We got our hands-on on the four new smartphones under the Galaxy A and Galaxy E series launched by Samsung yesterday.
After unveiling the Galaxy A3 and Galaxy A5 a couple of months back, Samsung has now launched both the metal unibody designed smartphones in India. Along with these phones, Samsung also launched the Galaxy E5 and Galaxy E7 smartphones, India being the first country to get these phones, marking India as a key market for Samsung globally. We got to play around with all the phones at the event, so read on to find out our first impressions of them.
First, we’ll talk about the Galaxy A series, targeted at the style conscious consumers as said by Samsung. The Galaxy A series phones sport a full metal unibody design and are the slimmest smartphones ever built by Samsung. Both these phones feel really good in your hands, with their full metal unibody design. All the buttons have a nice tactile feeling when you press them, and the phones look like a smaller version of the Galaxy Alpha. The specs are minimal and this is where the A3 and A5 differ. The A3 being a 4.5 inch display phone, fits perfectly in your hands, while the A5 has a 5 inch display. The colours are very vivid and sharp, owing to the Super AMOLED display on both the devices. Samsung has put in many features in its camera app, where selfies can be taken using your palm (as seen in the LG G3) and also by voice recognition. The phones probably have the same camera sensor and take good photos. The front cameras in both the phones take sharp images. The A series really wins on the design side, and Samsung claims to have spent a considerable time in designing it. But as always, Samsung again has messed up with the prices, since there are other cheaper phones which pack the same Snapdragon 410 64-bit processor. The A3 is priced at Rs. 20,500 and the A5 at Rs. 25,500.
Talking about the Galaxy E series, it is targeted at young consumers, as explained by Samsung. When we held the phone for the first time, calling it a metal unibody phone would be wrong since the back part of the phone is made of plastic with a glossy finish and only the side band is a metal casing. The buttons felt very tacky, taking away the premium feel, making us wonder for a second whether we were actually holding a repackaged Galaxy Grand. The E5 and E7 phones are mainly different from the A series with respect to the unibody design, and a few other specs. But again, the pricing seems absurd looking at the specs and the design; the E5 and E7 are priced at Rs. 19,300 and Rs. 23,000 respectively.
All the four phones have many common features such as the quad-core Snapdragon 410 64-bit processor, Android KitKat version of TouchWiz, 16GB of internal storage expandable up to 64GB, and a 5-Megapixel front camera. The A series and E series have dual-SIM support, capable of running 4G. Though Samsung has designed the Alpha and A series quite well, the pricing doesn’t fit the specs offered in all the phones at all. You can check out the specs of the Galaxy A3, A5, E5 and E7 here. Stay tuned for our full review on these phones.
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Abhijit Dey
A Star Wars fan and sci-fi enthusiast. When I'm not playing games on my PC, I usually lurk around the Internet, mostly on Reddit. View Full Profile
