Samsung Galaxy A5(2016): Hands On

Samsung today unveiled the refreshed models of the budget, Galaxy A5 and A7 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Galaxy A5 2016 model is priced at Rs 29,400 in India, and will be available through Samsung’s e-retail partner, Snapdeal, and other offline retailers.

The refreshed A5 features the glass and metal design found on the Samsung Galaxy S6. The A5 (2016) model also comes equipped with a fingerprint scanner. The phone will be available in three color variants gold, black and white.The A5 in terms of design, just like the A7 (click here for A7’s hands on), does look and feel extremely premium.

The Galaxy A5 (2016) comes packing a 5.2 inch Super AMOLED display with full HD resolution. It is powered by an Octa-Core processor clocked at 1.6GHz paired with 2 GB of LPDDR3 RAM. The memory on board is 16 GB which is expandable to 128 GB using a MicroSD card. 4G and Dual – SIM connectivity.

The phone has a 2900 mAh battery. This is a significant bump up from the last generation A5 which came packing only a 2300 mAh pack. To add to this, the A5(2016) also features Fast Charging which is sure to bring smiles on a lot of faces reading this hands on.

The A5 (2016) offers a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5 megapixel front camera. Both the front and rear cameras of the phone come with a f1.9 aperture. The rear camera on the back of the refreshed Galaxy A5 also has an Optical Image Stabilisation feature.

The phone overall is nice. The refreshed A5(2016) does not come with great under the hood specifications. For the price it’s being sold at the return feels inadequate. Full HD display and 2 GB RAM without the capability of capturing 4k Video that even the Rs 10,999 Le 1s comes equipped with only shows the disparity between options in the market and what Samsung is offering here.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Samsung’s Galaxy A5(2016) is still stuck on 5.1.1 and does not come with Android Marshmallow out of the box. But for all its shortcomings what does work in the handset’s favour is the fact that it feels extremely premium when it comes to looks which might help buyers gloss over the hefty price tag that Samsung plans to sell this handset at.