By Rehan Hooda | Published:Fri, July 27, 2018 11:25am
Does Galaxy A6+ manage to help Samsung take the fight to its competitors? Let's find out in my review for the Samsung Galaxy A6+.
Samsung India just launched one of its latest smartphone devices, the Samsung Galaxy A6+ in the market back in May. At the launch event, the company revealed its 2018 upgrades to the existing A series and J series of devices. The company is planning to take on the competition in the market with the help of the upgraded lineup. These competitors include Xiaomi, Oppo along with its sub-brand Realme, Vivo, Honor, and Lenovo-owned Motorola. The company initially priced the Galaxy A6+ for Rs 25,990 while later reducing the price of the smartphone by Rs 2,000 to Rs 23,990.
It is likely that Samsung India wants to put the pressure on the competition with the price reduction and hopefully attract users to its device lineup. The company sent us a review unit for the Samsung Galaxy A6+ (2018) and we were curious to check out what is new and different about this device to help it stand out from the crowd. I have been using the device for some time now. Does the Galaxy A6+ manage to help Samsung take the fight to its competitors? Let’s find out in my review for the Samsung Galaxy A6+.
That humongous notch-less display
One thing that you will notice as soon as you take out the device from its box is that massive 6-inch display. There is no display notch or near bezel-less design here.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Instead, the company has opted for what the company is calling the Infinity Display , a terminology that the company coined with the launch of Samsung Galaxy S8. The company has added a Super AMOLED panel with Full-HD+ resolution (2220×1080 pixels) and 18.5:9 aspect ratio on the Galaxy A6+.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Even though the colors and the contrast levels on the screen are excellent, there is still one fundamental issue with the device depending on how you like to use your smartphone. The problem here is the humongous size of the display making it almost impossible for one hand operation. Even with my comparatively large hands, it was almost impossible to reach the diagonally top edge of the device with my thumb.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
It would have been comparatively better if the device actually had a near bezel-less display instead of the tall display. Apart from that, there were no issues with the display of the device regardless of the situation that I was using it in.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Apart from the display, Samsung has constructed a great smartphone with a metal back and a glass front and it feels great in the hand putting it up there when it comes to the durability and hand-feel of the device.
Performance and Samsung Experience UI
Under the hood, the Galaxy A6+ comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core chipset paired with 4GB of RAM, and 64GB expandable storage. This is likely to be the Achilles heel for the device, one part where the entire package disappoints.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
The reason for this is not because the device is bad, but because the competition is offering far superior hardware for the same price when compared to this phone. In fact, one can find similar hardware with devices below Rs 10,000 in the market leading me to wonder what Samsung was thinking of while deciding on this processor for the Galaxy A6+.
The performance of the device is not as bad, but the device is a bit slow along with less than stellar performance while jumping in and out of a number of apps. Its performance wouldn’t be a problem if it were priced less. But at Rs 23,990, users expect better.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Gaming performance is decent in casual games such as Temple Run 2, but you will see noticeably longer load times when it comes to games such as Asphalt 8, and Modern Combat 5 with some skipped frames, or lag. Small things as the split second of the blank screen when the phone loads all the icons on the home screen don’t help my opinion of the device.
One thing worth noting is that the device did not get heated up even while pushing the device with heavy gaming sessions for hours at end. It did get somewhat warm but the heat dissipated quickly enough thanks to the all-metal back.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Samsung has added the usual Android-based Experience UI with the A6+ along with a number of in-house apps such as the Themes app, App store and Samsung Mall in addition to all the substitute apps that Samsung wants you to use in place of the Google apps. The company has also added Samsung Pay Mini in the device software along with Bixby, none of which served of much assistance as I prefer to use Google Tez personally while Bixby is nowhere near as good as Google Assistant.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
However, the under-powered processor does not bode well with all the bloatware regardless of the optimizations that Samsung has implemented with Experience UI.
Camera
Just in pure specifications, the smartphone is equipped with a rear dual-camera setup with a 16-megapixel primary sensor with f/1.7 aperture, and a 5-megapixel secondary sensor with f/1.9 aperture.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Samsung has added a 24-megapixel camera up front with a f/1.9 aperture with a dedicated LED flash for selfies. Moving to the camera software, the company has added a number of options in the camera software, some of which are meaningful for the users.
However, I wish that Samsung makes some changes to make the experience a bit more user-friendly instead of the somewhat convoluted UI. What I mean by that is it would have been better if the company made it easier to switch from shooting photos to video simply by swiping from one of the vertical edges instead of switching to the ‘Bixby Vision’ visual search inside the camera UI.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Talking about the image quality, the device managed to take good images in proper light with good color reproduction, contrast, and sharpness. The device does fall short in dynamic range with blown out parts. However, the image quality falls apart in anything less than ideal conditions as noise tends to creep into the images. The images shot in low-light need quite a bit of work if the company has to take on the competition.
Battery
Samsung has packed a 3,500mAh battery in the device which will last you through a complete working day without any issues. It is likely that this is because of the power-efficient Full-HD+ Super AMOLED screen along with the low-clocked processor that is helping with the good battery backup. the device lasted about 7-7.75 hours on my moderate to heavy usage that included 1-1.5 hours of gaming, 1.5-2 hours of music, 15-20 photos, three email accounts on sync and constant WhatsApp and Telegram messages throughout the day.
Verdict: Is Samsung Galaxy A6+ worth the money?
Samsung probably realized that the price tag of Rs 25,990 was not going to work for the Galaxy A6+ so they decided to reduce it by Rs 2,000 to the current pricing of Rs 23,990. What was surprising was that the company decided to make this price cut so soon after the launch of the phone.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
This move was likely to ensure that the Galaxy A6+ stays somewhat relevant and competitive in the cut-throat Indian smartphone market. The price change can be seen both online on Amazon India as well as offline stores so regardless of where you buy the smartphone from, Galaxy A6+ will make your wallet Rs 23,990 lighter.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Nonetheless, here is my problem with the A6+. regardless of this price cut, even after including all the exchange offers one can use to bring down the price to the device, it is really hard to recommend this device. This difficulty is not because of the build quality, display, or even the battery of the device. But, as mentioned earlier, the internal specifications of the device are to be blamed for not being powerful enough to take on the competition. In addition to the weak hardware, the camera also does not come with a good camera making it less than ordinary in two critical sections.
While Samsung does need to consider the ‘offline premium’ – the additional costs to make the phone available at neighborhood retail stores – in this particular case it’s a bit too much. At Rs 23,990, the phone is simply too expensive to be featuring these specifications.
Image credit: Rehan Hooda
Because of these problems, I would want to conclude that only look for the Galaxy A6+ if you are a dedicated Samsungloyalist can can’t think of a smartphone from any other brand. Instead, you can look to a number of smartphones from the competition that offer more powerful hardware for about half the price of the A6+. Some of the noteworthy offerings include Xiaomi Redmi Note 5, Note 5 Pro, and even the upcoming Xiaomi Mi A2, Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1, Moto G6, the recently launched Huawei Nova 3i, and more.
Published:Fri, July 27, 2018 11:25am
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