Has Samsung turned a new leaf?

Although successful, Samsung has suffered a lot of criticism for sticking with non-metallic construction materials while its rivals competed in same price segment with far better build quality.

With Samsung Galaxy A5, the company has tried to address the issue, and seems like they have got everything right, except for the pricing, says Himanshu Juneja.

Photographs: Courtesy, Samsung

Photograph: Courtesy, HTC

Over the years, Samsung has pioneered the art of making the phones which consumers desire. No other company flooded the market with variations to suit individual tastes the way Samsung did.

Now, with the Samsung Galaxy A5, the company seems to have turned a new leaf. Literally. Here's why

Build

Photographs: Courtesy, Samsung

With 6.7 mm thickness, height of 139.3 mm and a width of 69.7 mm, the A5 is pretty slim. Aluminium frame with chamfered edges imparts a premium look to the device. Samsung applied a coat of paint on the frame to make it match the panels for a consistent look. With even the sides having brushed aluminium finish, the phone is definitely a head turner. The buttons have a metal finish as well.

On the right side of the phone, there is a Nano SIM slot, a hybrid slot as well which can function either as a secondary SIM or as a MicroSD
card slot, and the power button. The left side carries the volume rocker. The bottom part houses the 3.5 mm audio jack.

Display

The phone boasts of 5-inch Super AMOLED display. With a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels, the pixel density of 294 ppi is very acceptable. The display is excellent, with vibrant colours and deep blacks.

Text was readable with consummate ease, and the visibility under direct sunlight is superb as well. Samsung decided to provide Corning Gorilla Glass 4 for added protection.

Connectivity

The phone comes with expected features like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS + GLONASS. Bringing in 4G connectivity might just be a crucial step here. With support for TD-LTE 2300MHz (Band 40) and FDD-LTE 1800MHz (Band 3) for India, this should make it somewhat future proof as well.

Unfortunately, only one of the SIM can be used on 4G. The other SIM will switch on to 2G mode. The Smart Dual SIM technology means users benefit from call forwarding feature, from one SIM to the other.

Hardware

Photographs: Courtesy, Samsung

Photograph: Courtesy, HTC

Samsung Galaxy A5 comes with a Quad Core Snapdragon 410 64 bit SoC. The four ARM Cortex-A53 CPUs are clocked at 1.19 GHz each. The supplied GPU is Adreno 306.

Out of the phone's 2 GB RAM, 1GB has been reserved for the apps exclusively.

The phone seems to be capable enough, but frankly, the configuration is not the most capable and Samsung should have supplied something better, especially considering the price that they are asking for.

Phone also comes with 16 GB of internal memory, out of which 11.67 GB is usable. The users get the critical advantage of expanding the memory by
another 64 GB via microSD card.

OS and performance

The Galaxy A5 comes with Android 4.4.4 (KitKat) with Samsung's TouchWiz UI on top. It is a well know fact that TouchWiz is one of the heaviest skins around, and the A5 did show hint of slowness occasionally, more so while playing hardware intensive games. Otherwise the performance is admirable. Seems like Samsung packed in few good software features apart from its usual array as well.

The Messenger app can be made to delay the message sending by 3 to 30 seconds. User can hence cancel the sending in this time frame. The keyboard offers an extra row of the numbers which should come in real handy.

Smart alert makes the phone vibrate when picked up while carrying unattended notifications like missed calls/messages. The Samsung internet browser takes inspiration from Google chrome, and can now sync up the history and bookmarks via a Samsung account.

Users will appreciate the fact that Samsung allows users to resize the screen, making one handed operation possible for those who prefer.

The gallery section allows pinch and zoom to be applied to the thumbnails as well. Apart from the usual Google apps, flipboard and Dropbox find
a place too.

Camera

With a 13 Megapixel camera on the back and 5 Megapixel snapper on the front, the phone is well equipped to take care of the photographic needs.

The pictures came out sharp and with good amount of details. Colour details were crisp as well. There is the LED flash for the rear camera, still the low light photography did suffer from noise.

Front facing camera performed nicely while taking good, clear selfie shots. The rear cam carries a wide selfie mode as well for capturing more
subjects.

The phone shoots videos at 1080p resolution with impressive results.

Samsung has provided good amount of modes like HDR, Panorama, beauty face etc.

Battery

Sporting a 2300mAh battery, Samsung decided to supply a non-removable unit this time round. For those who care about the metal construction, it shouldn't be a big deal.

From moderate to heavy usage, the battery lasts for a day. Samsung could have gone in for a better battery, but the slim profile of the phone seems to be a hindrance here.

Accessories

The phone provides plethora of colour choices. Buyers get to choose from Platinum Silver, Champagne Gold, Light Blue, Soft Pink or Midnight Black.

The phone comes bundled with Samsung headphones, wall charger, microUSB cable and a SIM ejector tools. It was good to see that Samsung didn't cut corners in this department.

Verdict and competition

There is no doubt that this is a clear attempt from Samsung to hit back at critics who panned the company for doling out products in plastic shells.
Samsung has been successful as well, with the only hindrance in making the Galaxy A5 a runaway hit being the price.

With a pricing of Rs 25,000 plus, the phone transcends beyond the upper mid-segment, which isn't justified considering its innards. Galaxy A5 is a
good phone, and Samsung will do well to slash the pricing and quickly at that, otherwise it faces a stiff challenge from the likes of HTC 820, and
even from OnePlus One.