The newest Galaxy A7 2018 is a big, 6-inch phone with a glass back and a triple camera system, but does it have what it takes to beat the new kings in the affordable phone arena?… The newest Galaxy A7 2018 is a big, 6-inch phone with a glass back and a triple camera system, but does it have what it takes to beat the new kings
Competition in the affordable phone market these days is not merely intense, it’s almost impossible to compete with aggressively priced phones out of China with top-tier specs at prices of around just $300.
There are plenty of alternatives in this price range:
Don’t get us wrong: it’s a phone that has that glass look and style that comes with it, and it handles basic tasks mostly okay, plus it has a beautiful Super AMOLED screen, but for demanding users its performance is lacking, its camera is downright disappointing, the fingerprint scanner is slow and in a sloppy place, you have the ancient microUSB, there’s no gesture navigation and overall this phone just lacks excitement and vigor! And that’s just unforgivable at the price that Samsung is asking for it.
And Samsung should know. It’s been losing ground to the likes of Huawei, Xiaomi and OnePlus quicker than all other Android phone makers. So is its newest mid-range Galaxy A7 2018 the transformative device that would bring it back on the success track? On the surface, the Galaxy A7 looks… a bit boring. It’s a pretty big rectangular slab with slightly sloppy-looking bezels. There are no top-tier chips on board and the interface is the same old Samsung Experience with no modern gesture navigation. And no, there’s no 4K video on board either. What was Samsung even thinking? Well, there are three cameras on the back, more than on any other mid-range phone, and a few surprises on the inside and we can’t wait to tell you all about them. Read on. The Galaxy A7 2018 is made of glass and feels surprisingly light-weight, but it’s still a massive phone almost as big as an iPhone XS Max, but weighing nearly 25% less. This is definitely not a device you can easily operate with a single hand. We’ve gotten pretty used to glass phones by now, but the A7 surprised us with just how slippery it was. It’s one of those phones that slip and fall on their own unless it’s resting on a perfectly flat surface. This happened a few times and we feel so lucky that the phone is not broken yet! So a case with this phone is not only strongly recommended, it’s mandatory in our opinion. The A7 comes in a selection of three colors: we have the blue model up for review, but there are black and gold models as well. One element that makes this phone look a bit on the cheap side are the plastic sides with a very reflective polished finish (but we do like that the sides have a matching color with the back cover). Buttons are all on the right side, the volume keys way up at the top and a recessed power button that you cannot easily find without looking and always feels a little weird to press. The big disappointment is on the bottom. Nope, it’s not the 3.5mm headphone jack, which Samsung has kept on this phone, but the age-old microUSB port. Is it really that expensive to include a USB-C port on a mid-range phone in late 2018, Samsung? We wonder. On the bottom, you’d also find the single loudspeaker. On the back, you have the star of the show: the triple camera system. We’ll take a closer look at it below, so stick with us. One more thing: there is no special water-proofing on this phone, so be careful not to get it wet. By now you are probably wondering: where’s the fingerprint scanner? It’s here, but this time Samsung has built it right in the power button on the side. After using the Galaxy A7 for nearly two weeks, we find this to be a bigger inconvenience than we suspected. Sure, it’s not a dealbreaker, but it just doesn’t feel very comfortable to reach to the side and than have to reposition your hand to actually unlock your phone every time you want to check something quickly. Speaking of speed, this is definitely not the fastest fingerprint reader around, always taking a slight, but noticeable moment to unlock the phone. And risking to sound too petty, you do get a nice click with the power key, but the recessed position makes it even stranger as you cannot easily feel it by hand. You also have face recognition on board. Enrolling your face is a fast and easy process, and using face recognition to unlock the A7 works most of the time. We also tried using it while wearing glasses and without them, as well as in a well-lit room and in darker environments, and it recognized us fine if (and this is important) you place your phone at the right angle and without moving too much. If you kind of just glance at the screen at an angle it often fails to recognize you and also while you are moving and on the go, it seems to have a tougher time. There is again a slight delay, similar to the one you get with fingerprint scans, when you use face recognition to actually unlock your phone, so keep that in mind. While we’ve been criticizing the A7 2018 for its looks and slightly slow secure unlock systems, there’s nothing to criticize about the big and beautiful Super AMOLED screen that you get with this phone. It is a 6-inch display with a Full HD (1080 x 2220 pixel) resolution and it looks gorgeous. Colors are impressively wide and lively, blacks are deep, viewing angles are mostly fine, and you can select between a few different color modes for more eye-popping color or a more toned-down appearance. The screen is very reflective, though, which makes it slightly more inconvenient to use outdoors. It is the big bezel around the sides, however, that we dislike the most, as it contributes to the width of the phone and spoils the looks a bit. This being a Samsung AMOLED screen, you also get the useful Always-on screen option so you can quickly glance at the screen to see whether you have missed notifications or calls. You also have a blue-light filter to help ease the strain on your eyes when you use the phone at night. The Galaxy A7 2018 is a brand new phone and it comes with the latest and greatest version of Android… oh wait, it doesn’t! It still runs on last year’s Android 8 Oreo software, which is disappointing, to say the least. The reason for this probably lies in the heavy custom interface that is Samsung Experience and that takes a lot of time to port to newer versions of Google’s platform. Whatever the reasons, though, we find it hard to find an excuse, especially considering how cheaper Android phones rarely if ever get updates, and with this one, you are starting off with old software. Still, if you don’t care too much about having the latest software, you will find the Samsung Experience on the A7 2018 to be a reliable interface that slowly but surely churns through tasks. What’s missing here, however, is clearly excitement: a prime example is that you don’t have the modern gesture navigation system that even cheaper phones have these days and only have the on-screen button navigation. Under the hood, the Galaxy A7 2018 is powered by the Samsung Exynos 7 Octa 7885 chip and if you get as easily confused by such long names as we do, you might find it useful to know that this chip compares to Snapdragon’s 6xx series in terms of performance, ranging somewhere between that of the Snapdragon 636 and Snapdragon 660 chips. The chip features two Cortex A73 performance cores and six Cortex A53 efficiency cores for an octa-core total design and it’s built on a 14nm manufacturing process. The phone comes in three memory configurations:Storage expansion with a microSD card is supported. Those are the technicalities, however, and what we take greater interest in is the actual performance. And it’s not among the fastest. There is a strange paradox about this phone: its animations mostly feel smooth, yet it never feels fast, quite the opposite. Apps take an extra moment to load up, the keyboard only comes after a slight delay and combined with the quite slow unlock speeds, you never feel like you are operating a fast phone. Right below, you’d also find some benchmarks to give you a rough idea of how the A7 2018 compares against the competition. The Galaxy A7 2018 supports 4G LTE bands and it’s officially sold and compatible with GSM carriers (T-Mobile and AT&T) in the United States. You won’t find it at carrier stores at the moment, though, but you can buy the US version at retailers like B&H. The phone that we have for review is a dual SIM device and it’s a true dual SIM phone, meaning that the microSD card does not overlap with one of the SIM card slots, and you can have two SIMs and a memory card at the same time.
