Samsung Galaxy A7 Review

Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Overview & Price

The Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 was released in September this year and is the cheaper alternative to the Samsung Galaxy A9.

In this Samsung Galaxy A7 review we give you all of the information you need to make an informed purchase decision, as well as showing you the best Samsung Galaxy A7 contract deals in the UK.

The mid-range phone offers a pretty cool triple camera setup, although making some sacrifices to compensate for its cheap price.

Price at around £310 in the UK, the phone is a mid-range device with some pretty impressive specifications.

The Samsung Galaxy A7 details are awesome, it focuses on a simplistic design that is easy to use, this phone does not take much getting used to at all.

Check out the best Samsung Galaxy A7 contract deals in the UK here…

A Super AMOLED display, 64GB internal storage and Android 8.0 Oreo are what you can expect from this eye-catching device.

Let’s dive into this Samsung Galaxy A7 review…

Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Design & Display

One of the first things you will notice right out of the box is firstly the metallic frame, this makes the Samsung Galaxy A7 design extremely shiny!

The glass front and back combination looks really good and the phone is beautifully designed.

The aluminium sides give it a mid-range feel and you can really tell it’s not a £700 phone.

Weighing only 168g the phone is very light and feels won’t weigh your pockets down when out and about with the device.

Gorilla Glass keeps the phone protected in case of an accidental drop on the floor, but be careful around water as you won’t have the same level of protection with the device not having an IP rating.

The Samsung Galaxy A7 also comes in some pretty cool colours; Blue, Black, Pink or Gold, our personal favourite being the shiny blue colours.

Design wise the phone is very much bare with only a couple of logos and as a light bump on the camera around the back of the device.

All of the buttons of the device are painted with a plastic finish, adding to the slick design. Samsung has decided to stick with a full top bezel at the top of the phone, which houses the selfie camera and sensors.

On the right-hand side of the phone you will find a power button and two volume rockers whilst on the left, you will find a SIM tray, which supports dual-SIM on some versions of the phone allowing you to boost that memory right up.

The power button also doubles as a fingerprint reader, although not as quick as you would find on the Samsung Galaxy S9, it’s still a lot safer than not having one at all.

The speakers are also on the side of the phone and are surprisingly loud, adding to the great media experience you will find when using this phone.

Face ID is also a cool feature of the phone, which works really well and allows you to secure your online banking and passwords with your very own beautiful face, it works extremely fast too.

Another awesome feature of the phone is that the SamsungGalaxy A7 actually comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack!

When it comes to the display, the Samsung A7 packs a 6-inch Super AMOLED with a 1080p resolution.

However there are some pretty big bezels are the top and bottom of the phone and although it’s called an infinity display, the edges are not curved.

Watching Netflix and YouTube on the phone is awesome and as the phone delivers 411 PPI, colours are bright and sharp.

Keeping in mind that this is a £300 phone we were pleasantly surprised when watching videos on the device as it really does deliver a great media experience.

We found the always-on display to be one of our favourite features of the phone as it allows you to check the time and any notifications you may have at a glance.

Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Performance

When it comes to the performance of the Samsung Galaxy A7 2018, we were pretty impressed. With the phone running on Android 8.0 Oreo, the customer interface is clean and easy to get used to.

That being said Samsung are not the best at giving their devices the latest interface and we would have loved to see Android 9.0 Pie on this device as its still a generation behind.

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Just like the Samsung Note 9 or Galaxy S9, you will find the Samsung health, voice recorder and themes.

The phone comes standard with either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage but also support a dual SIM tray for even more expandable storage, allowing you to store an endless amount of music and photos on the phone.

There is a micro-USB port down the bottom, which is kind of annoying as we would of like to see a USC-C port instead.

The phone has an Exynos 7885 chipset with either 4GB or 6GB of RAM giving you tons of firepower when using the phone for gaming, or streaming movies.

Just like to we do all of the phones we test, we tested out 2 hours of gaming on the phone on our favourite game ‘RuneScape’.

The phone coped with the high graphical demands of the game very well and we did not notice too much lag.

The Samsung Galaxy A7 details lots of respectable specifications that are great for both browsing social media and everyday usage, or gaming sessions too.

However, if you’re going to be doing lots of gaming and using the phone quite intensely you may want to look at the Samsung Galaxy A9 or S9, as they pack more of a punch.

That being said we were not disappointed with the phones overall performance after all this is a mid-range budget smartphone and Samsung have certainly done a great job at giving you a well-rounded balanced device.

Watching movies on the phone is great and an enjoyable experience, and the amount of internal storage means you can even download the movies too.

Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Camera

The main event of this phone is undoubtedly the Samsung Galaxy A7’s triple camera setup.

Firstly there is a 24MP f/1.7 aperture wide-angle lens, with face detection and auto-focus; next we have the 8MP ultra-wide f/2.4 lens, and finally the 5MP depth sensor lens.

Together these lenses deliver some awesome shots, colours are vibrant and the dynamic range is good too. That being said the camera isn’t as great we expected and we found it hard to see 24MP’s worth of detail here.

However, there are some awesome benefits of the camera, such as the ultra-wide lens, which has 120 degrees field of view, perfect for group photos or squeezing as much detail into the shot as possible.

Portrait mode is good on this phone and means you can take some nice shots for Instagram, however, you will need to be pretty close up to your object.

You will also get the option to blur the background, which allows the object to be a lot more focused. Selfies on the camera are pretty good too, although there is no auto-focus so it may take you a while to find the sweet spot.

We found that in low lighting situations the camera does struggle, and images often look distorted and unrealistic.

So the video recording on the Samsung Galaxy A7 is nothing to shout about either, it’s pretty basic although it does record in 1080p@30fps, it can shoot some good footage in the right lighting conditions.

In low light however the cameras do really struggle to capture high-quality footage, however, for the price of the phone and the as a mid-range Samsung device, the footage is actually pretty good and is great value for money at this price.

It also has electronic video-stabilisation which is great if you have a shaky hand and are trying to get some good steady footage!

Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Battery Life

The battery in the Samsung Galaxy A7 2018 is 3300mAh, which is slightly smaller than last years model!

Although the battery this year is more geared towards endurance and not performance.

One thing we found very annoying with the phone is that it charges extremely slowly, you can expect to get around 50% of charge from flat in an hour.

That being said you can definitely expect around a full day from one charge, the OLED display are extremely power sufficient, and unless you are on maximum brightness all day you will find that the phone can last you a long time.

There is no wireless charging or this device and you will not find a fast charger in the box either,0-100% will usually take around 3 hours.

Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Summary

So is this phone worth your money? Well if your someone who loves a great display and likes to watch lots of YouTube or Netflix, then yes!

But if you also love a strong battery life with a superb camera then you might want to check out something else.

The Samsung Galaxy A7 details are great, it looks super clean and has a very simplistic design, perfect for those who love a minimalist design phone.

Value for money wise the phone does offer some awesome features, the camera is not as good as we thought but is still more than capable of producing some great images in good lighting.

Samsung Galaxy A7 64GB Single SIM UK Version - Black 

The phone looks good and the blue colours are beautiful, for a mid-range device costing around £300 you can’t really go too far wrong with this phone.

The fact that you can buy the Samsung Galaxy A7 for around £300 SIM free is incredible, it offers serious value for money, making it easy to recommend to those looking for a cheap handset.

If you’re a casual phone user and not someone who will be using it every minute of every day then this is a cheaper alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S9 or Note 9.

We hope you have enjoyed our Samsung Galaxy A7 review, and feel free to check out the best Samsung Galaxy A7 contract deals in the UK at the top of this post.

Samsung Galaxy A7 Review: Full Specification

Launch: 2018, October

Body:

• Dimension: 159.8 x 76.8 x 7.5mm (6.29 x 3.02 x 0.30 inches)
• Weight: 168g (5.93 oz)
• Build: Front/back glass, plastic frame
• Sim: Single SIM (Nano-SIM) or Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual-stand-by)

Display:

• Type: Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
• Size: 6.0 inches, 91.4cm² (-74.4% screen-to-body-ratio)
• Resolution: 1080 x 2220 pixels, 18:5:9 ratio (-441 ppi density)
• Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass (unspecified version)
  – Always on display

Platform:

• OS: Android 8.0 (Oreo)
• Chipset: Exynos 7885 Octa (14nm)
• CPU: Octa-core (2×2.2 GHz Cortex-A73 & 6×1.6 GHz Cortex-A53)
• GPU: Mali-G71

Memory:

• Card slot: MicroSD, up to 512GB (dedicated slot)
• Internal: 128GB, 4/6GB RAM or 64GB, 4GB RAM

Camera:

• Primary:
  -24MP, f/1.7, 27mm (wide), PDAF
  – 8MP, f/2.4, 18mm (ultrawide)
  – 5MP, f/2.2, depth sensor
• Features: LED flash, panorama, HDR
• Video: 1080p@30fps (gyro-EIS)
• Secondary: 
  – 24MP, f/2.0, 26mm (wide)
• Features: HDR
• Video: 1080p@30fps

Sound:

• Alert Types: Yes
• Loudspeaker: Yes
• 3.5mm Jack: 
  – Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
  – Dolby Atmos sound

Comms:

• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct, hotspot
• Bluetooth: 5.0, A2DP, LE
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
• NFC: Yes (market dependent)
• Radio: FM radio
• USB: MicroUSB 2.0

Features:

• Sensors: Fingerprint (side-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
• Messaging: SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
• Browser: HTML5
  – ANT + support

Battery:

• Non-removeable Li-Pro 3300 mAh battery

Misc:

• Colours: Black, Blue, Pink, Gold
• Price: As seen in above post

Tests:

• Performance: Basemark OS || 2.0: 2051 / Basemark X:15200
• Camera: Photo / Video
• Loudspeaker: Voice 69dB / Noise 70dB / Ring 79dB
• Battery life: Endurance rating 93h