Samsung Galaxy A7 (2016) review: Stride across

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.

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

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.