Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) review: Stride across

Stride across

GSMArena team, 05 February, 2016.

Introduction

Samsung reinvented itself last year and that gave the A-series a chance for a coup. It took the great new design from the S-phones and parred it down to a mid-range price.

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) review

The Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) is essentially an A5 (2016) stretched to 5.5" screen size. This sort of size has turned into somewhat of a sweetspot for a phablet - any bigger and the phone becomes unwieldy, any smaller and you lose the benefit of the big screen .

While the A5 (2016) competed with the company's flagship - the Galaxy S6 - the A7 (2016) is placed somewhat differently - it can't even hope for taking on the Galaxy S6 edge+ or the Note5, so it's instead targeting a market populated by a number of Chinese-made phablets.

Key features

  • Available with a hybrid dual-SIM/microSD slot
  • Metal frame sandwiched between 2.5D Gorilla Glass 4
  • 5.5" Super AMOLED of 1,080 x 1,920px resolution, ~401ppi
  • Octa-core Cortex-A53 processor, 3GB of RAM, Adreno 405 GPU; Snapdragon 615 chipset (also available with an Exynos 7580 chipset)
  • Android 5.1 Lollipop with TouchWiz, theme support
  • 13MP camera with f/1.9 aperture and OIS; 1080p video recording; 5MP front-facing camera, 1080p video
  • 16GB of built-in storage; 11GB user available; microSD slot (same as SIM2 slot)
  • LTE Cat. 4 150Mbps, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, GPS, GLONASS, Bluetooth 4.1, ANT+, NFC, FM Radio
  • 3,300mAh battery

Main disadvantages

  • No 4K video or 1080p@60fps
  • Limited storage out of the box, no 32GB version
  • No MHL (but USB OTG is supported)

Compared to original Galaxy A7

  • Same screen size, resolution
  • Same chipset, but more RAM (3GB vs. 2GB)
  • Same camera specs, but has OIS
  • Bigger battery, 3,300mAh vs. 2,600mAh
  • 2.5D Gorilla Glass 4 on the back

The relationship between the old and new Galaxy A5 and A7 is strange. The original A5 left to be desired and the new one is a great upgrade... except it's priced too high. The A7 was pretty solid and so the new A7 (2016) isn't a huge improvement, but it's pricing is on point.

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) official images - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) review Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) official images - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) review Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) official images - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) review Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) official images - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) review Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) official images - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) review Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) official images - Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) review
Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) official images

And the new features, while few in number, do a great job of transforming the phablet into a true premium mid-ranger. The Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) brings a first-rate fingerprint reader and Samsung Pay support.

It also looks to have some impressive photography chops on paper - with a bright f/1.9 aperture and OIS. Not to mention the AMOLED screen with perfectly calibrated colors.

We'll check up on that later, first let's have a look at the new design, which features 2.5D Gorilla Glass 4 on the back, just like on the front.

Reader comments

  • Anonymous
  • 03 Dec 2021
  • NuU

Not charging showing only but not charging

  • Anonymous
  • 09 Sep 2020
  • IVy

This is very nice phone but the problem is the screen is flickering when low brightness....and when night i have tp increase the brightness and it strsining my eye....but there were solution for this by downloading night mode on the playstore without...

I've used A7-2016 4years ago.It's a best phone for me.