Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) review: Alphabet soup
Alphabet soup
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 • Pictures zoomed all the way out • Albums • Settings
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.
You can download the standalone Video app from the Galaxy Apps store, but all of its functionality is already present in the gallery.
Video gallery • Player • Settings • Subtitles
Music player
The Samsung Galaxy A5 (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
You get comprehensive control over the listening experience thanks to the SoundAlive equalizer, a manual 7-band equalizer, an automatic equalizer (Adapt sound) and even a UHQ upscaler.
Sound customization
Samsung's own Music app can be downloaded from the company's own app store too. It may look a bit sleeker than the utilitarian Google app, but it's limited to offline content only.
FM Radio
There's an FM radio on board as well, another area where A > S. It can't find the names of the stations (you can do it manually), but supports favorites and sound recording.
FM radio
Audio output is very good
The Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) did very well when hooked up to an active external amplifier. Its loudness was well above average and its clarity was outstanding.
Volume remained just as good when we hooked up a pair of headphones, but the quality deteriorated a bit. Stereo rose and some intermodulation crept in - neither is too bad and the overall output is pretty solid.
Anyway, here go the results so you can do your comparisons.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.02, -0.32 | -93.1 | 93.3 | 0.0039 | 0.0032 | -90.2 | |
| +0.29, -0.09 | -88.3 | 87.7 | 0.015 | 0.232 | -60.2 | |
| +0.04, -0.02 | -93.0 | 93.1 | 0.0018 | 0.0085 | -93.8 | |
| +0.05, -0.02 | -92.7 | 92.8 | 0.0023 | 0.054 | -52.4 | |
| +0.01, -0.02 | -93.3 | 93.2 | 0.0010 | 0.0070 | -93.5 | |
| +0.19, -0.35 | -92.3 | 92.2 | 0.0098 | 0.295 | -58.3 | |
| +0.10, -0.03 | -94.2 | 94.0 | 0.0019 | 0.0064 | -89.3 | |
| +0.30, -0.07 | -92.5 | 93.0 | 0.810 | 0.271 | -31.3 | |
| +0.03, -0.30 | -86.6 | 83.6 | 0.0017 | 0.049 | -91.1 | |
| +0.06, -0.03 | -92.4 | 92.4 | 0.0018 | 0.021 | -88.2 | |
| Xiaomi Mi 5s | +0.01, -0.03 | -89.6 | 90.2 | 0.0029 | 0.040 | -85.5 |
| Xiaomi Mi 5s (headphones) | +0.71, -0.31 | -82.9 | 84.8 | 0.229 | 0.559 | -48.0 |
| +0.06, -0.10 | -92.4 | 92.3 | 0.0015 | 0.0093 | -80.9 | |
| +0.03, -0.11 | -92.3 | 92.3 | 0.0011 | 0.012 | -77.0 |
Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) frequency response
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
Reader comments
- Anonymous
- 27 Jun 2023
- m}F
LOS is still being updated. Best phone ever.
- Peter
- 16 Jun 2023
- iE2
Android
- mobashir
- 05 Jun 2023
- wuc
the best phone i ever used till May, 2023. i bought it during 2017. unfortunately its eMMC memory got deal and i was not aware about it. Now its not being repaired .