Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016): For the fashion conscious

The phone looks stylish but doesn't offer anything out-of-the-box

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The Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016) is definitely a looker. Many would mistake it for an S6, though it's smaller in size. As with most Samsung phones, the A5 has a metal and glass back which even with rough use didn't show any scratches. The phone is pretty light at 155g. The way the lock and volumes buttons are placed makes the phone perfect for one-handed usage. The premium design goes with its price tag of Rs 28,500.

The phone has a 5.2-inch Super AMOLED full HD display with vibrant colours. Because of the high contrast offered by the phone, regular usage also becomes a delight.

Under the hood, it houses a 1.6 GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor with 2GB of RAM. The performance was nothing out of the ordinary. However, it needs to be said that even while running RAM-heavy games such as the Asphalt series, the phone didn't slow down. The camera app, which is slow to load in most phones, didn't make the A5 buckle.

One of the frustrating things about Samsung phones is the plethora of pre-installed apps that they come with. But with the A5, Samsung has toned it down. The phone comes with fewer pre-installed apps compared to others. Though it still has the TouchWiz interface, of which I personally am not a fan.

Though the camera app isn't slow to load, the quality of pictures isn't that great. It has a 13-megapixel (MP) primary and a 5MP secondary camera which give mediocre results. And, god forbid, if you have to take a picture in low-light conditions, the outputs are beyond bad. So, it's natural for photography connoisseurs to stay away from this phone.

What impressed me was its battery back up. At 2,900 mAh, the battery isn't that large but on a full charge, it manages to hold its own for almost a day. I tested its mettle by playing RAM-heavy games for almost four hours straight coupled with five hours of internet usage, yet the battery didn't die on me.

On a whole, the A5 (2016) is not a head turner but for people who don't give two hoots about extraordinary performance, this phone is certainly the one to go for.