Sexy, sleek and very, very slim
With plenty of selfie-infused features, the new Samsung Galaxy A7 is fun for snapping shots
THE THINNEST smartphone Samsung has produced to date, the super sleek Galaxy A7 boasts an elegant body crafted not in the usual plastic but in metal.
The A7 is even thinner than its sister A5, losing an additional 0.4mm, which makes it so skinny that the camera lens protrudes out the back.
Like the A5, the A7 is designed to have a built-in battery with nanoSIM and microSD card slots built into its right side. The microSD card slot also functions as a slot for the second SIM card and supports up to 64 GB of extra memory.
The A7 comes with gorgeous 5.5-inch Full HD Super Amoled display, which is excellent for viewing photos and watching video clips.
Galaxy A7 is powered by two quad-core processors, one running at 1.5 GHz and the other at 1 GHz. It has two gigabytes of working memory or RAM and 16 GB of internal memory.
The smartphone comes with a 13-megapixel main camera and five-megapixel front-facing camera making it good for taking selfies.
The A7 supports LTE 4G connection and TrueMove H’s 4G, coverage of which has been expanded to cover Srinakarin Road. The signal has now reached the bus stop in front of the Interlink Building where The Nation’s office is located.
During the test on TrueMove H’s 4G connection, the connection was superfast. For example, I downloaded and installed a 36-megabyte app in less than half a minute. My snapshots were uploaded to my Facebook wall in no time.
I used an app from Ookla to test the 4G speed and found that it achieved a download speed of 30.92 megabit per second and an upload speed of 20.74 Mb/s.
The phone had good performance too with both its touch screen and menus very responsive.
Like the A5, Galaxy A7 is optimised for social networkers.
Two selfie modes are available when you use the front-facing camera – normal and wide angle.
You show your palm to the camera and it will shoot in just two seconds or use the voice control to trigger the shutter in the selfie modes. You simply say “smile”, “cheese”, “capture” or “shoot” and the shutter will fire in two seconds. I tested the voice control and found that it worked effectively.
The wide selfie is great for taking group shots. After you show your palm to the camera or say one of the four magic words, you can slowly rotate the phone left and then right to take a panoramic photo. The A7 will then combine the photos into a single panoramic image.
You must however make sure to keep the blue frame inside the viewfinder window and all of you must remain still.
There is also rear-cam selfie mode. In this mode, the camera detects and focuses on your face automatically.
The camera also allows you to apply Beauty face effect to your subjects when you use these modes. It even obligingly lightens up the faces to make your subjects look younger.
The Beauty face-shooting mode is also an option with the main camera.
Other modes include Continuous shot that allows you to shoot a series of photos and HDR (Rich tone) that allows you to capture details of shots in complicated lighting environments.
You can download more shooting modes by using the Galaxy Apps application.
I found that A7 captured beautiful portraits. Shooting in auto mode allowed me to capture clean and sharp shots in well-lit conditions.
A7 also supports the private mode that can be activated to prevent others from using or accessing specific content, such as images and documents, stored on the device.
Another nice feature is the Smart network switch that automatically switches between Wi-Fi and mobile networks, and also between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands to maintain a stable Internet connection.
Battery capacity is good at 2,600 mAh and the Ultra power-saving mode allows for even more battery saving by applying a simplified greyscale theme to the home screen and limiting the number of usable apps.
Samsung Galaxy A7 has a suggested retail price of |Bt14,900.
n Network: LTE Cat4 150/50Mbps, HSPA+ 42/5.76Mbps
n Processor: A53 1.5GHz |Quad + A53 1.0GHz Quad
n Display: 5.5-inch FHD Super Amoled
n OS: Android 4.4 (KitKat)
n Chipset: MSM8x39 (Quad A53 1.5GHz + Quad A53 1.0GHz)
n Camera: 13MP AF w/ LED Flash + 5.0MP
n Camera Features: Wide Selfie, Rear-cam Selfie, Beauty Face
n Video: MP4, M4V, 3GP, 3G2, WMV, ASF, AVI, FLV, MKV, WEBM
n Playback: FHD (1920*1080) @ 30fps
n Audio: MP3, M4A, 3GA, AAC, OGG, OGA, WAV, WMA, AMR, AWB, FLAC, MID, MIDI, XMF, MXMF, IMY, RTTTL, RTX, OTA
n Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, BT 4.0, USB 2.0, A-GPS+GLONASS, NFC |(LTE version only)
n Sensor: Accelerometer, Proximity, Geomagnetic, RGB, Hall, Light
n Memory: 2.0GB (RAM)
n Storage: 16GB, microSD slot (up to 64GB)
n Dimension: 151 x 76.2 x 6.3 mm
n Weight: 141g
n Battery: 2,600 mAh
