First impressions are good – in fact so good that I wouldn’t hesitate to put the A5 in the same bracket design-wise as the Galaxy S7. Although the price is set at below £400, the A5 has more in common with phones far more expensive, clad as it is in glass at the front and metal wrapping around the sides and the rear.
Four colours are available – Black Sky, Gold Sand, Blue Mist and Peach Cloud – and although I’m not a big fan of the blue colour, but the rest look suitably handsome.
As for size, the A5 comes with a manageable 5.2in display using an AMOLED panel with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080. That gives you a pixel density of 424ppi, which isn’t sharp enough to use with the Samsung Gear VR (according to Samsung), but it’s plenty sharp for everyday use; you’ll have to look close to see any kind of pixel structure.
I’ve never had a problem with the protruding camera lens on recent Samsung phones, but if you did, you’ll be pleased to find that the lens protrusion is no more on the Galaxy A5 – it’s completely flush to the rear of the phone. And from the specifications, it looks as if it could be a decent snapper, too.
The resolution is 16 megapixels, which should produce detailed enough shots for most purposes, and there’s a bright, wide f/1.9 aperture that should ensure decent-quality images in low light. There’s no OIS, though, which is one sacrifice you’ll have to put up with.
Either way, the snaps I was able to grab during the event looked pretty good, and it’s also good to see that Samsung has made an effort to improve the camera software. The different shooting modes can now be accessed by swiping across the screen left and right, and the onscreen shutter button can be relocated to a location you’re comfortable with.
There’s a new food filter, too, for those keen to show off their culinary credentials. This applies a depth-of-field effect and ups the saturation in an effort to avoid the dreaded brown-plate-of-sick effect.
As with most modern smartphones, both budget and premium, the Samsung Galaxy A5 I tried at the launch event felt suitably snappy and responsive. It’s powered by an octa-core Exynos 7880 clocked at 1.9GHz, and this is backed up by 3GB of RAM, so it won’t be on a level playing field with the £400 OnePlus 3T, but it could prove to be a close match with the Moto Z Play, which has an octa-core 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625.
One area where the Samsung Galaxy A5 may not compete with the Moto is battery life. The phone comes with a 3,000mAh power pack, which is 510mAh smaller than its rival, although the A5’s smaller screen means the disparity shouldn’t be too huge. Samsung claims up to 16 hours of talk time, and once the battery is run down it should be quick to charge, with support for fast charging via the phone’s USB Type-C socket.
