With flagship phones popping out of every single companies to take the throne of “Best Smartphone of 2017”, we tend to forget that we are all not capable of buying these over-priced and over-complicated smartphones. We also forget that there are mid-ranged phones designed to deliver almost the same experience albeit lacking in some innovative departments. This time, we’re going to take a look at Samsung’s latest A series smartphone: The Galaxy A5 2017 edition. Just like the title above, this is almost the perfect definition of a mid-ranged smartphone. The company really out-did themselves this time.
The Samsung Galaxy A5 takes most of its design ideas from the flagship of the company last year — the Samsung Galaxy S7. At first glance, you’ll mistake if for the flagship smartphone because there’s little-to-none difference. It’s safe to say that build quality of this is really at the flagship level matching the S7.
With Samsung’s overall theme of glass and metal build quality, their products have been improving each and every year. The Galaxy A5 is really nice to hold and the curves at the back make it so premium to the touch. But with a smartphone that has glass and metal all around the body, expect it to be so slippery and will have smudges all the time. You really can’t do anything with this, so you just have to accept the fact that you’ll always wipe your phone.
It seems like the A series are the last batch of phones from Samsung that will have a home button located as the front because the S8 went all-out screen in the front and they moved the sensor at the back. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I really like to still have the fingerprint located in the front just like Galaxy A5. It has the same performance as the flagship S7 so it’s often fast and dependable but not really perfect.
The loudspeaker is located at the top-right side which I don’t like because it’s weird when you’re listening at one side of the phone. I think that they should have kept the grills at the bottom which will be acceptable to most of the users. Listening-wise, it still has the trusty 3.5mm headphone jack that some companies decided to remove (ehem, Apple) which is a good choice for a mid-ranged smartphone.
The port got an upgrade with Samsung opting for a USB-C as a charging I/O and you’ll find a MicroSD card slot at the top if the on-board storage is not enough for you.
One of the noticeable features that the A5 packs is the Always-On display that it got from the flagship S7. It’s exactly the same — you’ll see the date and time and all of your app notifications. There’s also the IP68 dust and waterproof certification which is very rare for a mid-ranged smartphone. You now get the gist that Samsung wants the A5 to look like a flagship phone even though it’s a mid-ranged one.
The screen has a 5.2 AMOLED 1080P display which is an average screen, the colors are somehow accurate and you won’t have to worry about using the phone outside as it can get pretty bright similar to the S7. You also have an option to have True color display if you’re not a fan of oversaturation that Samsung often does with pictures.
The one step-up that the A5 when compared to the S7 is it’s battery life. With the A5 having 3000mAh and a lower resolution, it equates to a longer battery life because it doesn’t really need to power that much pixels in the display. The battery lasted us a full-day with usage ranging to heavy web browsing and medium video content.
Specifications-wise, the A5 packs the Exynos 7880 paired with 3GB of RAM. We won’t go over the numbers but this kind of specs is an entry-level to flagship phones which means that it will get the job done and will go to your daily multitasking seamlessly.
Now this is the category that made us say that this phones is “almost perfect.” As you would expect for a mid-ranged smartphone, the camera is a little bit disappointing. Because of it’s lower-than-average software and laggy image processing, it may sway the aspiring Instagrammers and mobile photographers out of the market.
Don’t get me wrong, the rear facing 16-megapixel rear shooter is reliable, capturing detailed shots with some oversaturated color accuracy in a UI that’s easy to understand. Focusing is often fast and accurate albeit lacks the OIS that’s a must-have in this year. With those factors, shooting in a low-light and dark environment would be hard challenge for everyone.
The front-facing camera, however, is a much-need upgrade and a good sight to see. It’s has the same 16-megapixel as the rear shooter and an f/1.9 aperture. It has no autofocus but often times capture great selfies.
Video recording is a bummer. It records 1080p at 30fps only which means you can’t record 4K. And with it having no OIS, you’ll definitely have a shaky recording all through out.
We can pretty much say that Samsung Galaxy A5 is the perfect definition of a “Perfect” mid-ranged smartphone. It has a design and build quality that matches the company’s flagship smartphone, it packs features that’s also found in the S7, a better battery but unfortunately falls down when it comes to the camera. If you’re someone who doesn’t really care about a phone’s camera, we surely recommend this one heck of a beast.
