Samsung Galaxy A5 and A5 Duos review: Five star

Browser and Google Chrome

The Samsung Galaxy A5 comes with both the stock Android browser (customized by Samsung) and Google's Chrome. Both support multiple tabs (including incognito ones) and an option to go straight to the desktop version of a page.

Internet browser

With a Samsung account the Internet browser can sync your browsing history and bookmarks between devices, similar to Google Chrome.

Google Chrome

Chrome has another trick up its sleeve - it can reduce traffic by compressing web pages on Google's servers before they are sent to the device, similar to how Opera's Turbo mode (and Opera Mini) work.

Other preinstalled apps

S Planner is the default calendar. It features five different views: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and agenda. Multiple online calendars are supported (complete with color coding). Despite bearing the same name, coming from the Galaxy Note 4 version of S Planner there's definitely the sense that this is a stripped down version.

S Planner

The Memo app is fairly powerful, you can add images and voice notes in each memo and sort those in multiple categories. Notes are synced with a server, which is handy if you have several Samsung devices.

Memo

The clock app has an alarm clock, World clock, stopwatch and timer modes. Smart alarm can wake you gently by starting a quiet sound that builds over a few minutes before the raw ringer kicks in.

Clock app

My Files is the built-in file browser. Its initial screen is quite simple, sorting files by their type (video, document, etc.), but you can browse the built-in and microSD storage folder by folder, too. Files and folders can be moved, copied, deleted, renamed and ZIP-ed together.

File manager

Aside from the Google Play store you get Samsung Galaxy apps - the store for exclusive content for Galaxy smartphones. Much like Amazon, Samsung is pushing its own app store with free promos.

Samsung apps • Google Play

The latest Google Maps app comes as standard on the Samsung Galaxy A5. The app offers the most up to date maps, a great Street View mode and free voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation. Keep in mind that Google Maps requires a data connection for initial routing, though.

Finally, there's S Voice - another feature missing from the Galaxy A3. You can perform many tasks with only your voice like checking the weather, opening your calendar, updating your social network status or calling and texting people from your phonebook.

S Voice