Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016) review
late last year Samsung has new Galaxy A7, Galaxy A5 andor Galaxy A3 Smartphones were launched. Today we will review Samsung Galaxy A5 smartphone and find out whether this Samsung smartphone is worth buying or not. What are the shortcomings and advantages of this new smartphone of Samsung?
Look and Design
As you might have seen in Samsung’s TV advertisement, the company has heavily promoted the metal and glass design of Galaxy A5 and this is its specialty. Simply put, this Samsung smartphone feels like a premium smartphone like Galaxy S6. This Samsung handset has curved Gorilla Glass 4 on the front and back, which makes it look and feel better than its older generation phones.
Talking about the front part of the phone, this smartphone has a 5.2 inch Full HD Super AMOLED display which looks good with bright colors even in sunlight. The edges of the A5 are extremely thin, giving it an edge-to-edge look.
The navigation buttons are in the same place as on every Samsung phone. The fingerprint sensor works from the home button only. But there is no LED provided in this smartphone for incoming alerts. Headphone socket, Micro-USB and speaker grill are given at the bottom.
The Galaxy A5 smartphone (codenamed A510FD) was launched in India with dual-SIM slots and a microSD card slot. The SIM tray on the right side has a primary SIM and microSD slot while a secondary SIM slot is provided on the top side of the phone.
When you buy the Samsung Galaxy A5 smartphone, you get a 10-watt charger, a headset, and a SIM ejector tool. Samsung has done a great job on the design and build of this smartphone, making it look like the flagship smartphone Galaxy S6. However, due to the glass on the back of the phone, it becomes a little slippery to hold. The lack of LED notification in the phone is quite surprising.
Specifications and Software
This time Samsung has made a lot of improvements not only in the design of the phone but also in the performance. The Galaxy A5 (2016) phone sold in India has an octa-core Exynos 7580 processor. Samsung has recently used the same processor in its mid-range smartphone Galaxy J7. However, the processor in Galaxy A5 works with slight improvements (runs at 1.6 GHz and supports 6LTE).
During the benchmarking of the phone, we got decent figures but the GPU figures were slightly less.
The phone has 16 GB internal storage with 2 GB RAM. With the help of microSD card, the storage can be expanded up to 128 GB. Apart from this, the phone has connectivity features like dual-band Wi-Fi B/G/N, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, FM radio and USB OTG. The A5 supports 4G on both SIM slots, although the phone does not support VoLTE.
While it’s a bit disappointing that the Galaxy A5 (2016) ships with Android Lollipop, it seems Samsung had saved Marshmallow for its flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S7.
Apps like Samsung’s S Health and My Galaxy come pre-installed on the handset. The Ultra Data Saving Mode given in the J-series is also present in the Galaxy A5. Apart from this, many popular apps of Microsoft and Google also come pre-installed in the phone.
performance
The general performance of the phone is quite good. But if you have many apps open simultaneously in the background, then the phone becomes a little slow. But apart from this we never saw any problem in the phone. The phone heats up while playing games and using the camera a lot but runs smoothly without any problem. We did not see any problem in call quality on 4G network.
The fingerprint sensor works but it is not as fast as the sensors found in many recently launched phones. Despite 16 GB internal storage, only 11 GB is available to the user. But due to expandable storage this is not a big problem.
The bright display provides a great multimedia playback experience. Full-HD videos and high bitrate files also play well. The sound quality of the phone is quite good due to the mono speaker.
The phone’s 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilization and large aperture F/1.9 gives you excellent detailed landscape photos in daylight. The color reproduction of the photos is quite good. Photos taken in artificial and low light look fine even when zoomed. Overall camera quality is good.
Videos are also quite good in full-HD resolution. Detailed selfies can be taken even indoors with the 5 megapixel camera of aperture F/1.9. Pictures can be taken quickly with the phone but focus is very slow. The same problem is seen in video recording also. The lack of phase detection autofocus is clearly visible.
The camera on the Galaxy A5 smartphone is not that much better than the cameras on Samsung’s flagship smartphones.
battery life
The new Galaxy A5 has a powerful battery of 2900 mAh. However, this has increased the thickness and weight of the phone slightly. But it doesn’t matter because the phone’s battery lasted for a continuous 14 hours and 42 minutes in our video loop test. During normal use, we were able to use the phone for one and a half days without charging it. The phone has Adaptive Quick Charging technology and we charged the battery from 0 to 50 percent in just half an hour.
our decision
Samsung has done a great job with the Galaxy A5 smartphone. With improvements in its build and design, the Galaxy A series has now come very close to the flagship S series. However, the company has kept the price of the phone completely wrong due to which this phone cannot be recommended for purchase. The retail price of Galaxy A5 2016 is around Rs 28,500 which is quite high considering all its specifications.
Galaxy A5 is successful only if Samsung improves its price. According to us, at the price of Rs 20,000 you will get many other better smartphones with all these specifications and features. The build, design, display and battery life of Galaxy A5 is very good. We also liked the camera quality but the phone could have been designed better. But we did not understand the reason for not providing notification LED in the phone.
