Samsung’s Galaxy A-series has a pretty good heritage considering, technically, the range was the first time the company dabbled with metal-bodied phones.
Essentially signalling the switch from its bad habit of horrid plastic to premium metal and glass, the original Galaxy A-series appeared just before Samsung’s Galaxy S flagship series also transitioned into high-end build and design.
The Galaxy A-series has consistently featured three models arriving at once, covering the lower, mid-range, and upper-mid market sectors. This started with the Galaxy A3, Galaxy A5, and Galaxy A7 respectively.
Thus, the Galaxy A7 has the most competitive spec of the 2017 Galaxy A-series refresh, though it is still a mid-range phone.
Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Design & Display
Design-wise there is little to find fault with on the Galaxy A7, as it essentially continues Samsung’s current sleek and attractive design language, with a high end finish, metal and glass build, and a shape that clearly takes many cues from the Galaxy S7.
It does follow the recent trend of expanding the display glass as much as possible with an 18:9 aspect ratio and minimal bezels along the edges, but this is only a good thing both visually and in terms of more screen space to view. It’s also a plus that the Galaxy A7 is IP68 rated for water and dust resistance.
A physical Home key and capacitive touch Back and Multitasking keys sit at the bottom chin, and the handset has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a Type-C USB port.
The display demonstrates Samsung’s continued ability to excel in screen technology, with the firm’s signature Super AMOLED panel implemented with a 5.7in diagonal, a Full HD resolution at a sharp 386ppi, and Samsung’s previously flagship-tier Adaptive Display and Always-On Display (AOD) functionality.
As well as being pinpoint sharp, the brightness, contrast, and black depth are all superb, and colour is incredibly vibrant as we’ve come to expect.
Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Hardware, Performance & Battery
The Galaxy A7 houses a massive battery cell rated at 3,600mAh with Quick Charge support. Battery life is decent enough to easily last a day for most users, with the only possible exception being power users who, frankly, are unlikely to be won over by the processor performance and storage anyway.
At any rate, for average use scenarios you’re unlikely to find yourself running out of juice before bedtime, but even if you do, a quick boost from Quick Charge will top it up plenty.
In the engine room there’s a Samsung homebrew Exynos 7880 with 3GB of RAM. Performance generally is decent and it handles multitasking well, but it will struggle with high end games with some noticeable heating of the bodywork and a bit of slowdown and stuttering.
You’ve also got 32GB of onboard storage to play with, plus microSD support for expansion.
Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Camera
Samsung’s become pretty adept at cameras over the years, not only delivering superb image quality but also an excellent and intuitive user experience which enables even novice phone users to quickly, easily, and consistently snap fantastic images and video. The Galaxy A7 features a 16MP single-sensor camera on the rear with a nice and wide f/1.9 aperture, as well as autofocus and LED flash.
In normal daylight conditions the cameras here offer excellent performance and high quality imagery, however, unlike the firm’s top-tier flagships the cameras here start to suffer when the light fades, with low-light photography being notably sub-par.
Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Verdict
All in this is a neat little handset with a lot to like, but it is most assuredly a mid-ranger with some acute compromises in certain areas. Notably, it lacks performance punch from the CPU at the higher end, and the camera lacks low-light capabilities. The premium fit and finish, as well as distinct features such as the waterproofing and best-in-class display do offer something rather special, however.
