Samsung Galaxy A5 Review

The Samsung Galaxy A5 was unveiled in October 2014 alongside the A3. These two phones have very identical and similar designs but differ a little bit in size and specifications. A striking feat about these two phones is its all-aluminum material and unibody construction.

While this is Samsung’s first attempt at producing an all-metal build, the devices are the first of the company’s smartphones to have battery sealed in completely. Samsung’s strategy for this device is to target the youthful generation with metallic designed mid-range, premium and affordable smartphones. These particular set of people are not too concerned about high end specs or top notch exquisite hardware.

DESIGN

The A5 is a 5-inch square-sided smartphone with good look and feel. It is sleek, noticeably slim at 6.7mm, weighs just 123g and made of quality material. It is unique in design with its aluminium construction which gives it a decent build quality. Battery is enclosed in the all metallic casing as such the SIM card slot lies at the side of the phone.

Two SIM card trays and power button are at the RHS of the phone. The phone uses a Nano SIM card and one of the SIM trays can also house the memory card. This means that you either use two SIM cards without a memory card or stick with One SIM and a memory card at the same time.

The volume rocker is on the LHS while the USB charging port and the head phone sit below the phone. The 13MP camera with LED flash and loud speaker sit at the back

DISPLAY

The A5 bears a 5-inch super AMOLED Multi-touch display screen with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels and pixel density clocked at 294ppi. You know that Samsung’s super AMOLED technology does not disappoint when it comes to screen brightness, clarity and sharpness, the A5 screen is bright, sharp, crispy clear and visibility is impressive during use under direct sunlight.

Multimedia experience is pretty decent, the extreme edge of the phone display can be easily reached even when you handle with one hand.

A downside is that Images on the screen lacks detail because of the low pixel density.

CAMERA

Samsung just stepped up the selfie game in the A series with new fun features that are dedicated to selfies and I think this is the most interesting feature of this phone.

There is a 13MP back camera with LED flash and features like Autofocus, Touch to focus, Face detection, Geo tagging and a 5MP front facing camera dedicated for selfies.

The cameras have social handy features like Wide Selfie, Palm Selfie, Animated GIF, Beauty Face Features, and Rear-cam Selfie. Wide selfies allows you shoot up to 100 degrees in portrait and 120 degree in landscape mode.

The A5 also has the rear-camera selfie feature first seen on the Note 4

Samsung also adds the ability to launch a 3 seconds count-down by holding your hand in front of the camera to take selfies. There is also a brand-new animated GIF mode that converts pictures taken to animated GIF format, this feature combines up to 20 pictures you capture by pressing and holding the shutter button.

SOFTWARE

Runs on Android 4.4 KitKat OS and powered by a 1.2 GHz Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset. The phone is fast and very responsive. Switching in between apps and browsing on the phone is equally fast. Connectivity options include Bluetooth, NFC, WiFi while you still have the features like smart stay and multi window feature that allows for easy multi-tasking .

Samsung also offers 4 new themes apart from the basic theme. These include Natural, Craft, classic and sweet. These themes automatically apply pre-selected images and ringtones when activated

There are also unique touch sounds that you do not find on other Galaxy phones.

MEMORY and BATTERY

The internal memory is clocked at 16GB with an option of expanding it up to 64GB, RAM size is 2GB. Don’t forget that if you choose to expand the memory with a memory card, you will have to use one SIM card.

Battery capacity is 2300 mAh and it is Non-removable. This battery last for an average of 16 hours under normal usage, this duration is our own experience but amount of battery up time you get could differ depending on usage among, talk time among other things.

As good as the Galaxy A5 phone is, there are mainly two downsides, first is the low pixel per inch which makes images on the screen lack detail. The second is that the loud speaker is just too low even if its on the highest volume. Music lovers should rather stick with the head phone.

So If you wanna feel fly and you looking for a Galaxy phone that’s got a premium look but not with all the features that comes inside a flagship Galaxy line like the S5 or the Note 4, then the Samsung Galaxy A5 is clearly a good option for you.

You can watch the video review below: