Samsung Galaxy A7 review: Three cameras and premium looks. But will this be enough?
Just when it looked like smartphone manufacturers had left the mindless megapixel race behind, and finally started looking at larger, more light-sensitive sensors – and software optimisations – the industry now appears to be heading towards a sensor count war.
Though dual camera phones have been a commonplace for a while now, smartphone manufacturers are now looking at beating that number by bringing three – and even four – lenses with the camera setups of their phones.
The latest player in this race is Samsung, which despite not jumping the gun in the flagship segment, has done so in the mid-segment with its three lens cameraphone – Galaxy A7.
Its strategy of bringing such a flashy camera setup with a phone that starts at Rs 23,999 for the 4GB+64GB variant and goes all the way up to Rs 28,999 for the 6GB+128GB one, has raised questions over this being another gimmick to lure buyers in.
But before we get talking about the Galaxy A7's headline feature – the triple camera setup – let's take a look at the other features of the device.
Design and display
Let's start with the design.
In terms of the shell that the phone's hardware is enclosed in, the Galaxy A7 brings with it glass at the front and back which is held together by an aluminium frame sandwiched in the middle. This particular design decision adds not only a touch of premium to the device but also makes it look more in line with the times.
We were sent the blue colour variant of the device for review, and at first sight, it reminded me a little of the more expensive, top of the line S9+. Yes, the curves aren't there, and on closer inspection, the glossy aluminium frame also differentiates the Galaxy A7 from its expensive cousin.
Yet, the very fact that it looks cut out from the same cloth as the premium Galaxy S9+, is in itself a big compliment to this smartphone that starts at Rs 23,999.
The phone's aluminium frame also houses a 3.5mm headphone jack, a micro USB port for charging the device, volume rocker and (surprise, surprise) a side mounted fingerprint scanner which also doubles up as the phone's power button.
Though this unusually placed fingerprint scanner/ power button didn't bother me as much, it could, however, be a little confusing to use for a lot of users. In my initial hours with the phone, I often found myself reaching out to the phone's back to unlock the device. Even while trying to wake the device up, I initially found myself instinctively fiddling with the volume rocker instead of the power button.
Eventually, I got used to the placement of the button and unlocking and waking up the device became instinctive, but, for a number of users, this could be a problem even in the long run.
Coming to the front of the phone, the device brings with it Samsung's Infinity Display that was only seen on its flagship phones up until last year. Now, this may sound like a big deal, but the Infinity Display is just Samsung's take on tall edge-to-edge displays that have not only become quite normal for Samsung but rest of the industry as well in 2018.
The display here is 6-inches in size and uses a Super AMOLED panel that can churn up to Full HD+ resolution. As is the case with almost all Samsung phones, the display here is calibrated to the company's standards of perfection. Colour reproduction is good, with deep blacks and punchy colours which may seem a tad oversaturated at times.
The display is also bright enough, and even under direct sunlight, visibility is not an issue on it. Because of this being an AMOLED panel, it also supports the Always-On-Display feature also found on some of the more expensive devices in the market.
Specifications and performance
Now, this is where things start to go a little downhill for the Galaxy A7.
In terms of the hardware, we have Samsung's own Exynos 7885 SoC paired with up to 6GB of RAM and as much as 128GB storage. We received the more affordable, 4GB/64GB RAM+ Storage variant, and to be honest, it left us a little underwhelmed with its performance.
Tasked to run Samsung Experience 9 UI – based on Android 8.0 – the phone's hardware was found lacking on more than a few occasions. In our time using the device, we encountered our fair share of app crashes and overall the performance seemed a little patchy.
Multitasking remained a beast that the hardware found difficult to tame, and even when we tried to play games such as Tekken Mobile and PUBG the performance again wasn't up to the mark as micro stutters and heating issues ruined the experience.
Now, this was a little surprising because the 7885 SoC – with two performance-oriented Cortex-A73 cores and six efficiency-oriented Cortex-A53 cores – has previously performed quite well on the slightly more expensive Galaxy A8+. However, the particular device had 6GB of RAM at its disposal, leading us to believe that it is probably the lack of RAM that led to the choppy performance on our unit.
As far as the UI is concerned, the Samsung Experience 9.0 UI brings with it some nifty features. There's an ultra data saving mode, one-handed mode, S Secure, S Bike Mode and other UI specific features that are quite well-optimised.
Keeping the lights on here is a 3,300mAh battery pack that backed by the six energy efficient cortex A53 cores on the Exynos 7885 Soc, easily got me through the day on moderate usage. However, the Galaxy A7 does not support fast charging and it takes about two hours to charge the battery completely.
Cameras
Now let's talk about the headline feature of the device – the camera performance.
To begin with, let us get the specifications out of the way.
As we've mentioned before, the Galaxy A7 sports a three camera setup at the back, and as such, is the first phone from Samsung to do so. The setup comprises of a 24-Megapixel telephoto lens with f/1.7 aperture and PDAF support, a 5-Megapixel depth sensor with f/ 2.2 aperture, and an 8-Megapixel 120 degrees ultra wide-angle lens with f/2.4 aperture.
All three lenses can be used separately by switching modes to click Portrait, wide-angle or normal 4:3 ratio shots to utilise the full 24-Megapixels of the main lens. Because of its wide f/1.7 aperture, the main sensor lets in good amount of light, helping it click decent pictures in low light scenarios. The only problem we faced was that despite the 24-Megapixel lens, these low light photos turned out be a little noisy and grainy at times.
Under well-lit scenarios, most pictures taken turned out fine. However, under bright sunlight, the primary lens because of its wide aperture did take pictures that appeared to be a little overexposed and with oversaturated colours.
Moving on, the Galaxy A7's wide angle lens – which can be easily switched to from with the Galaxy A7's camera app – turned out to be bit of a mixed bag during our review.
Though it was impressive to find the phone automatically capturing extra area at the toggle of a switch, the pictures clicked using the lens didn't impress as much. To begin with, there was noticeable fish-eye effect in all the wide-angle shots. Then we also observed a slight lack of detail in the pictures clicked using this 8-Megapixel lens. This problem was accentuated when clicking wide-angle pictures in low light conditions – we observed noticeable noise in low light photos.
The 5-Megapixel depth sensing lens, however, worked quite well, as Bokeh shots using the Live Focus mode turned out quite well during our review of the device. The Galaxy A7 processed the pictures well and produced quite natural looking depth effect. We did notice a little smoothing on the edges of the object in focus, but it was more than acceptable.
The device also has a 24-Megapixel selfie camera that performed well under nicely-lit situations. However, the processed images did come out a little over-smoothed for our taste.
Apart from this, the phone's camera application brings with a ton of features, including Scene Optimiser that "automatically detects any of 19 different scenarios such as food, flower, or sunset, etc". The optimiser did prove itself to be quite accurate and responsive during our review. This, however, cannot be said for the camera shutter and post-processing speed – both of which took half a second more than we would have liked.
Should you buy it?
The answer to this quite frankly depends on what you're looking for in a phone.
For the price, the Galaxy A7 brings with it a premium design and a display that is created for multimedia consumption.
To be honest, the overall performance of the Galaxy A7 does it a slight disservice. But, one cannot forget that the flexibility the A7 provides with its three cameras – wide-angle and depth sensing sensor paired alongside an above-par 24-Megapixel lens.
Although the camera performance is not perfect, the mere fact that the phone brings with it three cameras is definitely a big tick in the phone's favour, one that definitely puts the Galaxy A7 in a superior position vis-a-vis the existing competition in the market.
And as such, if flexibility to click pictures in different situations and different ways, paired with premium looks and a gorgeous display is what you're looking for, then the Galaxy A7 comes highly recommended for you. Despite its flaws, the camera setup is a step in the right direction by Samsung which is trying to bring premium features to the masses. The Infinity Display, and now three cameras on a mid-tier phone is proof of that.
Yet, if these features don't appeal to you, then there are a number of devices, including the Asus Zenfone 5Z and Xiaomi's Poco F1 that could prove to better buys.