Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017) review: Bite-sized
Bite-sized
Gallery
The gallery integrates with Samsung Cloud to automatically sync your photos. The ones on your phone are split into three categories - Pictures, Albums and Stories. Pictures is just a timeline view, while Albums is the folder-based view.
Stories are collaborative online projects - you can invite people to add their own photos and videos to the Story gallery and create a cool slideshow.
Gallery: Pictures • Sync settings • Albums • Stories
The built-in editor is fairly powerful, going from basic tools to straighten photos through image correction to downloadable image effects.
The built-in image editor is powerful and extensible
Video player
The video player is part of the gallery. It supports subtitles with customizable styles and can play in a pop-up window.
Video player • Player settings • Subtitle settings
Music player and FM radio
The Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017) comes with Google Play Music by default. The app should be familiar, it can play locally stored music as well as stream from Google's library (and you can cache music over Wi-Fi to save mobile data).
Google Play Music
For non-streaming music, we prefer the Samsung app, which we downloaded from Galaxy Apps. Even if you stick to the Google app, however, you can head to the settings for Samsung's excellent SoundAlive equalizer, a manual 7-band equalizer, an automatic equalizer (Adapt sound) and even a UHQ upscaler.
The A3 has something the S7 does not - an FM radio. It supports RDS and broadcast recording (subject to local regulations).
FM radio • Recording a broadcast • Recordings • Settings
Audio output is excellent
The Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017) showed some impressively clean output with an active external amplifier with no weak points to its output. The volume was high and the clarity was basically perfect.
Plugging in a pair of headphones did well controlled damage to stereo quality and introduced a bit of intermodulation distortion. None of those was too bad though and since the other readings remained excellent and volume didn’t drop a bit, it made up for a very solid showing here.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017) | +0.03, -0.01 | -94.7 | 93.2 | 0.0039 | 0.025 | -92.3 |
| Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017) (headphones) | +0.37, -0.07 | -92.6 | 91.7 | 0.015 | 0.254 | -62.5 |
| Motorola Moto M | +0.02, -0.11 | -90.5 | 90.3 | 0.0033 | 0.012 | -91.4 |
| Motorola Moto M (headphones) | +0.38, -0.12 | -90.5 | 90.7 | 0.0030 | 0.219 | -61.8 |
| Lenovo K6 Note | +0.04, -0.09 | -92.7 | 93.0 | 0.011 | 0.020 | -86.8 |
| Lenovo K6 Note (headphones) | +0.08, -0.10 | -92.3 | 93.1 | 0.012 | 0.086 | -75.2 |
| Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 | +0.02, -0.10 | -94.5 | 90.9 | 0.0019 | 0.0086 | -94.9 |
| Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (headphones) | +0.37, -0.25 | -92.2 | 89.6 | 0.0087 | 0.274 | -53.6 |
Samsung Galaxy A3 (2017) frequency response
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
Reader comments
- Aqib
- 02 Sep 2021
- 2Tw
How to update A3 2017 ? Play store no functional in my phone pls guide
- Anonymous
- 08 Apr 2021
- byX
According to reviews, the A3 has enough battery life. BTW, the thing has its own chip for it so it won't suck like if you just use an app for it. Also, the A3 has superior build quality, a decent OLED display, and Samsung Pay as I am aware of.
- ecologist
- 14 Nov 2020
- sps
You're right. I am not find a phone to be good for me in 2020, to big, to expensive or cheap things. I have also a Nokia 7+, and a Samsung a50, still use the old a3. I don't need a brick in my pocket, and a 1000 megapixels.