Samsung Galaxy A3 – A new compact device from Samsung

Samsung uses plastic to design the bodies of its devices. It does make the phones durable but it doesn’t make them feel premium. Even the flagship models of Samsung used to have a plastic body which wasn’t liked by many consumers. Now, Samsung is getting away with its cheap plastic material, ditching it for a complete metal body for its devices. Samsung began experimenting with this new design material with the Galaxy Alpha. And now we have a whole new A-series based on the same metal body design. And it is the Samsung Galaxy A3 which is the entry level device of this series.

Samsung Galaxy A3 is, like we mentioned earlier, is built from metal. It is thin, looks premium and feels premium. Samsung has really raised its standards in build quality of its devices. The Galaxy A3 has a nice brushed back which feels very nice to hold and it isn’t too slippery. Since the device has a uni-body design it doesn’t has a removable back panel which means that the 1900mAh battery inside the device isn’t user replaceable. The Samsung Galaxy A3 is a new compact device from the company. It is designed to be used easily with one hand. Its dimensions are 130.1 x 65.5 x 6.9 mm and it weighs 110.3 grams only.

The device has a 4.5 inch SUPER Amoled display. It is a qHD display which means it has a resolution of 540 x 960 pixels which brings out a pixel density of 245 ppi which isn’t great but for such a small display it wouldn’t do much harm. The text still seems pretty crisp and the Amoled thing does its job well by providing great viewing angles and deep blacks. However, it is the media consumption which wouldn’t be much of a fun on this device because of its qHD display and this is when you would miss your big 5 inch smartphones.

Samsung did change the material to design its smartphones but the overall layout still remains the same. At the bottom of the display we get the typical Samsung buttons – multi tasking capacitive touch button, a physical home button in the middle and another touch capacitive button for ‘back’. At the down side of the device there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack and a charging port. The right side of the device sports a power key and two slots for SIM cards. Out of these two slots one will accept only SIM card while the other one is capable to accept a SIM card as well as a Micro SD card. This means that you can either use the Galaxy A3 as a dual SIM phone or a single SIM with a micro SD card. The left hand side of the device has volume rockers while the top end is completely empty.

The Galaxy A3 is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8916 Snapdragon 410 chipset along with a Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU. This provides enough juice to handle most of the usual tasks. The graphics on the A3 are dealt by the Adreno 306. It also has 1 GB of RAM to provide smooth multi tasking. The internal storage on the A3 is 16 GB which can be expanded by a micro SD card of up to 64 GB. It runs on the upgraded Touch Wiz UI pasted on top of Android 4.4.4 KitKat. The phone will perform daily and usual tasks with ease and you wouldn’t encounter any lag. But if you start to use it heavily then it will disappoint you. It isn’t meant to be used brutally. However, it can handle some heavy games pretty well.

Samsung has provided the Galaxy A3 with an 8 MP primary camera which has auto focus and LED flash. It can also do video recording at 1080p@30fps. The secondary camera on the device is a 5 MP shooter which would allow you to take decent selfies. It A3 isn’t a device to boast about its camera. The battery on the device is small, only 1900mAh, but it gives a good backup. Also, the low resolution display doesn’t require that much amount of juice to stay lit and the Amoled technology helps to keep battery consumption as little as possible. We also have Samsung’s ultra power saving mode which turns the device into a greyscale mode and limits its capabilities to give you the most out of the remaining juice.

Samsung did get rid of the cheap plastic here and has upgraded the Touch Wiz UI to provide a lag free experience. The Galaxy A3 is a good compact phone if you aren’t a heavy user. It feels very nice in hand and provides a good user experience. But just like any other Samsung device, it is over-priced for the specs which it is loaded with. It is available at around Rs 20k-22k on e-commerce websites. You can get very high end devices in this price bracket and that is the only let down. If Samsung would have priced it lower then it would have been fair.

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