Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!
So it's been 6 days which is sufficient enough to me to have more to say about the Samsung Galaxy A3 2017. Consider this my review (If I have this in a month, I'll do a follow up). Some of this will overlap but oh well. I'm not even going to say that I'm not going to try to make this long haha but I will do my best to space it out accordingly.
The good:
-Battery life is great. Because my battery anxiety habits are still in me, I check it a lot throughout the day...and each time I check, I'm put at ease. I always get over a day, even after reading on it for like about 30 minutes with normal usage. Always.
-The size is great too. This is a great one handed usage phone. I don't have to shift it in my hand or anything. It actually feels better than the iPhone 7 and the Pixel felt in my hand.
-Cameras are nice. Both of them meet my standards for cameras in regular light and low light situations. There's a night mode that can used in low light but doesn't use flash. That mode is nice to have.
-There's a mute mode that silences the ringer but allows media to play just fine. I have tried so many Android phones without a mute or silent mode without vibration and having that not there, always grinds me. Love having that mode and also without DND at that.
-Performance is also good. Occasionally, it closes apps to save power but surprisingly, not many apps have to reload all the time.
-Speaker is good, as are calls. I'm good with the experience I have had on phone calls.
The neutral:
-Physical buttons. I don't love or hate them but it feels weird to have them again. The iPhone has just one button, so having three has been an adjustment.
-Speaking of, the button placement! Having recent apps on the left and back on the right is weird. It's still weird but I think I have got it down now.
-On the placement note, holding it landscape means that I have to remind myself not to cover the speaker.
-Fingerprint scanner is kind of fast but occasionally it doesn't read my thumb.
-Memory management is interesting. It closes apps in the background occasionally that are consuming power but it's not as aggressive as EMUI/Honor/Huawei style.
-The UI is Grace UI. I like it, there's many features but this is just a neutral for me. Not amazing, and surely not bad either.
The bad:
-It's still on 6.0.1. I knew this coming in, but I had to remind myself that some things don't work because that came later. I don't think this will bother me, but it's hard to note that as a good thing.
-The 16gb of storage. Being "forced" on WhatsApp has me wondering how this will go for me, since it saves media on the phone directly. It's still okay, but I see myself having to delete silly videos that people like to send on it. (To be fair though, I have a 16gb iPhone SE, and I'm used to deleting stuff I don't see a need to keep on my phone).
-The signal appears to be weak. One would think that a glass backed phone would not have that problem but that's not the case. Phone stats show me that 14% of the time, I haven't had a signal, which seems high to me. Even so, battery life doesn't seem to be affected, weirdly enough.
That's it though. I feel like I have met my phone match, and I'm glad that I took a chance on this somewhat rare phone.
It finally feels like I'm not sacrificing much. I still really like the SE but the only thing that made it tough was the front camera, especially coming from the Pixel and Honor 8, which have 2 of the best front cameras in the Android world currently.