Gadgetory

what's up guys lon here from Android or D and Samsung's Galaxy a line is designed to bring many characteristics of their flagship smartphones and a package made for the more budget-conscious crowd but is this 2016 refresh the budget smartphone to get this is the Samsung Galaxy a7 the best way to describe the design of the Galaxy a7 is to call it a much larger galaxy s6 because well for all intents and purposes that's exactly what it is it's a little bit more rectangular in shape than the s6 but otherwise it feels pretty familiar it may not be packing the same power but it definitely has the look and feel of a high-end phone you've got glass on the front glass on the rear and a smooth chamfered metal frame that rounds out along the top and bottom but flattens out on the sides the same way the s6 does these flat metal sides helped out quite a bit with the phone's grip despite being made predominantly of glass which we all know is a material that can tend to make a phone feel pretty slippery glass is also pretty atrocious when it comes to deterring fingerprints so expect to clean this phone often unless you have the white version where it's not as noticeable because this is a budget device you won't find everything that a typical high-end Samsung phone offers the a7 doesn't include Samsung's signature heart rate sensor on the back for you fitness buffs although I don't imagine this being much of a deal-breaker for too many people the a7 does however still include a fingerprint scanner built into the home button which works quite well and it's the same touch and hold method that we saw on the s6 and note 5 the setup process is a little long compared to some other phones but once you have it all set up the fingerprint sensor is accurate reliable and generally pretty fast at unlocking the phone everything else is in its typical location for a Samsung phone you've got the capacitive recent apps and back keys flanking the home button the power button on the right side volume buttons on the left and along the bottom is the 3.5 eliminate headphone jack micro USB port and single firing speaker the speaker is nothing special but it gets the job done it's not going to compare to front-facing speakers or anything like that but it's decently loud and produces a clean and clear sound without distorting even at higher volumes on the front of the phone is a fairly large 5.5 inch display which is becoming a more and more common display slides and smartphones these days so you are dealing with a decently sized smartphone here if you're used to a smart phone with a five and a half inch screen size or larger you'll instantly feel right at home and these super thin side bezels definitely make one-hand usability a lot easier in typical Samsung fashion this is a Super AMOLED display so obviously you're getting those super punchy colors deep inky blacks wide viewing angles and it's bright enough that outdoor visibility has been a non-issue it's got a resolution of 1080p with a PPI of 401 which still looks perfectly fine to my eyes despite quad HD being the new standard everything from web browsing reading text watching videos and playing games still looks very sharp and crisps so I have no qualms about the display whatsoever and it's generally a very pleasing screen to look at the internal specs are pretty run-of-the-mill for a device of this caliber you've got a Snapdragon 615 inside with three gigs of RAM and performance is par for the course it runs reasonably well for the most part and handles web browsing multitasking and graphically intensive games just fine but the phone does suffer from the occasional animation stutter throughout the interface when it does happen it's quite noticeable and due to the slower chipset the scrolling lag from Flipboard back to the main home screen that plagued the s6 is even more apparent on the a7 the phone fortunately doesn't come with a lot of bloatware pre-installed to slow things down any further and on first boot there's surprisingly only a pages worth of apps but this is most likely due to the fact that the a7 only comes with 16 gigs internally thankfully the a7 does have a micro SD card slot built into the SIM tray for up to an additional 128 gigabytes and with only 16 gigs of storage odds are you will most likely need one as far as network connectivity goes there are several model numbers of the a7 floating around out there none of which are made for the US so you will be missing out on those LTE data speeds you will however get HSPA+ which was perfectly fine for the majority of my usage but if you absolutely have to have those LTE data speeds you're not going to get that with the a7 at least not in the States on the plus side battery life on the a7 has been extremely good it's got a hefty 3300 milliamp hour battery inside and this phone easily last a good full day with normal usage and even into the better half of a second day before I had to put it back on a charger never did I ever find myself having to recharge this phone midway through the day and the screen on time easily surpassed the 4-hour mark sometimes even five the a7 doesn't have wireless charging which isn't a huge deal but it does have fast charging which really comes in handy for charging up such a large battery pack and if Samsung can get the battery life right on the a7 hopefully this means they'll be able to do the same thing on the upcoming s7 one of the biggest complaints on samsung smartphones last year with the camera bulge and while the a7 doesn't completely eliminate that the protruding camera lens is significantly smaller in comparison to the s6 and note 5 and from an aesthetic standpoint it definitely looks much cleaner it's a 13 megapixel camera with optical image stabilization F 1.9 aperture and the majority of the camera experience is the same as what you would find on Samsung's flagships with just a few minor exceptions there's no 4k video recording no YouTube live streaming capabilities and no HDR auto there's no HDR toggle on the main camera interface either which makes switching back and forth between HDR and auto mode a little slower and more cumbersome than I would like you do however still get the very convenient DoubleTap of the home button that was first introduced on the s6 to quickly open up the camera the images that the a7 produces are honestly mediocre at best and well it scenarios you can get some decent looking shots but in high contrast or brightly lit situations you're getting a lot of overblown highlights crushed shadows and the a7 doesn't seem to exhibit the typical Samsung image processing with the vibrant colors or sharpening which makes a lot of the photos look really dull HDR mode does provide for a much more balanced shot and as a slight boost in color but without HDR audio you will have to remember to switch to it as the camera automatically defaults back to auto mode each and every time the camera is launched in medium to low light you can really start to see the noise creeping in details begin to look extremely soft colors are lacking and you're getting those same overblown highlights as you would in daytime shots the a7 s camera is one of those cameras that simply just gets the job done but it's a far cry from what Samsung is typically capable of the software experience is pretty standard Samsung the a7 is running TouchWiz on top of Android lollipop 5.1.1 and it's exactly what you might expect from a typical Samsung phone it's the newer version of TouchWiz that we saw on the note 5 with the squarish circle icons which I personally like a lot better over Samsung's previous icons but otherwise the general look and feel and feature set of TouchWiz is practically all the same Samsung didn't really dilute TouchWiz at all on the a7 mini or getting a software experience that's pretty much identical to something like the s6 you've got multi window for all your split-screen multitasking needs useful motion gestures like swiping your palm across the display to take a screenshot a one-handed mode by a triple tap of the home button and of course the wonderful Samsung theme store to me this is still hands-down one of the best features implemented into TouchWiz and if the blue / green TouchWiz colors just aren't your cup of tea the theme store is a definite lifesaver there's tons and tons of themes to pick from now including ones to make things feel a little more like stock Android and if you slap on a third-party launcher in the process you'll hardly notice that it's even TouchWiz the Galaxy a7 is Samsung's higher-end budget smartphone for the year 2016 but compared to many other budget Android phones on the market it's not exactly cheap especially if you're trying to import into the States you can find it going anywhere between four to five hundred dollars through online retailers but at that price you're better off considering devices like the oneplus X Nexus 5x the Moto X Pierre honor 5x or even the Nexus 6p with these devices you're potentially getting a phone that's much more powerful and you don't lose out on LTE the galaxy s7 is a pretty solid smartphone from Samsung and brings many things that made their flagship smartphones grey into a much more affordable package but it's far from a bargain and considering how much the budget landscape has changed Samsung may have to rethink a few things if the a7 is going to stand a fighting chance as always thank you guys so much for watching this video if you did enjoy it please give it a thumbs up down below we definitely appreciate it and also subscribe to the channel which is also down or up here it's somewhere so click it and subscribe so you don't miss out on our future videos and if you want to see more here from us at Android thority make sure to check out the video links somewhere around me in this region and check the website as well for more in-depth coverage because we are your source for all things Android