Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016) Pro Reviews

The Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016) is a beautiful, but flawed smartphone. It's hard not to like, or at least appreciate its classy look and quality feel. But the new A5 is exactly like those people who tend to put extraordinary amounts of effort into making sure they look their best, and little to no effort into anything else. In other words, once the initial attraction starts wearing off, there isn't much left in the Galaxy A5 (2016) to keep you interested. Sure, it has the better-than-average camera, but boy does TouchWiz ruin the show. Samsung should step up its software game ASAP. The software experience may be something difficult to quantify (unlike CPU cores, resolutions, and megapixels, which Samsung loves to pump up), but users can definitely feel it. The TouchWiz problem is there, and it's very real, so if Samsung doesn't want lesser companies to eat through its share, it'd do well to double down its software efforts. At present, this year's Galaxy A5 costs around $400, which means it has to compete with some rather solid smartphones out there. The sub-$400 Nexus 5X, for example, has none of the A5's style, but immeasurably better performance. And then there's the much cheaper OnePlus X, which doesn't have the brand authority, but actually looks as good as the A5, and also has way better performance and user experience. Choose wisely! The Galaxy A5 (2016) isn't the superhero mid-ranger we wanted to see. It has a costume, but lacks powers.