The Samsung Galaxy A7 is another phone in the Galaxy A Series with a full metal body, it is also the costliest, loaded with high end features. Galaxy A7 sports a 5.5 inch screen with FHD resolution and comes powered by 1.5GHz qualcomm snapdragon octa core processor.
Box pack
Inside the blue box you will find the A7 smartphone, warranty card, quick start guide, data cable, travel charger and SIM tray ejector pin.
Design, Display and OS
Like the other handsets in the Galaxy A Series the Galaxy A7 also comes packed in a full Metal body. There is a metal frame and a metal back. Build quality and finishing is excellent. A7 looks premium and feels really good. It is with a 5.5 inch screen, big size and almost rectangular had it not been for the 4 curvy sides.
A7 weight with battery is 141 grams and it is very slim – dimensions are 76 x 150.68 x 6.39 (mm).
The top frame as well as the bottom frame come with silver borders that looks really good and gives premium feel to the handset. A7 is flat on the front side as well as (almost) on the rear side, the camera module is a little out on the rear.
Volume rocker is on the left, power button on the right along with eject-able SIM slots. 3.5mm audio jack and micro USB port is placed at the bottom. There are dual mics one on the top side and another at the bottom side. There are dual SIM slot tray, SIM 1 is nano SIM and SIM 2 is hybrid slot it can either house a Nano SIM or a micro SD card.
Samsung Galaxy A7 sports a 5.5 inch screen that is protected with corning gorilla glass 4 and supports 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution. It is a super AMOLED screen with excellent viewing angles, colour reproduction and touch response. There is no LED notification, this smartphone comes loaded with accelerometer, light, proximity and magnetic sensors. 14 Indian regional languages are supported.
A7 is running Android 4.4.4 out of the box with TouchWiz UI.
Memory and Storage
The Galaxy A7 comes packed with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage. There is micro SD card option too but if you are planning to use the Micro SD card you will be able to use only 1 SIM. On the first boot you will get around 11 GB free internal storage space and about 1.1GB free RAM.
OTG is supported however apps are getting installed on internal storage. You can move apps to SD card after they are installed and only if the ‘Move to SD card’ option is active.
Performance
The Galaxy A7 is using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 64 bit 615 octa core chipset – it is a combination of 1.5GHz Cortex A53 quad core plus 1GHz Cortex A53 quad core coupled with Adreno 405 GPU clocked at 550 MHz. Performance is very smooth and lag free.
| App | Result |
| Quadrant | 18537 |
| Antutu | 30630 |
| Vellamo | Metal (1054) Multi core (1308) Browser (N/A) |
| Nenamark 2 | 59.4 fps |
| Multi Touch | 10 point |
Gaming
I tried Asphalt 8, the game got installed on the internal storage. Game play was very smooth, no issues as such.
Camera
There is 13MP rear AF camera with LED flash and 5MP fixed focus camera on the front. The interface and camera functionality is the same as seen on other galaxy smartphones. Rear camera as well as the front camera can shoot full HD videos. The front camera also supports wide angle selfies.
Camera quality is above average check the sample images and video at the end of this review.
Others
The A7 supports 4G LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth and NFC. No issues found with these features. I could not test 4G as the same is not available in my area. Sound (loudspeaker and incall) is loud and clear.
Battery
The A7 comes packed with 2600 mAh non-removable battery. Battery backup is very good you can expect about 5 to 7 hours of continuous moderate to heavy usage. The handset also does not heat up much.
| Task | Time | Battery drop (%) (max temp) |
| Running Benchmark apps | 27 minutes | 7% (33) |
| FHD video playback with Wi-Fi on + full brightness | 19 minutes | 4% (33) |
| Asphalt 8 Game Play | 12 minutes | 5% (37) |
| Full Wall Charge | Under 3 hours | 19% to 100% |
Verdict
The handset is powerful, looks really good (premium feel), superb screen quality and overall very good performance. The Samsung Galaxy A7 is priced at approx Rs. 30,500 now that is pricy. The Yu Yureka is also using the qualcomm snapdragon 615 chipset, no doubt the A7 in general is better in all other aspects, but the price difference between the A7 and the Yu Yureka is just too much at approx Rs. 20K.
Rating 3.5 out of 5.
Samsung Galaxy A7 is available for Rs. 30,900.
Image Gallery
Rear Camera Sample
Front Camera Sample