A metal phone for the price of plastic one
Compared with Apple’s, it’s hard to see other smartphones without one word springing to mind: plastic. But Samsung finally went metal with last year’s Galaxy Alpha, and now you can get the same cool silvery durability (it also comes in black) in a mobile that costs less than £200 without a contract. It’s also available free with tariffs from under £20 a month.
The Galaxy A3 is just slightly smaller than (and the same thickness as) an iPhone 6, but its screen has far fewer pixels, making it look coarser than most phones these days. Colour and contrast are excellent, though, so it’s only things like tiny text that suffer any noticeable lack of clarity.
Unlike some mid-priced phones, it also has a great camera that takes sharp and well-balanced pictures. The camera sticks out noticeably from the smooth rear panel, with a distinctive Samsung square shape, beside an LED flash. A more discreet 5-megapixel front camera handles video chat.
Despite the cute adverts (www.snipca.com/17221), not all of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors particularly exciting, and the 400-series chip inside the Galaxy A3 doesn’t run Android 4.4 any better than phones half this price. But it’ll cope with most tasks, and even fancy 3D games, if you can overlook the occasional stutter. It’s not just about speed: one of Snapdragon’s benefits is power-efficiency. That helps to explain how our Galaxy A3 played videos continuously for 14 hours and 37 minutes before needing its battery recharged. That’s not the longest we’ve seen, but towards the top end of the range.
16GB seems a fair amount of storage, but with 6GB taken up by Android, it may not take you long to run out of space for your apps, music, photos and videos. A microSD card slot lets you add up to 64GB more. Up-to-date 4G, NFC and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connections are built in, along with 802.11n Wi-Fi rather than the newer, faster 802.11ac.
It only just scrapes full marks, but the Galaxy A3 is a reasonably priced phone that’s at least decent in every respect and very good in many.
VERDICT
If you don’t want to shell out for a top-end smartphone, this feels classy and capable for a third of the price.
SPECIFICATIONS
4.5in 960x450-pixel screen • 16GB flash storage • 3G/4G • 802.11n Wi-Fi • 5-megapixel front camera • 8-megapixel rear camera • Android 4.4 • 130x65x6.9mm (HxWxD) • 110g • One-year warranty