SAMSUNG GALAXY A3 Review (2017)

Introduction

For the third time in a row, the company Samsung begins a year from the release of three medium prices of the Galaxy line of Galaxy A. The apparatuses of 2017 are the most impressive of them. Samsung managed to create all three models with exceptional appearance and sensation, in many ways they resemble her expensive smartphones. Among the three new products, Galaxy A3 is the most compact and affordable model.

The device received the Super screen Amoled 4.7 inches and externally resembles Galaxy S7, possessing the same stylish design of glass and metal, the same high protection against water protection and dust, for the first time for smartphones of this cost.

Naturally, the sake of price reduction had to make compromises. It uses not the most productive processor, less flash memory, there are several other weak points, but what about the price and quality ratio?

Design

in terms of appearance Galaxy A3 2017 It is so attractive as possible. In this review, a beautiful glossy black version of the apparatus, made of glass and metal, the body feels very solid, the quality of the assembly at a high level. As a result, you might think that you have a flagship smartphone in your hands, thanks to the small bending of the back of the case and the device is especially convenient to compact the device in hand. The thickness of the case is less than it could be assumed, the smartphone is well balanced, its weight eliminates the feeling of excessive lightness or emptiness. Smartphone is felt monolithic. Each aspect of this apparatus seems well thought out, even the side buttons are made of metal and have a good move and sensation.

One of the minuses of this beauty of the glass case is the presence of many fingerprints on it. They accumulate very quickly and turn the apparatus into rather dirty, you need to constantly wipe it or put it in the case. On the black version of the smartphone under consideration, this problem is especially striking, but with other flowers it is not so noticeable. Samsung offers the Golden, Blue and Peach Version of the device.

Another distinctive feature of the smartphone is the compact size: the screen is 4.7 inches, the edges are thin frames, so that the size of the smartphone is even less than that of a compact iPhone 7. In As a result, it is very convenient to keep one hand.

The fact that Samsung abandoned the obsolete connector microUSB and even in the price of Galaxy A3, the modern USB type USB interface is also used. There is a traditional headphone connector 3.5 mm, to which you can also connect speakers and AUX cables.

The main supercine of this smartphone is to protect the housing from water. Galaxy A3 2017 meets the requirements of the standard IP68, this is one of the cheapest smartphones with such protection. It can be immersed half an hour in fresh water to a depth of one and a half meters. As a result, you can not worry about splashes and falls under the rain, do not be afraid to drop the smartphone in the sink or puddle.

This uses the Super panel AMOLED with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixel type Pentile, which means the presence of a smaller number of colors in each pixel compared to RGB, therefore the sharpness here is lower. If you look closely, you can see the serrated edges of some icons and text, but with usual use no one will notice.

A good screen is not allowed or sharpness, but color rendition. Here in this regard everything is in perfect order. The screen itself is extremely smooth, the finger smoothly slides on it, the colors are configured under the range of SRGB, which is used for photos and video. White color gives a little blue, all the colors are a bit brighter than should be, but in general for its price range is a great screen.

Samsung allows users to customize color reproduction. To do this, open Settings> Screen> Screen Mode and select one of four color modes. The adaptive mode brings the most accurate colors, but they cannot be called realistic. The basic mode is close to the generally accepted standard and it is recommended to use it.

The maximum screen brightness is 440 threads, which allows you to comfortably work with it outdoors under sunlight. The minimum brightness is only 1 thread, which reduces eye load in the dark. Samsung also does not lag behind competitors and included a blue filter here for use in the evenings. It can be configured to automatically activate and shutdown in the morning, because it is believed that the blue color is responsible for the production of a certain hormone, which interferes with sleep.

New Galaxy A3 has the Always-On Display feature, which shows the time, date and types of missed notifications on the lock screen (but not the notifications themselves). This screen gives text with good contrast, but noticeably increases the charge rate of the battery charge.

Interface and Functionality

The developers of Samsung and Google do not lose the time for the gift and constantly improve Its products, as a result of Android and their own software shell of the South Korean manufacturer, are becoming better. In Galaxy A3 2017, the Samsung Grace user interface is installed, which compared with the past variants has become noticeably cleaner, logical and more thoughtful. It not only looks nice outwardly, but also convenient to work. Samsung also worked on their applications: mail, weather, calendar offer modern appearance, informativeness and simplicity.

The updated notification panel got rid of useless switches, but the necessary remained. The new settings menu offers important options and no longer looks chaotic, instead we see a well-organized list with search. Applications can be signed in the list of applications, you can also search here in the Google Play Store, which does not need a separate icon. A new device manager helps find malicious and consuming a lot of application energy and get rid of them.

Experienced users will be able to evaluate the functions like secure folders that Samsung introduced in the Galaxy Note 7 apparatus. Here you can store the most confidential data and documents. You can make even a separate Google account.

Despite the small size, Galaxy A3 has an excellent keyboard. True, it was not possible to find the setting on the turn on the vibration when you press the keys, which works perfectly on most Samsung devices, but still the keyboard is one of the most accurate and fast on Android.

Despite all the advantages, the new Galaxy A3 has a disadvantage of almost all Android smartphones that do not belong to the flagship category. The smartphone works on already obsolete software and with a large delay receives updates or does not receive them at all. With recently changed to the better, this is the situation with obtaining security updates that began to appear monthly. However, with major Android updates, Google and Samsung need to do something to come out more quickly.

processor, performance and memory

Galaxy A3 2017 uses the SAMSUNG EXYNOS 7870 processor and 2 GB of RAM. This is a step back compared to the Galaxy A5 with the Exynos 7880 processor. Both 8-nuclear chip with Cortex-A53 kernels, but Galaxy A3 is a frequency of 1.6 GHz against 1.9 GHz in Galaxy A5.

As a result, the smartphone cannot be called powerful, but the processor is created on the basis of a modern process process 14 nm. This means higher energy efficiency compared to smartphones of past generations, which increases the duration of autonomous work.

The speed of everyday work is at a normal level. Samsung optimized its interface that works quickly and smoothly, but you can notice a rather long application startup time.

A small screen resolution means that the smartphone is capable of issuing in games performance is not worse than more expensive Galaxy A5, but the smartphone is clearly not created for regular games. For him, they constitute too much load and comfort in them may be far from the desired.

The benchmark shows that the performance of the device is at one level with the MediaTek Helio P10 processors, the processor does not reach the capabilities of Snapdragon 625. Meanwhile, the latter is used in the devices of the same price category, such as Huawei Nova.

Galaxy A3 received 16 GB flash memory, from which the user is accessible to about 10 GB. Supports memory cards microSD with a volume of up to 256 GB.

Internet and communications

The smartphone supports the bands 4G LTE in European and world markets. For Europe, stripes 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 20 are available here. There are two SIM card slots, one of them is hybrid and instead of a SIM card in it you can install a microSD memory card.

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Supported two-band Wi-Fi A / B / G / N / AC, NFC and payment system Samsung Pay, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, GLONASS and USB type C.

chamber

The main chamber Galaxy A3 2017 has a resolution of 13 megapixel and the lights of F / 1.9, the camera is 8 megapixel. Rear have a LED flash, but there is no image stabilization and the 4K format is not supported.

To begin with, a great camera application is praised. It can be run by double pressing the HOME button, quickly and conveniently. Here is a new application from Samsung: the developers have removed from the main screen. All unnecessary, rarely used settings are hidden from the eye, only the shutter buttons and start recording video, the label to the gallery, the flash control, settings and switch between the rear and the front chambers. If you want to manually configure white or ISO balance, run the gesture to the left and select Pro mode where there are manual settings. The gesture to the right opens the modes HDR, panorama and others. Various filters and styles for photos are available here.

Image Quality

Quality of photos on this smartphone is above average for the apparatuses of this price category. They offer live colors and a good level of sharpness. The camera requires a lot of time for focusing, so it is desirable not to use it when photographing moving objects, but for everything else it is very good. In dynamic scenes, the most bright sections of the image are usually too bright, the HDR does not automatically turn on, it is recommended to include it yourself. HDR improves the quality of photos, but not as noticeable as on some other smartphones. In panoramic mode, you can get excellent images that are imperceptibly combined into a big picture.

With weak lighting, the quality of the photo is not so good. Details are blurred, and the sharpness of the image disappears. The only flash is quite strong, but completely destroys the correct color reproduction by adding a cold green shade.

As for the anterior chamber, it issues wide-angle photos suitable for group filming. The quality of photos can not be called good, there is not enough detailing and tint of the skin turns out to be blurred.

Quality Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=w_fidswgc1y

The camera supports 1080P video video record at 30 frame frequency / s. The lack of recording in 4K format is expected for such a price, but it is in the Huawei smartphone Nova, so Samsung is behind. Fortunately, even on the resolution of 1080P quality video good, bright colors, proper sharpness and dynamics. Unfortunately, the video stabilization is completely absent, so often the result is shaking. Even the slightest movement of the hands during the shooting leads to a jergy image. It is the lack of stabilization that can be called the main disadvantage of this smartphone.

Sound quality

The speaker here is located on the side of the housing. This is an unusual position, and he himself is quite small. The new smartphones of the Galaxy A lineup began to place the dynamics on the side so that they could be impossible to close the hand.

The sound quality in this dynamics was surprisingly good. Volume is also at a high level.

Call Quality

When telephone conversations, thanks to this smartphone, you can well and clearly hear your interlocutor through ear sink, the voices sound naturally, the same The most refers to the other side of the line. The interlocutors have no complaints about the purity and volume of your voice.

Autonomous operation

The smartphone has a relatively small battery capacity of 2350 mAh, but it works along with an economical processor and a screen with a resolution of only 720p. As a result, the smartphone has an excellent duration of autonomous work, like other representatives of the Galaxy A line of this year.

With the on-screen enabled, it showed the duration of operation 11 hours, while flagships Galaxy S7, Google Pixel and iPhone 7 work around 7 hours. In real life, the smartphone on one recharge works for about two days, but you need to turn off the ALWAYS-ON DISPLAY function, which consumes about 1% charge every hour.

Samsung did not include quick Charger Adaptive Fast Charge, but the small capacity of the battery allows it to be relatively quickly charged it. The recharging takes 112 minutes, which is worse compared to onPlus 3T and Galaxy S7, but better compared to Google Pixel with its standard fast recharging. Supporting wireless recharge here is also not.

Conclusion

Galaxy A3 2017 is a fascinating smartphone. It carries the level of sophistication of the design and interface, previously unprecedented in the devices of such price category. The same can be said regarding the protection of the case from water.

The developers know about their successes and this year the smartphone has become more expensive: 330 euros instead of last year's 300 euros. Of course, there are disadvantages here, one of which can be called slow work compared to flagship models. There is a noticeable delay between clicking on the icon and the launch of applications. The video has no stabilization, so it turns out to tremble. The volume of the 16 GB flash memory is too small according to modern standards, the 720p screen leaves much to be desired in terms of sharpness.

These shortcomings are faded compared to advantages. Excellent design of the device you will enjoy every day of work with it, a bright rich display gives live images, the Samsung Grace user interface has a multitude of settings and their convenient organization, the duration of the offline work is excellent as the quality of the photos.

Among the alternatives of this smartphone can be called honor 8 with a 5.2 inches screen, also beautiful and stylish, on a faster processor and with the same high-quality photos and videos, battery life Work. The interface is not so good here, although the smartphone works on Android Nougat.

Another option is a 4-inch iPhone SE, noticeably more productive and regularly updated, better in terms of photos and with support for recording video 4K. At the same time, it costs 400 euros.

Two new alternatives are Moto G5 and Moto G5 Plus on the latest version of Android. Which of these devices select, to solve each user independently.

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