorama, continuous shot, HDR (Rich tone,) Night Mode, Pro (manual mode), and an auto mode. The Auto mode itself has a few features that can be dabbled around with, like effects, timer, flash, picture size which are conveniently positioned on the left of the screen and if the features get too distracting, they can be hidden.
Wait for our full hands-on review coming up shortly.
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 "Samsung Galaxy A7 and Galaxy A5")
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