Samsung Galaxy A3 review: Another corking smartphone from Samsung

In recent years, Samsung’s flagship phones have been undeniably good, but its mid-range and low-end phones have appeared to be something of an afterthought. An uncharitable reading would be that they’re riding on the popularity of the flagships. Imitations that look like the must-have handset at a distance, but fall apart under any real scrutiny.

In 2016, that picture has completely changed. I was blown away by the Samsung Galaxy J5 when I reviewed it, declaring it a better bet than the mighty Motorola Moto G, and Jon seemed equally impressed with the slightly cheaper Galaxy J3. Does the same improvement apply to the mid-range handsets and the latest Samsung Galaxy A3?

Samsung Galaxy A3: Design

The confusing naming convention of handsets aside, there’s no question that you’re looking at a more expensive product than the Galaxy J5. In fact, picking up the Samsung Galaxy A3 for the first time, I was struck by just how much this feels like a flagship phone, albeit the kind of flagship you got a couple of years ago when 4.7in smartphones were all the rage.

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Gone is the plastic back of the J5, and in its place, a smooth metal frame with a Gorilla Glass front and back. There are flashes of Samsung’s current flagships in its look and feel, but it’s dinky by comparison. The design is minimalist, with rounded edges softening an otherwise smooth, glassy rectangle, and the square camera housing protrudes a couple of millimetres from the back.

It’s a touch slippery, perhaps, but undoubtedly a premium design. If you were getting this phone as an upgrade from a 2014 flagship, you’d probably be blissfully unaware that it only retailed for £229. A very solid start.

Samsung Galaxy A3: Screen

Switching it on for the first time would give you your first clue, however. Unlike current top dogs in the space, the Samsung Galaxy A3’s resolution is set at a miserly sounding 720 x 1,280. When you consider that Full HD screens have been the default for high-end smartphones for two to three years now (and many flagships routinely offer Quad HD and 4K panels), that does sound disappointing, until you consider that resolution isn’t the only trend the A3 has bucked.

Remember, that it’s just 4.7in. On such a small display 720p is actually pretty darn sharp, and the pixel density is actually a respectable 312 pixels per inch. To put that in perspective, that’s just a little shy of Apple’s retina resolution: the iPhone 6s and iPhone SE displays put out 326 pixels per inch.

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If you’re happy with that, and it’s really not that big a deal on a small screen, you’ll find the display is a sterling performer. It’s an AMOLED panel, as with Samsung’s flagship devices, and the numbers it puts out in our tests make it a very good match for similarly priced rivals. Here, I’ve lined it up against the Nexus 5X (£339),  Wileyfox Storm (£200), Sony Xperia M5 (£299) and OnePlus 2 (£249). Remember, the Samsung Galaxy A3 retails at less than all these phones: it’s £229 SIM free.

In short, despite its resolution, the screen is top notch with even peak brightness reaching an impressive 480cd/m2 (although only if you leave auto brightness turned on). It’s a great performance from the A3 and the fact that it comfortably outperforms phones that are both more and less expensive than it is a very good sign indeed.

Samsung Galaxy A3: Performance and battery life

In daily use, with a quad-core 1.5GHz processor backed by 1.5GB RAM, the Samsung Galaxy A3 is a smooth performer, transitioning between screens with ease, and with no noticeable slowdown. Out of the box, though, that’s the least you’d hope for.

As a rule, all Android phones feel pretty slick from a fresh install, and alarm bells go off on the rare occasions they don’t. How they perform for games, and how they’ll deteriorate over time is something we always try to catch, which is why we put our handsets through a set of benchmarks using the Geekbench 3 and GFXBench apps. The former measures single- and multi-core processing performance while the latter measures graphics capabilities. Here’s the previous chart again for raw performance.

This, clearly, is where it all falls down. Don’t get me wrong, these aren’t terrible scores. The Samsung Galaxy A3 clearly performs better than the Sony Xperia M5, which retails for £50 more, but both the Nexus 5X and OnePlus 2 roundly trounce it, the latter especially in the gaming performance. Considering the OnePlus 2’s recent price cut, that’s a pretty decisive blow, even given the A3’s superior (albeit smaller) screen.

Of course, other than raw performance, there have to be some key differentiators between the A3 and Samsung’s flagship S7 range, and there are. There’s no fingerprint reader here, with Samsung opting for a traditional Android lockscreen, which bafflingly requires you to press Enter after keying in your digits. It also isn’t water resistant, and there’s no wireless charging. None of these are essential, by any means, but it’s worth remembering that there are little luxuries that, for the moment, you only get if you pay top dollar.

Samsung phones have recently taken Sony’s crown for terrific stamina, and the Galaxy A3 continues that trend in style. In our standard test – we play a looped video with flight mode enabled and the screen set to a brightness of 170cd/m2 – it lasted an impressive 14hrs 48 mins. Arguably, that’s just as well, given you can’t replace the battery yourself, but it is, nevertheless, very good going indeed. Most handsets we test last between eight and 12 hours.

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The camera is also extremely solid. At the rear, you get a 13MP camera with a f/1.9 aperture, and this takes photos that are perfectly acceptable for the price range. Detail is high and the colours aren’t washed out or overexposed. You have to zoom in pretty far on any images before things begin to look blurry or smeary.

It does struggle a bit in low light, as almost every smartphone camera does, but the LED flash is there to take away some of the pain. The 5MP front-facing camera will be just fine for selfie-obsessives, but has the same caveats over performance in low light, and without the flash to provide illumination.

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Samsung Galaxy A3: Verdict

All of which leaves me in a difficult position when it comes to awarding the final score. With the Galaxy A3, Samsung has given us a diminutive smartphone with flagship looks and build quality, a super screen, a capable camera and battery life that goes on and on. What it hasn’t given us is the performance to match.

That’s fine if your interest in smartphones is limited to casual games and productivity. If you want to push things harder, however, the Galaxy A3 becomes something of a harder sell. And especially so given that the 64GB OnePlus 2, which absolutely crushes it in performance terms, has dropped down to £240. There are other reasons you might lean towards the A3, not least of all its size, but if performance is your number one target, it’s hard to give it a full-throated endorsement.

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