[Samsung Galaxy A3, A5, A7 (2017) Guides, News, & D] kevinlevrone:
Hi,

For me the A3 2017 replaces the S7 Edge (Exynos) which I have simply donated to my other half because I just got bored with it after 13 months of use (got it on the first day) and I really hate the S8 (small battery) and the S8+ (much taller than the S7 Edge and smaller battery - go figure). I needed a phone with very good battery life foremost, and a good notification system. And I thought: why not go minimal and cheap this time, until something better arrives, and not care about the phone all the time ? I got the phone for 260 EUR carrier-free. Why did I choose a Samsung phone ? Mostly because of the Always-On Display and the fact that I can use Package Disabler (without root) to disable packages that I don't need.

In short, what I like (compared to S7 Edge): compact and light (nice to have a compact phone again !), better battery life, active fingerprint sensor with front placement, better speaker placement, FM radio, flat screen. Always-On Display on such a cheap phone is also a great feature.

What I don't like: Lack of notification LED (although the AOD is plenty bright - unlike the one from LG G6, for example) , 2.5D glass makes a full-screen protector quite hard to find - even the official one is bad on corners (but much better luck than with S7 Edge anyway).

Screen:

It's a 4.7" 720p AMOLED with no issues regarding readability. I can't find any obvious flaws to it, to be honest. If you look really close (like from 5cm away) you can maybe see the pixels, but other than that it is really a good screen.

Performance:

First, I have to say I don't play games at all, I just use the phone for messaging, web browsing, email, occasional videos and about one hour of music daily. I am really surprised how fluid it is, there is no UI lag at all and web browsing is almost just as fast as on the S7 Edge.

Battery life:

Immediately after purchasing the phone, I used Package Disabler Pro to disable some 180 packages I also had disabled on the S7 Edge. This, combined with a dark theme, brought the battery life to even better figures than the S7 Edge, which is already known to be a battery life performer. I can routinely get 48 hours of stand-by with about 5 hours SOT, and that's with Always-On display turned on 18 out of 24 hours daily. I am amazed how a 2350mAh battery can do this.

Camera:

It's mediocre, to be honest. If you hold it very steady you can get some surprisingly good low-light pictures, but nothing comparable to the S7 Edge. Colors are also quite bad in daylight. But I don't use the camera except maybe once a month or so.

So I don't really care.

Speaker:

Perfect placement for me, closer to the ear and I don't cover it with my palm or fingers anymore. Plenty loud too, but the plastic back of the phone does contribute to some distortion at the highest levels.

Fingerprint sensor:

It was supposed to be an "active" sensor (not requiring pressing) but I had real issues at first with it. It worked maybe 1 in 10 tries. I finally figured out that it doesn't work with the finger tips like other sensors, you have to use an area below the finger tip for the fingerprints, then it works perfectly and it's very reliable and fast.

So these are my thoughts about the A3 2017. Below you will find some screenshots regarding battery life: almost 7 hours of SOT with 1 day and 17 hours of stand-by, and 1 hour of SOT (web browsing) with only 5% of battery. Remember, all the stand-by times are done with Always-On Display on 18 out of 24 hours.