Samsung Galaxy A6 Plus review: A good phone let down by its price tag

While the Galaxy J6 is all about offering an immersive viewing feel, the Galaxy A6 and Galaxy A6+ are about giving consumers the right mix of features taken from both the budget and mid-range Galaxy J and Milky way A lineups. Or, well, the right price tag would be more accurate, every bit the new A6 and A6+ fill the gap between Samsung's premium mid-range offerings (the A8 and A8+) and the J series devices.

The Galaxy A6+ is clearly the more interesting smartphone here. It'southward got a vi-inch Infinity (xviii:v:9) display and too comes with a 24-megapixel front-facing camera, the highest nosotros have seen yet on a Samsung smartphone. It also gets the leg up over the Galaxy A6 with its dual rear photographic camera setup. Yous could say the A6 and A6+ are every bit unlike every bit the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, with the larger model getting the better features.

But the regular Galaxy S9 tin can still avowal of flagship internals. The A6+, meanwhile, has only its cameras and that large Infinity display to fix itself apart. In fact, it's rather lacking in one key surface area: the chipset inside. The Snapdragon 450 SoC is all virtually efficiency, not unlike Samsung's Exynos 7870 or 7880 fries. For the starting price of a Milky way A6+ (around $370/€369), the Snapdragon 450 is a fleck besides entry-level in capabilities, once over again showing how Samsung continues to need to make important sacrifices as it attempts to fight the always-increasing competition from Chinese manufacturers.

Then there are aspects like the microUSB port or the lack of fast charging that further piece of work against the Milky way A6+, so information technology's ultimately up to the telephone's cameras and the Infinity display to make a solid impression. Whether they can actually practice that is what we will find out in our Milky way A6 Plus review, and so allow's get started.

Here's our video review of the Galaxy A6+. The full text review (with camera samples and other of import details) begins below the video.

https://world wide web.youtube.com/watch?v=1XNyzox6dpo

Galaxy A6 Plus review: Pattern

In that location's no other way to say it: The Galaxy A6+ is a large, burly, and non-and then-ergonomic device. It is the same size and weighs every bit much every bit the Galaxy A8+, only the metal unibody makes it less grippy and more decumbent to slipping out of the manus. It feels premium, though, even if the metal body is something we have seen on much cheaper Milky way J series devices. But Samsung needs to work on reducing the size of its non-flagship phones with Infinity displays by reducing the bezels further, as there'southward room to brand these devices more than compact.

At the back, the fingerprint sensor beneath the vertically placed dual camera setup is like shooting fish in a barrel enough to reach, but you would need to reposition the device in your paw once yous tap the fingerprint reader to unlock the device. Samsung isn't willing to move the fingerprint reader a little lower on its smartphones, so only those with really big hands would observe the current position truly comfy, particularly on Galaxy devices with 6 inch and larger screens.

A notation virtually the colors: The blue Milky way A6+ looks amazing, but if yous desire the Infinity display to be truly immersive, it's best to pick upwardly the black version. That's because on the non-black models, the colored edges of the phone tin can be visible, which ruins the experience.

Brandish

The half dozen-inch Super AMOLED Infinity display on the A6+ is excellent. It has bright colors, deep blacks, and high brightness levels. The Full HD+ resolution (2220×1080 pixels) is more than than sufficient to make everything look sharp. Since the front is all black, information technology makes for an immersive viewing feel when y'all're watching videos. Every bit I said in the blueprint section, the bezels could exist smaller. The A6+ is just a tad longer than the Galaxy S9+ despite a screen that's 0.2 inches smaller, so shaving off the bezels a bit more on upkeep and mid-range Milky way devices would farther amend the bewitchery of the Infinity display.

The Milky way A6+ comes with software navigation buttons similar all other Infinity brandish-toting devices. Y'all tin can change the background color of the navigation bar and as well swap the back and recents keys if you don't like the default club. The navigation bar can be made to disappear so you accept slightly higher screen manor and admission the buttons past swiping up from the bottom of the display when needed.

Similar the Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S9, the A6+ offers customization of the screen mode as well. You can choose from the usual screen modes Samsung devices with AMOLED displays accept always had, make the brandish's color tone warmer or cooler, and also manually adjust the red, dark-green, and bluish values for deeper control over the overall look and feel of the screen. At night, you can enable the blue light filter to reduce middle strain and fall comatose faster.

Photographic camera

The Galaxy A6+ has a 24-megapixel front camera, and it's too equipped with a dual camera setup at the back. Let'due south talk about the forepart photographic camera first. As is usually the case, an increment in megapixels doesn't necessarily translate to more item in pictures taken by a phone's forepart camera. In that location's ordinarily non plenty room to put the kind of high-cease sensors and other shenanigans at the forepart of a telephone every bit there is at the back, so the Galaxy A6+ doesn't offer the kind of selfies yous would expect from a 24-megapixel camera.

But that's not to say the selfie camera on the A6+ isn't impressive. Indeed, when the lighting is right, it takes first-class shots with a fair amount of item in the subject'south face. Noise is well controlled, and camera shake isn't unremarkably a problem. This is true for indoor shots with good lighting as well. Even low-low-cal selfies can sometimes come up out quite clean, though at other times things tin exist quite grainy if you're taking selfies in artificial lighting.

The selfie flash helps in the dark. Its brightness tin can be adjusted in the camera app, and in most cases it's non piece of cake to notice that the flash was on, which is a bonus. Every bit for the Selfie focus feature, well, let'southward just say it's a hit and miss matter. The groundwork blur can be adept at times, but yous have to concur the phone all the same until the picture is saved. Detail is defective likewise with bogus lighting, and so it'due south ultimately the Galaxy A8 or A8+ that you lot would want to accept bokeh selfies.

The sixteen-megapixel primary rear camera on the A6+ is pretty skilful as well. Daylight photos have expert detail and accurate colors. It helps that the camera supports Automobile HDR, which makes for good dynamic range in nigh situations. In good indoor lighting, the operation of the rear camera remains largely the same. Particular is slightly lower, though and a chip of noise can creep in. In low-light photos, if the scene has a few bright artificial lights, the camera keeps noise to a minimum as long equally yous tap on one of the light sources to adapt the exposure.

General low-light shots can come out quite grainy, though, and the camera also tends to have a few seconds to focus on a subject area. In fact, if there's one affair about the rear camera that irritated me on the A6+, information technology's the tendency to have a few seconds to relieve a photo later on you accept tapped on the shutter button. The camera seems to refocus on the subject for no reason at all when the shutter button is pressed, and it was rather frustrating to see the phone taking more than time to capture sixteen-megapixel shots from the rear camera over the 24 MP front camera.

The Galaxy A6+ also supports Live Focus (bokeh) pictures thanks to the secondary 5-megapixel rear camera, and I have to say the results are usually quite expert. Edge detection is first-class for the near part, and unless y'all're taking Live Focus pictures in poor lighting, at that place'south a good amount of item every bit well. Yous tin can arrange the level of groundwork blur after taking pictures, and also refocus on a different part of the film. As for video recording, the phone captures Total Hd videos that are unremarkably quite detailed just suffer from problematic focusing at night and in depression-calorie-free conditions.

The A6+ gets an older version of Samsung'southward camera app despite running Oreo. You have the usual shooting modes, such as panorama, sports, nighttime, and Sound & shot (which adds sounds to an otherwise even so picture), and likewise a bones Pro style for changing exposure, white balance, and ISO levels. Yous get a variety of stickers and filters to choose from, and Bixby Vision is also built into the camera app.

Note: The camera samples in a higher place accept been reduced in size so the page loads apace. If you desire to take a look at the total-resolution samples, bank check out this Google Photos album.

Functioning

The Galaxy A6+ is powered by the Snapdragon 450 SoC, which simply does not vest on a device that costs most $400. It has eight Cortex-A53 cores, similar Samsung's own Exynos 7870 and 7880 (which powered the 2017 iterations of the Galaxy A3, Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A7), with the clock speed going equally loftier every bit 1.8GHz. But, as I've written earlier, Qualcomm seems to do a better job with its budget and mid-range chipsets than Samsung, which is why the Galaxy A6+ performs admirably in 24-hour interval-to-day usage. This is despite a Full HD display, which Samsung's Exynos offerings tin can't handle equally well as similar chips from Qualcomm.

The user interface is polish for the most part. Stutters but bear witness up when you try to do something too quickly, similar switching to the concluding used app by double borer the recent apps primal, or while opening heavy apps such equally the camera. Apps don't take a lot of time to load, though I can't say the same virtually something every bit simple as the screen waking upwardly later I tap the fingerprint sensor. While it was a quick affair initially, my A6+ review unit of measurement now takes up to 2 seconds to register fingerprint input when it'southward locked and the screen is off. I also observe slowdowns after long bouts of uninterrupted utilize of the telephone despite the 4GB of RAM, and so it's clear some optimization is needed.

The A6+ also suffers with graphically intensive games like Modern Combat five. Lighter games – or something similar Cobblestone 8, which isn't equally heavy equallyModern Combat 5– run fine, but is that plenty for a near-$400 phone? Perhaps a lower screen resolution would have helped in this regard, although that would have meant a poorer viewing experience overall on a six-inch display. And, well, maybe information technology's a good compromise equally most consumers tend to play unproblematic games. If you're interested in playing high-end games, this isn't the right device for y'all.

Sound, call quality

The Galaxy A6+ is ane of very Samsung few devices that come with Dolby Atmos support. It works just when you use headphones or play audio via a Bluetooth connection, and the main deviation information technology makes is to the volume. There's a slight increment in the book and an even slighter increase in bass, simply it's not enough to be too useful. Samsung has also bundled depression-cost earphones with the phone. Dolby Atmos ends up being less useful than on Samsung's flagships equally a issue.

The speaker, placed above the ability button, tin become loud, but it's too shrill at the highest book and lacks depth. As for call quality, the A6+ didn't disappoint. Network reception is first-class on both SIM slots and in-call volume is loud enough for all but the nearly noisy environments. Some callers did complain about non being able to hear my voice properly, merely this was a rare occurrence and may be limited to our review unit.

Battery Life

This is one expanse where the Milky way A6+ excels. It wasn't that keen in the first couple of days, simply one time things settled, the Galaxy A6+ constantly made it through a day and a one-half of regular tasks. By regular, I mean a few hours of sharing memes on Facebook, taking a few pictures, checking out SamMobile'due south Slack channel for work, and chatting on WhatsApp all day long. Screen on times regularly touched vi hours, and at least five hours with heavier usage. Utilise it extensively with a mobile data connection, and you're still looking at iv hour screen on times.

But, sadly, the 3,500 mAh battery doesn't do that well when you throw something like navigation into the mix. Navigation can take a price on the largest of smartphone batteries, but information technology is more frustrating with the Galaxy A6+ considering it lacks fast charging. That means you can't apace pinnacle it up after yous accept subjected information technology to heavy apply. It doesn't assist that charging from 0 to 100 percent takes almost three hours with the default charger, which has the same ability rating as those for Galaxy J smartphones (v volts, i.55 amperes).

Software

The A6+ runs Android 8.0 Oreo with the Samsung Experience 9.0 UX. Information technology's more or less similar in terms of features to the Galaxy A8 (2018). You get Ever On Display, Dual Messenger, Multi Window multitasking, facial recognition, fingerprint sensor gestures, and Bixby Dwelling and Bixby Vision. The A6+ misses out on Samsung Pay, though. Information technology has Samsung Pay mini if yous're in Republic of india, which supports UPI and wallet services similar Paytm. Indian consumers too get Samsung Mall, allowing them to shop from diverse online stores from within a single app.

The A6+ also comes with a feature called Chat Over Video in India. This is an extension of the Popular-up View characteristic that Samsung phones have had for a long time. When you're watching a video, Chat Over Video will evidence you lot a popup notification for messages received in WhatsApp and the regular SMS app, much like Facebook Messenger's floating icon. You lot can reply to those letters without pausing the video using a transparent keyboard. Information technology's a smashing thought, only it can be irritating later on a while as WhatsApp and the Letters app remain open as a floating icon even later yous've stopping watching the video, which you then have to manually close.

In case yous're moving from a Samsung device that ran an Bone version older than Android 7.0 Nougat, you will also see a few changes to how the home screen works. In that location's no apps button by default, so you take to swipe up or down on the dwelling house screen to access the app drawer. You can also fix the swipe downward gesture to expand the notification shade in the home screen settings, and get the old app drawer push dorsum if you want. There's an choice to disable the app drawer completely and put all apps on the home screen, similar to how it works on the iPhone and Android devices from Chinese OEMs like Xiaomi.

Conclusion

The Galaxy J6 punched to a higher place its weight by existence better than expected for its price. The Milky way A6+ is exactly the contrary. It's a good phone, but at the asking cost, information technology'southward not expert enough. Other than the less-than-ideal software performance, the A6+ does everything quite well. The 24 MP front camera is impressive, the rear photographic camera takes nice photos, and it has long-lasting battery life.

Even performance isn't bad when you consider the combination of the Snapdragon 450 and the Full Hard disk brandish. And speaking of the brandish, this 6-inch AMOLED panel is excellent, but Samsung needs to shave off a bit more bezel. The takeaway? The Galaxy A6+ is an all-rounder smartphone, but with its current price tag, information technology's non an attractive deal. If but Samsung could drop the cost past around $50, and this would get an like shooting fish in a barrel recommendation.

Pros	Cons
Excellent Super AMOLED Infinity display	All the same plenty of bezels
Impressive front camera	Performance inadequate for heavy tasks
Dual rear photographic camera performs admirably	No fast charging or USB Type-C port
Performance is skilful for nigh use cases	Fingerprint sensor takes time to wake upwardly device
Long-lasting battery	Dolby Atmos non very effective
Premium feel, blueish version is cute	Total Samsung Pay support would be dainty to take
E'er On Display, other software features	Toll needs to be around $50 lower

Source: https://www.sammobile.com/2018/06/26/samsung-galaxy-a6-plus-review/

Posted by: johnsdeater.blogspot.com

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