At the beginning of September 2018, Mr. DJ Koh, CEO of Samsung Electronics, shared that the company is changing its strategy in the mid-range segment, prioritizing the introduction of new features and technological innovations in this product line before using them on high-end smartphones.

The goal of Samsung in this strategic change is to revive the mid-range segment, which is fiercely competed by Chinese phone manufacturers. The Galaxy A7 2018 is the first product born from that new strategy. 

Samsung Galaxy A7 2018: Design

Recently, Samsung has changed the design of the Galaxy A series, switching to a metal frame with a glass back instead of a monolithic metal design as before. On the Galaxy A7 2018, this company continues to change the material both on the back and the chassis. The back uses a transparent glass-like plastic material. 

Another notable change in the design of this phone is the placement of the fingerprint sensor. It is moved to the side of the device, on the power button. Sony has previously done so on a number of products. The fingerprint sensor of A7 2018 is a one-touch sensor and has a fast recognition speed. However, this sensor has a slightly small area, so during use, the device sometimes does not unlock because I didn’t place my finger on the correct place. But that will likely change after you use the phone for some time.

On the front, a little surprise is that Samsung has already applied the screen protector that fits very well. So with the inside plastic case that comes with the product box, after buying the device, users will no longer need to buy a phone cover or a screen protector. It has a 6-inch screen with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio, slightly thicker bezels than recent A series smartphones. The screen-to-body ratio is 74.4%, slightly lower than the Galaxy A6 + (75.3%).

Samsung Galaxy A7 2018: Display

The handset gets a 6-inch Super AMOLED display with Full-HD + resolution (1080 x 2220 pixels), reaching a pixel density of 411 PPI. The quality of the panel still carries the full characteristics of the Super AMOLED screen: high brightness, wide viewing angle, high contrast, and deep black. Of course, the Super AMOLED panel on this phone is not as good as the one on the high-end S and Note series devices.

This display comes with different color modes for different needs such as watching movies, or taking photos. Samsung also introduced the Always On Display feature that displays basic information (date and time, notifications ...) even when the screen is off.

Besides allowing users to change the navigation bar color and the position of the virtual navigation buttons, Samsung recently added a new feature for tall displays (18.5:9 or 18:9 aspect ratio), allowing users to hide the navigation bar to increase the display area.

Samsung Galaxy A7 2018: Camera

The highlight of A7 2018 is the camera. This is the first Samsung phone with triple rear cameras including a 24MP f / 1.7 main camera, an 8MP  ultra-wide-angle camera with f / 2.4, and a 5MP with f / 2.2 aperture for taking portrait shots. In the front is a 24MP camera with f / 2.0 aperture and a customizable light with different brightness levels

The ultra-wide-angle camera is probably the most interesting aspect of the product. This camera has a 120-degree viewing angle, which can capture wide landscapes without the need for panorama mode. The wide-angle camera is also especially useful when photographing building structures, making it easy to capture the panorama without having to move further like regular cameras. However, the wide-angle camera also has many limitations from the software. When you switch to this camera, you cannot choose focus (fixed focus), nor can you adjust exposure.

In bright enough conditions, the image from the wide-angle camera is of good quality both in detail and in overall color. However, how to process images from wide-angle cameras is also slightly different from the main camera. However, photos taken by the wide-angle camera are often boosted in colors and contrast. If viewed at a small size, the image looks very impressive, but when zooming in, it can be seen that the wide-angle camera captures less amount of details and images look slightly blurry.

In low light, the 8MP resolution and small aperture (f / 2.4) area reasons for the limitations of the ultra-wide-angle camera. The image looks more noisy and blurry than the main camera. This camera also only supports fixed focus, so when shooting at night with many lighting sources, we cannot manually adjust the exposure to get a more reasonable photo as with the main camera.

Photos taken by the main 24MP camera have a lot of details, but the colors are a bit darker than what they really are. The camera has a fast focusing speed in bright enough conditions, while in low light, it is quite easy to focus in the wrong way, or even out of focus. The plus point of the camera is that in difficult situations such as low light or backlight, the device still reproduces pretty natural colors.

Samsung Galaxy A7 2018: Performance

In terms of performance, Galaxy A7 2018 has a similar configuration to the Galaxy A8+with an Exynos 7885 processor, 4GB RAM, and 64GB internal memory. The Exynos 7885 processor has 2 high-performance Cortex A73 cores (clocked at 2.18GHz) and 6 power-efficient Cortex A53 cores (clocked at 1.59GHz). The graphics processor on the Exynos 7885 is Mali G71MP2, which offers a maximum speed of 1.3GHz.

In actual use, the device gives fast, smooth processing speed when opening applications. The speed of loading games or image processing applications is also fast. However, the Mali G71MP2 is not a powerful graphics chip for heavy gaming needs. The handset is good enough to play popular games such as CrossFire: Legends, but heavy games like Dead Triggers 2, PUBG Mobile, or Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade are quite a challenge for the Galaxy A7 2018, reaching up to 30-40 fps. 

Samsung Galaxy A7 2018: Battery

The battery of A7 2018 has a capacity of 3,300 mAh, 300 mAh smaller than the A7 2017 and also 200 mAh smaller than the Galaxy A8 + with similar specifications. In our regular battery tests, the battery life of this phone is also slightly lower than other A series devices. As for watching movies, the device lasts around 12 hours (nearly 4 hours lower than the Galaxy A7 2017 and a half an hour less than the Galaxy A8+. The device lasts over 5 hours when gaming and 7 hours when surfing web.