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back to article Samsung launches 'perfect pair' of skinny mid-range phones

The world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturer has unveiled two new Galaxy devices aimed at halting its falling market share and plummeting profits. The Samsung Galaxy A3 is 130.1 x 65.5 x 6.9mm, and 110g with a 4.5-inch screen, while the A5 is 139.3 x 69.7 x 6.7mm and 123g with a 5-inch screen. For comparison, the flagship …

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  1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    What about the things that matter?

    Price?

    Availability? (Samsung is renowned for selling phones in very restricted market areas leaving the rest to wonder why this is)

    Are you having a laugh when you say that the charge should last a whole day?

    My old Nokia need charging once or twice a week. Even my company iPhone 5s lasts 2 days.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: What about the things that matter?

      Your Nokia lasts a only a week? You need to need to get yourself a 6310i matey.

      2 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What about the things that matter?

        6310i's only lasted a week if you didn't use them. Most days I had to change the battery by mid afternoon.

        1 0 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What about the things that matter?

          "6310i's only lasted a week if you didn't use them. Most days I had to change the battery by mid afternoon."

          Yes, those old B&W LCD phones had fantastic battery life back in the days when calls were so expensive that people hardly ever made them.

          As you say, though, if you needed one for business...car charger, office charger, home charger essential.

          0 0 Reply
  2. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Joke

    Serious omission there

    "...the cameras have “Wide Selfie, Palm Selfie, Animated GIF, Beauty Face Features, and Rear-cam Selfie, which lets users capture the best selfies possible in high resolution by automatically detecting and focusing on a person’s face”"

    No "todger mode" for randy MPs?

    4 1 Reply
    1. Tim Jenkins
      Reply Icon

      Re: Serious omission there

      I think that might be considered 'hands free mode', assuming your Honourable Member is in a sufficient state of arousal.

      Don't even want to think what a 'Palm Selfie' is...

      4 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Serious omission there

      That would be 100x digital zoom.

      0 0 Reply
    3. dogged
      Reply Icon

      Re: Serious omission there

      Also "belfie".

      0 0 Reply
    4. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Serious omission there

      I'm a bit worried by Rear-cam Selfie mode. Particularly if it's combined with Wide Selfie. Put that with MPs, and you could be talking Eric Pickles...

      Is the internet really ready for that?

      I'm hoping that Palm Selfie is for getting the perfect shot of you, on a tropical beach. But I'm fearing that it's more for getting every hair in focus on all five knuckles, as they shuffle.

      0 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Disappointingly, the phone runs Kit Kat rather than Lollipop"

    Eh? Lollipop hasn't been fully released yet. It hasn't even been put on the existing Nexus devices and isn't yet on any released device even from Google. I'm guessing they've been working on this phone since before Lollipop was even announced.

    3 0 Reply
    1. larokus
      Reply Icon

      @ac

      Yeah that was right up there with using the 7xxp resolution 'retina' screen as the benchmark by comparison. I almost forgot I've been wielding 1080p ips androids for 2 years and was just about to rush out for this best ever retina tech circa 2011 android

      0 0 Reply
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meh

    Still waiting for a Galaxy phone to be released that has really impressed me since the S4. They seem to be spreading themselves too thin at the minute with all these releases and diluting the brand that they've built up.

    I just wish they'd hurry up and release the Galaxy S6

    0 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Meh

      What are you missing from your current phone?

      This is the problem, it's largely the OS that makes all the magic happen.

      0 0 Reply
      1. Alan Brown Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Meh

        "What are you missing from your current phone?"

        Stability, support, battery life.

        Mine's a S2 - and Samsung effectively stopped supporting it 18 months ago.

        All the new apps are following the usual path of bloatware and that has knockon effects on battery life and stability (when the things run hard they get hot and when they get hot, they shut down)

        0 0 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Meh

          With my S3 im missing more RAM 1GB just isn't enough (yes international model), forward facing stereo speakers and a bigger and more powerful cpu, N300 Class 2x2 mimo wireless, apart from that its a solid phone and goes for ever with its upgraded 7000mAh battery :)

          As for bloat its rocking CM11 Snapshot M11 and you find many of the apps behave a lot better when you flash over an anti ad hosts file :)

          On heavy use it easily goes 1 day (and i do mean very heavy) on light use its can easily go 4 days, so unless i can slap at least a 6000mAh upgraded battery cell into a phone im not interested (more is always better, i woudl be happier if i could shoe horn in a 10,000mAh cell, but sadly no one makes one that big for the S3).

          0 0 Reply
      2. dcathjlmif
        Reply Icon

        Re: Meh

        For me missing features are as follows in prioty order

        FM radio

        IR Camera

        128 GB SD slot

        LED protection device

        multiple lens system for camera

        solar panel built in behind screen

        projected key board

        enviromently sesnsors (smoke alarm, MOx , etc)

        0 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Meh

      Yeah im over due an upgrade as well, Ive and S3, the jump to an S4 would have been nice but i was still in contract term, the S5 was not so far ahead of an S4 so ive passed up offers of an upgrade. If the S6 doesn't dazzle its time to jump ship.

      Despite all their faults Samsungs still one of the manufactures that realises many users want a battery door, removable battery (that can be upgraded to something much bigger cough cough zerolemon) and want SD card support.

      Until lithium-ion electrode batteries make it to market having an upgradable one is a bit of a must if your a heavy user and before you mention it, i dont want a battery case, whats the point of using the same space to have one battery charge another and lose a load of power/capacity in the process.

      I would have stuck with HTC long ago but due to the two above reasons i turned my back on them, the S3 has been a solid phone, but after much tom foolery with being long long in the coming 4.3 updates and then failed promises of a 4.4 update it left a bit of a stale taste... Still i rooted and loaded 4.4 myself anyway.

      So the S6 is their last chance to keep me, check list, removable battery, sd card slot, 5" display 5.5" max, i dont want a fondle stab, 4gb of ram, it would be nice to have 400 fps video record (but wont kill me if it doesn't) and lastly forward stereo speakers.

      The bigged bullet being the removable battery, its the biggest thing that would make me come back for more, its fine having the alpha for people who dont care about runtime, but for the rest of us keep the best feature of your phone.

      0 0 Reply
  5. Ken Darling

    Same old boring Galaxy design

    Come on Samsung, give your phones a face-lift! The design of the Galaxy range is stale,boring, and overwhelmingly plastic. Even Microsoft's Lumia range make plastic look a little more interesting with it's odd mix of rounded and angled corners and retina-damaging bright colours.

    And PLEASE do something with TouchWiz. I don't want to hear the sound of a turd plopping into the bowl everything I press a button.

    2 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Same old boring Galaxy design

      And PLEASE do something with TouchWiz.

      Yeah I'd recommend taking it out the back and blowing its brains out with a shotgun and giving users the option of removing your crapware.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Same old boring Galaxy design

        Just install another launcher, better yet root and blow a new vanilla android rom or a de-bloated rom official rom.

        Agree the likes of touchwiz or htc sense (less heh) interface has never been a selling point and one of the first things on my list of things to go with a new phone.

        0 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Same old boring Galaxy design

      This is why we CAN have nice things: Samsung Galaxy Alpha/

      0 0 Reply
  6. supreme-overlord

    New day, new Samsung phone models.

    0 0 Reply
  7. Simon Harris

    Way ahead?

    312 ppi vs 326 ppi pixel density. That's only about 4% - how many people can really see the difference?

    0 0 Reply
    1. Dave, Portsmouth
      Reply Icon

      Re: Way ahead?

      I was wondering the same. In fairness to the Reg, it's a Friday afternoon so maybe their quality control department (editor!?) has gone home and left the students to write the news, and that's the best comparison they could come up with.

      0 0 Reply
  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Too many models?

    High end, mid range and low end. How many more models do you need?

    0 0 Reply
  9. PaulR79

    Samsung following HTC

    I see that Samsung have adopted the old HTC attitude when they were top of the Android pile by flooding the market with low-end crap to try and get more sales. All that it will do is dilute sales even further and lead to more failed low-end crap being pushed out at a faster pace. I'm fine with this because I'm tired of Samsung and their lack of design flair but it is surprising that they don't see it.

    0 0 Reply
  10. ratfox

    Pearl White, Midnight Black, Platinum Silver, Soft Pink, Light Blue and Champagne Gold.

    FTFY. What a lack of imagination! It is too easy to know what colors they are. How about "Mango Explosion" or "Zebu Mix"?

    1 0 Reply
    1. Simon Harris
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      Are we talking about mobile phone colours here, or toilet paper?

      1 0 Reply
  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They've moved the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone next to the micro USB port? That's so cute!

    0 0 Reply
  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    326 to 312 ppi

    That's "way ahead"? I make it 4.5%.

    Yes, Eddie Ito (on another thread) the Jobs reality distortion field is still alive, well and growing.

    0 0 Reply
    1. Simon Harris
      Reply Icon

      Re: 326 to 312 ppi

      I think there might be an echo in the room!

      0 0 Reply
  13. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Screens

    A5 runs at 720 x 1280 pixels to give a 294 ppi pixel density

    Fuck that kind of willy-waving! Is OLED or just LCD?

    Over 2000mAH should easily give you more than a day's use with those screens.

    0 0 Reply
  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The new phones should last through a day..."

    Is that the benchmark for a phone these days?

    Sometimes it feels like technology's regressing, not progressing.

    1 0 Reply

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