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Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017): Hands On Overview, Expected India Launch And Price

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) is the result when a midrange handset craves to be a flagship one. The phone comes with an impressive exterior combined with quality internals. With specs like a Full HD Super AMOLED display, IP68 water and dust protection, 14 nm processor, and Type-C USB port, the Galaxy A5 (2017) speaks excellence.

Samsung launched the Galaxy A5 (2017) a couple of days ago along with the Galaxy A7 (2017). We got our hands on the premium midrange smartphone. Here is the complete analysis of the look and feel of the premium handset.

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) Specifications

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Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) Photo Gallery

Physical Overview

As we mentioned above, the build quality and finishing of the Galaxy A5 (2017) is top notch. The body is beautifully carved out using glass / metal combo. Frankly speaking, the phone easily passes out as a flagship device. The best part of the new A5 is that it comes with a IP68 certification, which means that it is pretty resistant to dust and water damages.


Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

The front of the handset houses the gorgeous 5.2-inch Super AMOLED display. The 2.5D Gorilla Glass covered display is an eye candy. The brightness, colour reproduction, contrast and most importantly the black level is in line with flagship smartphones.

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

The earpiece, selfie camera, sensors along with the Samsung branding are lined up right above the screen. Unfortunately, the A5 (2017) missed out an LED notification light.

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

Below the display, lies the fingerprint scanner cum home button and the capacitive keys. Overall, this completes the front of the new Galaxy A5.

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

Moving on to the edges, the left side features the volume rockers.

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

The power button sits comfortably on the right. Interestingly, the loudspeakers are placed at the right edge of the smartphone, just above the power key.

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

Moving on to the top, we see the SIM/microSD card slot along with the secondary mic.

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

The bottom holds USB Type-C port, 3.5 mm audio jack and the main microphone.

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

Lastly, coming to the back, there is the primary camera, an LED flash and the company branding. Rest of it is totally clean.

Display

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

With a 5.2-inch Super AMOLED display, the A5 (2017) is a rock star among midrange devices. Not only the screen offers excellent contrast and colour reproduction, but it also boasts exceptional sunlight legibility. During our usage, we were quite pleased with the panel quality. The Gorilla Glass 4 protection and 2.5D curvature is the icing on the cake.

Hardware & Software

The Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) sports the 64-bit octa-core Exynos 7880 SoC. The 14 nm chipset packs eight Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.9 GHz each. For graphics, there is a tri-core Mali T830 GPU running at 950 MHz. Coming to the memory, the smartphone has 3 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 32 GB internal storage. A micro SD card slot is there too.

Speaking of software, the phone runs the older Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with a company modified the user interface. Needless to say, it is sufficiently snappy for day to day usage but starts to stress out a bit while running multiple resource intensive applications. For a comparison, the performance is comparable to Snapdragon 625 devices.

Camera Overview

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017)

The 16 MP autofocus camera of the new Galaxy A5 comes with a large f/1.9 aperture. Although it misses out the OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) of its predecessor, the photography quality is remarkable. The images come out with accurate colors and minimum noise levels.

Coming to video recording, the A5 (2017) can shoot some fantastic footages. Unfortunately, the phone does not support 4K recording, and the resolution is restricted to Full HD 1080p. Nevertheless, the device can actually play 4K 2160p movies.

The front camera of Samsung’s brand new handset is a 16 MP fixed focus unit. Even though it is not as good as the primary shooter, it can capture some sweet selfies.

Price and Availability

Even though the Galaxy A5 (2017) is Samsung’s midrange offering, it comes with a price tag of Rs. 28,990 in India. Speaking of availability, the new Galaxy A5 (2017) will be available for purchase at all leading online and offline retailers across the country, starting from March 15th.

Conclusion

Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) is certainly a good device. It combines an outstanding aesthetics with a decent hardware. Its IP68 certification is one of the rare features among mid-range smartphones. However, everything depends upon the pricing. If you shed a little more, you can get the Galaxy S6, and the S7 does not cost much more either.

Another notable alternative to the new Galaxy A5 (2017) is the OnePlus 3 / 3T. The latter is better than the former in almost every aspect except the IP68 dust and water resistance.

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Abhishek Bhatnagar

Abhishek Bhatnagar, a known technology blogger & YouTuber from India. A Software Engineer by qualification, now he works as the editor-In-Chief, Webmaster, & Managing Director at Gadgets To Use. He runs a number of other technology websites as well.