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Samsung is back with a new entry-level A series phone, the Galaxy A07. At only about 70 bucks for the base storage tier, this is the cheapest new Samsung phone you can get. So, is it actually worth buying? I'm Will Gove for GSM Marina and let's find out in our Galaxy A7 4G review.
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The Galaxy A0 phones sit at the bottom of Samsung's A series lineup. They're not expected to be feature-packed, but could be a consideration if you need something basic. But there's more going on here than just that. The Galaxy A7 actually brings plenty of perks over last year's model, like a higher refresh rate screen, ingress protection, faster storage, a new chipset, and longer software support.
The phone is made of plastic and has a straightforward flat design. Like last year, there are vertical stripes on the backside which add a bit of flare. The matte frame is color matched to the body, and the Galaxy A7 feels solid in hand. While last year's 4G Galaxy A6 didn't have ingress protection, the new model does. It's rated at IP54 against dust and splashes of water.
As a low tier budget device, the A07 doesn't have an OLED screen. It's a 6.7-inch LCD with just a 720p resolution. At least this year, it has a 90 Hz refresh rate. This means that swiping and scrolling on this device looks and feels smoother than on last year's A06. And the refresh rate is able to dial down to 60 Hz when the phone is idling to save energy, too.
Besides that, though, this display isn't too great. While it is rather large, the display is considerably less sharp than more expensive phones, and it's less contrasty than an OLED panel. Colors are washed out, and the viewing angles are kind of poor. It isn't very bright either. Even last year's model was brighter. We were only able to achieve about 450 nits with the manual slider. And in auto mode, we didn't get much of a boost in bright light either. It's definitely not great for comfy use outdoors.
The Galaxy A7 brings back the 3.5 mm jack for headphones, and there's support for FM radio, too. It also has a single bottom-firing speaker. The speaker earned a score of "good" in our loudness test, and the sound quality is just okay with decent mids, but not much bass and some distortion at higher volumes. You can listen for yourself with our comparison tool linked below.
You can wake up and unlock the phone with the side-mounted fingerprint reader built into the power button. It's very responsive and you can set it to activate on key press to avoid accidental unlock attempts. And the Galaxy A7's storage is expandable through microSD card through a dedicated slot on the SIM tray. That's on top of the 64, 128, or 256 gigs on board the phone. And that storage is now UFS 2.2, which is faster than the eMMC 5.1 storage used in last year's model.
The interface of the phone is Samsung's One UI 7 running on top of Android 15. It isn't the latest version of One UI and doesn't provide all of the features you get on the flagships, such as the AI-based ones. Still, if you'd like to learn more about One UI 7, you can check out our dedicated video. Another change with this generation is that Samsung is now promising six major OS upgrades.
And this time around, Samsung has equipped its lowest-tier phone with a Helio G99 chipset from MediaTek. It's again a 4G chip, but a decent upgrade over the Helio G85 of last year. In benchmarks, the Galaxy A7 doesn't sit at the bottom of the charts like its predecessor. More like in the middle of the road for these budget phones. Plus, the faster storage helps for this year's model to feel a bit snappier than last year's. Still, this is no powerhouse, and perhaps in part due to our review unit's measly 4 gigs of RAM, we still did encounter the occasional hiccup or stutter. So, if you can afford it, we'd recommend going for a storage tier with higher RAM.
As you'd expect, with its modest chipset, the Galaxy A7 had no problems through our prolonged stress test, and we didn't experience thermal throttling. The Galaxy A07 has a 5,000 mAh battery, and the battery life is solid, but nothing too impressive. It earned a decent active use score of 12 hours and 44 minutes in our tests. There is support for 25-watt charging, and there's no charger included in the box. The phone is not the fastest to charge, but it's not the slowest either. With a 25-watt Samsung adapter, we charged the phone from 0 to 43% in half an hour, and a full charge took about an hour and a half.
Just like last year, on the back of the Galaxy A7 is just a single 50-megapixel camera paired with a depth sensor. This main camera's photos are just okay, but they're decent considering the price. There is detail here, although it's mostly aided by a heavy-handed artificial sharpening. The colors are a bit off, possibly due to incorrect white balance, as some photos we took had a color tinge on everything, and the dynamic range is far from ideal.
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Portraits can vary significantly in quality. The exposure ranges from decently balanced to aggressively overexposed in the background. If you're careful with the shooting conditions, you can get plenty of skin detail and nice facial features. The subject separation from the background is decent, too. Two times digital zoom shots look like the regular ones, but quite a bit softer with mushier textures. Nothing too drastic, though.
In low light, the Galaxy A7 4G has an automatic night mode that triggers quite reliably. These photos are surprisingly clean, all things considered. Noise is kept to a minimum. The dynamic range is decent, too, with fairly well-handled light sources. Still, the photos are soft and light on detail. At two times digital zoom, photos are a bit softer and noisier, but still usable.
Selfies from the 8-megapixel front-facing camera are decent. Skin tones look natural, but the photos aren't too detailed. The dynamic range could definitely be better, too. Video recording on the Galaxy A7 is limited to 1080p resolution. The quality from the main cam is just okay. There's not a lot of fine detail. Colors are yellowish, and contrast and dynamic range are far from perfect. At two times digital zoom, videos are even softer. The low-light results are better than we expected, though, with solid dynamic range for this sort of camera hardware. There is no stabilization here, optical or electronic, so handheld video can come out quite shaky.
So, there you have it, guys. The Galaxy A7 is actually not a bad phone, especially when you consider its super low price. There are plenty of improvements over last year, like the better performance and faster display. Sure, the display isn't too bright and it's just 720p, but what can you expect for under $100? Overall, if you need a second phone or just something usable for dirt cheap, the Galaxy A7 4G could be worth checking out. Thanks for watching, guys. If you want to compare to the next-tier Samsung phone, here's a link to our Galaxy A17 review. Let us know what you think down below, and I'll see you on the next one.