How Samsung’s Galaxy A Smartphone Line Targets Midrange Market

Samsung’s latest Galaxy A smartphones have high-end finishes and features, yet they’re designed for the midrange of the market. Here’s a look at these handsets.

Samsung isn’t offering just one device in its A line. Instead, the company is selling the small, A3 model, alongside the midrange A5 and the biggest of the bunch, the A7. While there are many similarities between the smartphones, there are also some notable differences that customers must keep in mind before they choose one over the other.

One of the first things to consider in the A line is its processing power. According to Samsung, the A7 comes with a 1.6GHz octa-core processor, matching the chip built into the A5. The A3, however, features a 1.5GHz quad-core processor, making it slightly underpowered compared with its larger counterparts.

Despite relentless talk that Samsung may eventually bring its Tizen operating system to more of its devices, that won’t happen in the A line. The company said that Android 5.1 (Lollipop) is running on all versions of the A. Samsung did not say whether an update to Android 6.0 would be available at some point in the future.

Although the A line has been designed for midrange customers since its inception, the device comes with some top-notch features. The most notable high-end feature is arguably its metal finish. Samsung made a decision earlier this year to bring metal to its high-end Galaxy S6 line, but plastic has largely been used across other midrange products. Bringing metal to the A3, A5 and A7 makes the devices feel a bit nicer than their prices might suggest.

One of the more notable differences between Samsung’s A devices is screen size. The A7 comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD screen, making it slightly larger than the 5.2-inch Full HD display in the A5. The A3 has a 4.7-inch screen, but unlike its larger counterparts, it offers only HD resolution, rather than Full HD.

While Apple has been somewhat slow to ramp up its support for Apple Pay, bringing it only to its latest smartphones, Samsung seems to be moving at a more rapid clip. The company says that the A line will come with a fingerprint sensor, allowing for additional security as well as Samsung Pay support. Thanks to that, the device line will come with a near-field communications chip that can be used for all kinds of other apps and activities.

Samsung says that the Galaxy A will come with some of the best camera technology available in the midrange market. The device has Optical Image Stabilization to mitigate blurring, as well as low-light support for clearer pictures at night. The cameras offer 13 megapixels on the rear and 5 megapixels on the front across all of the devices, and support wide-angle selfies.

Samsung has bundled its Knox application with the A line. Samsung Knox is essentially the company’s security platform designed for mobile devices. While it was originally intended for enterprise users, the feature allows anyone to keep data encrypted and potentially be less likely to succumb to a data breach. It may not be a big add-on, but for enterprise users seeking better security, it’s an important one.

The Galaxy A features only 16GB of on-board storage though that’s expandable up to 128GB with help from a microSD card. It would have been nice to see Samsung offer more storage, but that was one of the few areas in which it seems to have skimped.

Samsung did not announce market-specific pricing for the new Galaxy A phones but said they would launch in mid-December. The line will initially be available in China, but will expand to global markets soon after. Samsung remains somewhat tight-lipped on that schedule, but expect to see the new Galaxy A devices come to store shelves around the world in relatively short order.