Samsung’s A series of smartphones launched last year carried one of their first smartphones that featured an all-metal build. Since then, we have seen plenty of good-looking smartphones emerge out of Samsung’s line-up. One of the best examples of this is their brand new flagship, the Samsung S7 Edge. But Samsung isn’t just stopping there. They are constantly improving and the new Galaxy A7 2016 edition is the perfect example of this. The new A7 comes with a stunning design that is no less than any flagship smartphone today. Besides just giving the phone a major facelift, Samsung has also upgraded the hardware and bumped up the price to a whopping Rs. 30,000*. The last A7 was quite a success, and now it is time to find out if the new A7 does the job well too.
Design and build
One thing’s for sure, the new Samsung A7 looks premium from every angle you look at. It’s nothing short compared to a flagship device. Right from its metallic frame on the sides, to the glass finish at the front and back, all of it comes together very well to give you that superior feel when you hold the phone. Of course, the additional glass coating makes the phone a little chunkier than previous models. At 172g, the phone also feels a little heavier.
One area where the A7 is smaller than the predecessor is the width of the phone. It’s all thanks to the extremely slim bezel, giving the phone a screen-to-body ratio of 74 per cent. Although it makes the phone easier to operate in one hand, you will occasionally notice your palm touching the screen, when reaching out to far corners with your thumb. Besides that though, we think it works very well in giving you an immersive media experience.
The phone is available in three colour variants, black, white and gold. Our review unit was black. The Corning Gorilla Glass 4 on the phone has its protective advantages, but it is also a complete fingerprint magnet. We had to wipe the phone constantly. Surprisingly though, the grip on the phone is decent.
Overall, the Samsung A7 features a simple yet detailed design. At the back, you have a protruding camera lens. The outer ring on the lens matches the colour of the metallic frame of the phone, which blends in very well with the design. Next to the camera is the flash and right below is the Samsung logo. The metallic frame on the sides is chamfered around the corners. It doesn’t make any difference to the grip, but it adds a bit flair to the design. The button and the port placements is very similar to the S7 Edge. You have the Power/ Standby button on the right and the volume rocker keys on the left. All of them are quite easily accessible and have a satisfying click. Unlike the last variant, the volume buttons are separated. At the bottom, you have the 3.5mm auxiliary port, micro USB port and the speaker grill. There are two SIM card trays, one on the side and one at the top. The side tray also carries the microSD card slot.
Features
Unlike last year’s A7, the current variant comes with Samsung’s own Exynos 7850 processor. It carries eight cores, clocked at 1.6GHz. Numbers aside, it is one of their mid-range processors, which is a little disappointing. With the high price, we expected a much powerful processor at the core. It’s safe to say that it can run simple tasks easily, but we doubt its performance when pushed to the limits. Thankfully, there are some improvements in the hardware. The RAM has been bumped up to 3GB for better multi-tasking, while the internal storage is still 16GB. It is now expandable to a good 128GB.
Samsung has also included a bigger 3,300 mAh battery, which is big upgrade from the 2015 model. Video performance seems to be better at 15 hours. Based on the numbers, the phone should easily last you a day or even more on moderate usage. Fast charging is also included, which means you don’t have to spend a lot of time charging it either.
The home button is a fingerprint sensor now. You can use it to unlock your phone and to verify your Samsung account when purchasing apps or services. Bluetooth has been upgraded to 4.1 and NFC makes the cut too. Wi-Fi is still limited to 802.11n though. The 5.5-inch screen runs a full HD resolution. It even has the same pixel density of 401ppi as the last model. When compared though, the screen on the current model looks a bit sharper and presents better whites. Brightness levels are high too. Samsung includes four different modes to change colour tones to suit the light around it and the content on the screen better. The split-screen features makes a comeback. This feature lets you use apps side-by-side simultaneously, regardless of using the phone in portrait or landscape mode. It doesn’t work with all the apps on the phone, but is compatible with most Google and Samsung apps on-board. Though it was also available on the older variant, it should work better on the current A7, with the upgraded 3GB memory.
Samsung has also included some features to make one-handed operations easy. Here you can reduce the size of the display to fit it one side of the screen, making it easy to access far corners without stretching. You can do this by pressing the home button thrice. The new feature added is the One-hand input. It reduces the size of input tools like keyboard, phone dialler and the lock screen pattern, in order to make them a bit more manageable while holding the phone in one hand. We like the idea of the pattern and the dialler being small, but we do not think it works too well for the keyboard. The keys turn out to be too small for comfort. It’s also a little disappointing to see the A7 run the Android 5.1 (Lollipop) operating system. An update is in question, but Samsung hasn’t announced a date yet. Most of the UI looks identical, but there are a few minor tweaks. The UI offers plenty of customizable options. Some are similar to the old one, while some are refurbished and offer new features. For example, in the Assistant menu now, you have access to plenty of tools right from the homescreen, such as screenshots, volume rocker settings, screen magnifier and even cursor. Besides that, plenty of gesture controls and shortcuts are also added to make life easier. Samsung has added a bunch of their proprietary apps, which we think are a bit redundant. The usual set of Microsoft apps are also included. OneDrive gives you access to 100GB of cloud storage, which is quite exciting. The last model came with Dropbox, which only offered 50GB. The camera specs are also quite similar. You get a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front-facing camera. However, the rear camera here comes with an optical image stabilization and a wider aperture at F/1.9. There is no 4K recording though, which is disappointing.
The rear camera gets the same Pro mode available in the Samsung S7 Edge. The feature doesn’t really line up with the name. You only get control over White Balance, ISO and Exposure. Metering modes are also available. However, you don’t get control of the shutter speed or the aperture, which is much needed. The rest of the modes are the same as the predecessor. You can also download more modes if you want. Other features like Motion gesture control and the voice control are also included for easy camera operation.
Performance
Our biggest complaint with the A7 is the processor. The performance is something you wouldn’t want to settle for especially when you’re paying such a high price. On the surface, the interface feels good and smooth, but we did notice some stuttering when opening and closing games and the camera app. We ran the phone through a series of benchmarks and got the following scores.
More or less, in every benchmark the Samsung A7 was at par with mid-ranged phones. AnTuTu scores pretty high compared to the older model. Unfortunately, the scores on 3D Mark aren’t too great. Gaming performance isn’t the best on the A7, but it was still pretty good with most games we ran on it. Heavy games like Asphalt 8: Airborne, Overkill 3 ran pretty well. There was a little stuttering, but it didn’t hamper our experience. Overall, the media performance felt average, which is less than what we expected from the phone. One good thing about the phone is that it doesn’t heat up much. We played games continuously for 45 minutes and didn’t notice much heating. One of the few things that excited us about the phone was the 5.5-inch screen. It’s perfect for watching movies and videos on the go. The screen shows deep black levels and a sharp picture. Games didn’t run well, but they looked very appealing. It’s not just with media. The web browsing experience is also great. Photos and text appear smooth, presenting a very comfortable reading experience. Colours although bright aren’t natural. We noticed red and green to be a little oversaturated. However, it’s still fun to preview photos, look at videos or even just browse through favourite websites. The A7 has an exceptionally good rear camera. It takes beautiful shots regardless of the lighting conditions. We were impressed most with the details captured, especially when it comes to macro photography. Focusing is a bit slow here, but the end results are astonishing. Every detail looks crystal clear. The best thing is, we didn’t have to go through the hassle of tweaking settings. It’s possible to get photos like this even with the Auto shooting mode. Colours come out looking natural with no need of any additional tweaking or changing the white balance. We noticed that the optical image stabilization didn’t work well all the time. Some of the photo we clicked while using the phone in one hand looked blurry, even when there was very less movement. The best ways to get blur-free shots is with the help of voice commands or gestures, which worked quite well.
Selfies clicked on the front camera look nice and detailed. The major setback here is the framing. It happens even when the camera is set to Auto mode and is consistent throughout other modes. That said, we noticed the camera to focus pretty quickly.
Verdict
There is no doubt that the Samsung A7 is a stunning phone. It has a premium design that many would like. It’s perfect for making a style statement, and we’re not only saying this just for the design, but also because of its stunning display and exceptional rear camera. The problem though lies with its price. At Rs. 30,000 it’s a bit expensive for the kind of the processing performance it offers.
