Gadgetory

there's always been a lot of cheaper alternatives to the galaxy s6 thanks to Samsung's a series but here with the 5.2 inch galaxy a5 we might have the best and most similar option hello everybody its Crystal Laura and this is our review of the Samsung Galaxy a5 now the reason why I believe this could be the best option for people who love to pick up a galaxy s6 but can't justify its price is due to the size of the a5 the a5 sports only a 5.2 inch display which makes the phone feel very similar to the s6 it's quite a small package thanks to a small bezels and you can really easily be mistaken for a normal galaxy s6 although we have this nice gold color here and of course we have a beautiful Gorilla Glass 4 back panel here creating a beautiful look and also feel in the hand now that's the whole idea of Samsung's a-series lineup give users a beautiful premium design phone at a lower cost as we'll see when we get to the specs the phone has been bumped up in thickness from the s6 and you can definitely tell even though it's still very thin the camera bump sinks into housing a bit more and the phone has a good amount of weight to it when it comes to buttons speaker and charging port placement is exactly the same as you would expect with all Samsung phones as of late now if you think the Galaxy s6 is a nice looking phone you'll feel the exact same way with a5 now we know Samsung is known for displaying their great Super AMOLED technology and the a5 definitely lives up to its name with is very vibrant colors here we have a Super AMOLED 5.2 inch display at 1080p with a PPI of 424 and no it's not quite HD like the s6 but of course this is a more budget-friendly phone and with such a small screen creating a PPI of 424 it's more than enough this compact screen size helps with one-handed use and the resolution here makes text appear very sharp of course on most AMOLED panels whites may tend to lean towards pinkish hues but here on the a5 not that much at all and another downside with AMOLED panels is their lack of brightness but with a5 there are no issues at all easily making for a great viewing experience even under direct sunlight overall 1080p on a 5.2 inch soup on the display is fantastic and there is nothing to complain about here when it comes to the hardware you'll find exactly what you're familiar with on any Samsung phone as of late nothing has been taken away and there's only one new addition although it's a big one microSD card expansion on the right side we have a large dual SIM tray that springs out allowing for either two nano SIM cards or one nano SIM and a micro SD card for up to 128 gigs of storage the speaker is still placed on the bottom right and it sounds pretty decent but is facing away from the viewer and is easy to cover up we have a physical home button surrounded by the back and recent app capacitive buttons but they are reversed like on all Samsung phones as expected the physical home button also doubles as a fingerprint scanner and it's very reliable and fast although it may take a little bit longer than the s6 thanks to the a 5s slower processing power and speaking of processing power inside our a5 we have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 although some regions may have the x2 no 7580 two gigs of ram and once again depending on your region you may have the adrenal 4-5 GPU or the MAL ET 720 you do only get 16 gigs of internal storage so you'll probably need to take advantage of the micro SD card slot and due to the bump up in thickness we also have a bump up in battery capacity at 2900 million powers the s6 has some pretty bad battery life thanks to this tiny battery and power sucking display but here we have a decently sized battery and more energy efficient HD display so I was able to get some good battery life out of the a5 four and a half hours of screen on time will probably be your average when using the phone moderately and that's just enough juice for me to last all day usually being under 10% when it's time to sleep now as for real performance when using the phone it's what you would expect for a more mid-range processing package normal tasks like opening up apps and diving in and out through the recent apps screen is fast enough to create a good workflow there's not really any performance issues here except that pesky TouchWiz briefing screen which really isn't a processing power issue just a software issue Geekbench and m2 to give the galaxy a5 some lower scores at two thousand eight hundred and eighty seven and thirty five thousand seven hundred eighty-six respectively gaming holds up pretty nicely here with not many drop frames creating a very playable perience the galaxy a5 is running Android lollipop 5.1.1 which is a little disappointing for a recently released phone especially with Android and being announced soon but Samsung clearly is saving their marshmallow version of TouchWiz for the new Galaxy s7 lineup the version of TouchWiz here is pretty much identical to what we've been used to on the galaxy phones of 2015 it's very customizable without too many silly features holding down on a blank area of the homescreen will bring up options - customizable wallpapers you can add widgets apply themes and even change the screen grid it's a pretty smooth experience overall with animations only stuttering once in a while the notification pulldown is designed very well without buttons taking up too much room and if you're not a fan of this color scheme you can easily change it with a new theme the recent apps screen has been unaltered from stock however we do have an option to trigger dual window mode which is a great feature to have even if it's on a smaller 5.2 inch screen it only works with certain apps but still is very useful oh and remember that briefing screen I mentioned before it's pretty laggy but it does display news articles in a very appealing way but that lag may be too much for some people and thankfully you can disable it another area where Samsung saves some money for consumers is with the camera which is a little unfortunate as pictures taken with a5 are very far off from the galaxy s6 s quality we have a 13 megapixel rear-facing sensor with an aperture of 1.9 and optical image stabilization pictures don't look too bad with some extra sharpening going on to help create sharper images but a big problem with the camera is it it tends to overexpose a lot and HDR doesn't really help too much making just an overall brighter image but when a photo isn't overexposed the image actually comes out pretty nice with good colors also four-to-three is going to be the aspect ratio that you'll shoot in if you want to take advantage of the full 13 megapixels lo the lit areas will create very dull images with colors disappearing and lots of noise showing up the front facing five megapixel camera creates some very soft looking images with not much sharpness but as long as you are as bright as a background you'll end up with an okay shot however most of the time this is hard to do and magnifies a rear facing cameras problem of overexposing even more there's definitely better smartphone cameras out there for this price range but still the a5 isn't a bad one you'll just need to do some work when trying to snap a photo of a scene with high contrast for the most part the Galaxy a5 is the thicker galaxy s6 with mid-range specs better battery life and a lower resolution screen some of these things are improvements and some are definitely a step down although they won't cause any major issues the galaxy a5 is a great phone for users who enjoyed the galaxy s6 but aren't a fan of its two major problems high price and mediocre battery life the galaxy a5 fixes these problems with an extra 20 or 30% of life throughout the day and is about half the price of the s6 that is release the a5 will only set you back about 375 dollars for a galaxy phone has a really great deal until you factoring the biggest downgrade and disappointment of the phone it's poor camera it's nowhere near the quality of its flagship brother and that may be a big deal breaker for some people for around 375 dollars there are better options out there for sure but if you're invested in the Samsung ecosystem and love the galaxy design the a5 won't disappoint for its price and that concludes our review of the galaxy a5 be sure you guys let us know what you think of it in the comments below and make sure you check out Android authority comm for the full in-depth review because we are your source for all things Android