Samsung Galaxy A3

The Samsung Galaxy A3 is very similar to the Galaxy A5 in terms of its design and build quality. Samsung’s A series shares design cues, with only difference being screen sizes. The Galaxy A3 is a smaller version of the A5 and you’ll find the same unibody design and lightweight build that impressed us while reviewing its bigger brother.

The handset features a 4.5-inch display which is based on Super AMOLED technology. We’ve reiterated the brilliant visuals offered by Samsung’s AMOLED tech, and the one on the Galaxy A3 doesn’t disappoint as well. The display has good viewing angles and ample brightness levels making it legible outdoors too. It looks sharp enough, but if you notice it from close quarters, then there's pixelation visible, since along with the smaller screen size, the Korean brand has also lowered the resolution on the Galaxy A3 compared to its sibling, the Galaxy A5. Sporting a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels, the device bears a modest pixel density of 245ppi on its 4.5-inch screen.

The software part on the Samsung Galaxy A3 is handled by brand’s custom layer TouchWiz, running atop Android 4.4.2 KitKat. The custom skin adds a lot of flavour and features to the stock interface of Google’s mobile platform.

Unlike the 13-megapixel sensor available on the Galaxy A5, its sibling is adorned with a modest 8-megapixel snapper at the back. An LED flash module supplements the primary camera to assist shooting in dimly-lit environments. While Samsung has reduced the megapixel count of the rear camera, it has taken care of selfieholics since the device, just like its bigger and expensive siblings in the A series, sports a 5MP shooter at the front. The camera app on the smartphone is same as all Samsung’s offerings and offers a ton of options and modes.

Similar to its bigger sibling, the Samsung Galaxy A3 relies on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC for number crunching. The chipset offers four Cortex-A53 cores which are 64-bit compatible and run at the clock speed of 1.2GHz. The processor is complemented by the Adreno 306 graphics processor. The device gets half the RAM, i.e., 1GB, when compared to its sibling, but the processing combination is able to deliver fluid performance. The apps open quickly and we didn’t experience any lags while switching between them even when multiple apps were running in the background.