Samsung has treated the Galaxy A3 (2016) to the same body structure as its big brother, despite the downsized price of €329. Here also, the combination of Gorilla Glass 4 on front and back and an elegant metal frame creates a classy look. Due to the compact dimensions, the Galaxy A3 (2016) plays the role in-house of a Galaxy S6 Mini. It sits well in the palm, even in slightly smaller hands. With wet fingers, however, the glass surfaces become slippery, and care must be taken when operating the display.

Bright display, abundant features
The Galaxy A3 (2016) owes its compact design to a 4.7-inch OLED display. The HD display has a 720 x 1280 pixel resolution and offers a high brightness of 445 cd/m2, ensuring good sunlight readability. Below the display is a 1.5 GHz quad-core CPU of the in-house platform Exynos 7578, which together with 1.5 GB of RAM ensured brisk everyday performance, even if benchmark records are not slashed. Nearly 11 GB of storage is available, but users can easily and inexpensively expand space via a micro SD memory card. When it comes to hardware, the Wi-Fi is the only thing we found fault with, because the Galaxy A3 (2016) does not support 5-GHz-Wi-Fi. The camera, however, makes amends. The image quality of the 13-megapixel device is good, even in poor light conditions, but cannot quite reach the heights of its big brother. The camera comes with a 5-megapixel front shooter for selfies. Various modes can be set according to the situation, ensuring great pictures with much more than just snapshot quality.

Strong performance in the lab
In the laboratory the Galaxy A3 (2016) managed to go one better. The Android-5.1.1 device offers a talk time of about 15 hours in GSM and about eight hours in the UMTS network. Added to this are over eight hours of display operation under realistic conditions. The transmission and reception properties, as well as the acoustics, are excellent. The Galaxy A3 (2016) ticks all the boxes and with 426 points more than deserves the "very good" rating it has been awarded. Viewed objectively, the device offers everything you can expect from a smartphone – at a more than fair price. MICHAEL PEUCKERT