The 2017 Samsung Galaxy A7 and UMI Plus E are two of the hottest mid-range smartphones in the market right now. If you were to choose between the two, which smartphone will you pick?
Price
The 2017 Samsung Galaxy A7 was introduced last January 5, 2017, and will be available this coming January 25th. It is said to cost around 23,990 PHP ($483) while the UMI Plus E is said to only cost between $240-250 (depending on where you buy it).
Design
The Samsung Galaxy A7 comes in with a metal and glass construction and has a body dimension of 156.8 x 77.6 x 7.9 mm. It has a water and dust resistant feature that makes the smartphone capable of being submerged in water for up to 1.5 meters for 30 minutes. It also has a fingerprint sensor embedded on its Home Button and an always-on screen feature.
On the other hand, the UMI Plus E features an aluminum case. It measures 155 mm x 75 mm x 8.8 mm and weighs 185 grams. On its left side design, it has this button that activates its camera app, but some sources claim it could be customized as to what app you want to link it with. So whenever you press that button, the app connected to it will open. One more thing, its USB C port located at the bottom is kind of long, you if you don't use a USB C cable made by UMI, you may find out that using other USB C cables will only fall-out.
For this round, the Samsung Galaxy A7 is better. Well, first reason, the combination of glass and metal is sexy to me and it makes it look like a premium smartphone. The second reason is that I really, really like its always-on feature.
Display
The Samsung Galaxy A7 features 5.7-inch super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen (16M colors) with a screen resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and is protected by an unspecified corning gorilla glass. The UMI Plus E features a 5.5-inch full HD IPS LCD Capacitive touchscreen (16M colors) that has a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and protected by the T2X-1 (aka Dinorex).
The choice for this round will be the Samsung Galaxy A7. There are two reasons as to why. First, though both smartphones are quite similar to sizes, the Galaxy A7 features a much larger screen which is a big plus for me. The second reason is kind of bias because for me AMOLED screens offer a much better display performance, specifically with the vibrancy of the colors, contrast, and the saturation.
Platform And Memory
The Samsung Galaxy A7 runs on Android Marshmallow (hopefully there will be an update for Nougat) and is powered by a 1.9 GHz Octa-core processor. It features 32 GB with 3 GB of RAM. It also has an expandable storage option of up to 256 GB.
The UMI Plus E runs on Android Marshmallow and is equipped with the latest Helio P20 chipset by MediaTek. It features 64 GB (though some sources claim it's 32 GB) with 6 GB of RAM. And just like the Samsung Galaxy A7, it also has an expandable storage option of up to 256 GB if you insert both SIM trays with SD cards.
This is kind of hard to decide base on the video sources. Well, both smartphones are fast in terms of software, but in gaming performance, the UMI Plus E is way better and faster. You can literally throw any intense Android game at and it will work just fine. So for this round, the UMI Plus E is the winner.
Camera
The Samsung Galaxy A7 features a rear and front camera both with 16 MP and an aperture of f/1.9. It shoots at 1080p@30fps. The UMI Plus E features a 13 MP rear camera and a 5 MP rear camera. It also shoots at 1080p@30fps and in 4k.
Now, for the camera performance of both smartphones, it is hard to judge as of now because there aren't that many sources that talks about the 2017 Galaxy A7's camera performance in details. But for the UMI Plus E, there are many. There are even glitches that cause the camera app to crash down on rare occasions.
So, the rear camera performance of the UMI Plus E does pretty well in daylight, while in low light conditions it has trouble preserving details and accuracy. For its front camera, users claim that it is decent enough in daylight, but in low light conditions and if I will scale it from 1-10 with 10 as the highest, I will say 5. And for its video, the rear camera is okay enough in daylight, but with other things, let's just say it was below average and the colors are washed-out.
So for this round, I will go with the Samsung Galaxy A7. Yeah, there are only few details about its camera performance, but a 16 MP for both its front and rear camera is bound to be better than a 5 MP front camera and 13 MP rear camera, right? Plus, there were glitches with the camera app of the UMI Plus E (which UMI currently working on to fix) that causes it crash down on rare occasions. I think that is deal-breaker and if that is not, then I don't know.
The Verdict
The tally is Samsung Galaxy A7 with 3 wins and the UMI Plus E with 1 win, making the Galaxy A7 the winner. So, yeah, I believe that the 2017 Samsung Galaxy A7 can definitely match the UMI Plus E.
