Gadgetory

Android Authority what's going on my name is Kevin the tech ninja today I'm reviewing the galaxy a5 now guys that live stateside I know what you're thinking I don't care this phone is not coming over here but let's think about something for a second the galaxy s6 is just around the corner and Samsung has been known to try out new things on their other devices so the way that this is made using aluminum versus plastic and also the way TouchWiz is running on the system make sure you check out the review anyways so you can see what the s6 may have in store for you I'm Kevin the tech ninja welcome to my dojo it seems that the number one complaint about Samsung's design is their use of plastic Samsung's Galaxy line was created to be the flagship device to have but for some the use of plastic made it feel well pretty cheap enter the galaxy a5 light sleek and aluminum the moment you put it in your hand you instantly get that feel of premium that Samsung has been searching for all those mostly aluminum the a5 is really light only weighs four point three four ounces on the front you'll find the classic Samsung layout with front facing camera and LEDs on the top speaker grille at the bottom chin the back and multitasking capacitive buttons are flanking the home button Samsung likes this layout and they're sticking with their guns on this one on the back you have the 13 megapixel shooter which is located towards the middle and the camera is accompanied by the LED flash and also the speaker grille the speaker grille is in an awkward location it often gets covered up when honing your device and landscape this location also makes the sound lack depth and sense of direction speaker calls sound fine but when listening to music or gaming that's when you can really hear the disadvantages of only having one speaker in that location a great example is when listening to music that uses left and right channels independently you are stuck hearing both channels coming out the same spot which can dramatically change the sound of a song on the right bezel you have the power button and also two SIM card slots left side as the volume rocker and at the bottom you see the charging port and also headphone jack the screen size is 5 inches which gives it a screen to body ratio of 71 percent this super-mo LED screens PPI is 294 the resolution is 720p colors pop off well with this display with very high saturation levels even if the color temperature is a bit too vivid for you you can easily adjust this in the display options within the settings and what I mean by vivid is that a lot of the colors has an additional punch to it it's a color style that Samsung has adopted and matured over the years and is working pretty well for them the engine that makes this whole operation run is the Snapdragon 410 it's a 64-bit quad-core processor that runs at 1.2 gigahertz the GPU pairing is the andrina 306 and 2 gigabytes of RAM it does have a micro SD card slot that you can expand up to 64 gigabytes of 16 gigabytes onboard isn't enough for you and as I mentioned before it does have dual SIM card slots so for people that travel internationally often this is a huge bonus for them and get used to these specs most mid-level devices will be running this chipset in the foreseeable future the hardware isn't going to shake up the world but it's a decent mid-level offering from Samsung the Snapdragon 410 absolutely flies opening and closing applications is done effortlessly and as far as the UI is concerned is comparable to the Snapdragon 805 in 2015 handling the UI is a pretty simple task for these phones to do so it isn't really a big surprise I know a lot of people like to mention the TouchWiz lag but on this device I'm not seeing it TouchWiz appears to be more watered-down and not so much in your face but more on this in the software section when it comes to gaming the 410 and adrenal 306 combines to give you a decent gaming device most games run with little lag even switching between games and back to your home screen is quick the phone's performance is just solid the 64-bit architecture is here and it's running well but we won't see 64-bit really shine until we see the phones with 4 gigabytes of RAM for the full benchmark scores make sure you check out the written companion paste link down below out of the box that is running 4.4.4 kitkat and as you know it's running TouchWiz which is a highly modified skin on top of Android for better or worse TouchWiz is most people's introduction into Android and it does a great job at getting you acclimated but for purists like me or maybe you you rather have a more vanilla version of Android or at least an option to switch from TouchWiz to that the home screen by default has three screens you can swipe left and it takes you to Flipboard you can also swipe right that takes you to your other page or you can press and hold for more home screen functions like widgets icons and settings shockingly enough there was no blow wordless device at all I mean you'll find a few Samsung applications onboard like my files Flipboard voice recorder and s planner but I didn't see any other type of trial software maybe because this isn't locked down to a carrier a lot of times carriers are the ones that actually add to the bloat we're comparing this to the s5 all the applications that are on this device is running the same version messages browsers my files all look and behave the exact same way the headlines as of late is that Samsung is trying to make the s6 more like a stock version of Android in my takeaway from this is that Samsung is considering a slimmer TouchWiz and providing their applications a Lockhart and this is something that I'm pretty excited about for some people the camera on the phone is one of the most important features to have Samsung realizes that it provides one of the best cameras on a smartphone the a5 brings a 13 megapixel shooter to the game it's extremely quick and provides very clean images now for a mobile device the depth of field on these images are pretty good this gives the subject the ability to stick out of the background in good lighting images appear bright and vivid with a lot of life to them and lower lighting scenarios images still come out pretty good but there is a bit of grain to the images and sometimes they lack color but beyond that it's one of the better low-light cameras on the software side of things it has less features in the s5 there are only a few shooting modes available on this device you can head into the Samsung store and download more shooting modes although there are only two extra ones in there the front-facing camera is 5 megapixels just like the s5 the images lack detail and color it's due to the size of the lens it does not let a lot of light into the lens so that means the software needs to compensate for that also beautify mode is owned by default which can make your skin look like a rubber if you're not careful you can also go to additional settings by sliding out the menu from the right and things that are in there like white balance ISO settings voice-activated pictures and even hand gestures which makes taking selfies a whole lot easier the camera lens on the back protrudes out a little bit so that means the a5 does not sit flush on a surface thankfully it does not rock it's well balanced so that's pretty good although this camera is only 13 megapixels it feels just like the s5 16 megapixels just with less shooting modes images are on par with each other and a shutter speed is just as fast my parting shots with this device is pretty simple it's another good Samsung device its mid-range but it's running the newer Snapdragon 410 64-bit processor it's a watered down version of TouchWiz from the past so the device is pretty quick and it comes with tons of free space camera takes quick shots and for the most part the images are pretty good if you don't need top-end specs and a high resolution screen and if the price is right you should really consider this phone and there you have it guys that was the review for my galaxy a5 now before you go make sure you check out the written companion piece down below because I can go into a little bit more detail than I can in just a small video as always guys my name is Kevin the tech ninja make sure you like this video and subscribe to android adora tea for more great videos and giveaways because we are your source for all things Android take care guys