Apr 11, 2017 10:39 PM EDT By Avery Robbins, UniversityHerald Reporter

Samsung Galaxy A7 2017 is Samsung's latest offering in the A family. The overall design looks like the premium Galaxy S7 Edge but with a cheaper price.

Samsung offers a great alternative to Galaxy S7 Edge with its Galaxy A7 2017. It looks and feels like the premium S phone but, with mid-range hardware choices, at a pocket-friendly cost. The design and build are qualified as a premium smartphone with Samsung signature curved edges. As far as the display is concerned, Samsung Galaxy A7 2017 has a beautiful Super AMOLED 5.7-inch screen. It is relatively heavier than Galaxy S7 Edge but Samsung equips both phones with dust and water resistant feature.

And just like the premium S7, the Samsung Galaxy A7 already supports NFC for Samsung Pay. The handset has 3GB RAM on board coupled with 32GB internal storage, with a dedicated slot for MicroSD to expand the memory up to 256GB.

Samsung Galaxy A7 is powered by octa-core processor, Exynos 7880, and it runs Android Marshmallow out of the box. A recent report has learned that the device running the Nougat version was spotted on GFX Bench. This means that the handset is currently on compatibility test to be updated to Android 7.0, according to The Mobile Indian.

Moving on to the optics department, the 2017 edition of Samsung Galaxy A7 gets 16MP sensor on both rear and front cameras. It packs more pixels than Galaxy S7 but lacks 4K video recording feature and OIS software to shoot steadily. There is a fingerprint sensor mounted on the front panel - which one-handed mode always finds it a hassle, CNET reported.

The phone gets 3,600 mAh battery - that is 22 hours of life in standby. Samsung Galaxy A7 2017 is often compared to high-end handsets although the flagship product is a mid-ranger. However, the build quality is not far from iPhone 7 although the latter is a better-optimized device.

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