Samsung Galaxy A3 preview: First look

Latest TouchWiz on Android 4.4.4 KitKat

The Samsung Galaxy A3 runs on the latest available Android 4.4.4 KitKat enhanced with the TouchWiz UI. It's almost the same version that powers the Galaxy Alpha but with the fresh twist of supporting themes for the first time in the Galaxy lineup.

The lockscreen

The homescreen features the My Magazine tab, which displays both news articles and social networking updates. It's powered by the popular Flipboard app and you can enjoy your reads in a clean interface, and easily share links or post social updates straight from the homescreen pane.

My Magazine keeps you up to date with news and social networking updates

There are regular homescreens too, with shortcuts, widgets and folders. If you want just those, My Magazine can be disabled completely.

The regular homescreens • Themes menu

For the first time ever, the TouchWiz UI now features Theme support. Quite expectedly, they change your default wallpaper, system icons, and system colors scheme. The themes however won't change the notification area or any apps or submenus.

We couldn't find a way to install additional themes, but we believe that Galaxy Apps repo should add such option as soon as the feature launches officially.

Two of the default themes

The notification area is filled to the brim with features. The toggles work as usual and below them are two buttons (S Finder and Quick connect). Below that is the brightness slider, which can be hidden to save space.

Notification area

In the app drawer, icons are presented as a customizable or alphabetized grid. You can also view only the ones you've downloaded yourself or just hide the ones you don't need. You can also disable some of the pre-installed apps so they won't take up any RAM.

The app drawer

The Galaxy A3 has an App Switcher button below the screen, which, as you can guess, calls up a custom app switcher UI. As usual, you can go into the task manager for more advanced controls or just hit the Close all button from here, should you need that.

The app switcher and task manager