While not part of the 'try the tech' scheme I have had a Galaxy A3 for just over a month now so thought I would write a quick review.
I have a SIM free A3 (A300FU) with 1.5 Gig of RAM and 16 Gig internal storage (with a micro sd card expansion tray), and use a pay monthly simplicity 4G O2 tariff, the phone needs a nano SIM.
First impressions when opening the box was what a nice bit of kit - the A3 has an all aluminium unibody construction, with a gorilla glass 4 covered qHD super Amoled 4.5 inch screen. It's very thin, just over 6mm thick and feels very solid and very well made. For a 'mid range' phone in my opinion it does have a premium feel.
It feels very comfortable in the hand and not being too big you can comfortably use it in 'single thumb mode'. The front facing camera is 5 Mega Pixel, and the rear camera is 8 Meg with a single LED flash, also on the back near the camera is the single speaker. Photo quality is fine for everyday snapping. Sound from the speaker isn't great, but this phone is never designed to be a media device.
It comes with Android Kit Kat 4.4.4 and seems to work very smoothly the only noticable software issue in everyday use is that sometimes the screen appears to be refreshed, so flashes, but this is only noticable after heavy app usage so I am assuming this is due to the limited RAM.
I wouldn't class myself as a power user, but my banking app, O2 apps (my o2 and priority), whatsapp all work without issue. Being a mid range phone it doesn't come with the processor grunt and memory of the high end phones but for everyday 'normal' use with a few apps on top the phone holds it's own.
The battery is 1900 mAh, and is non replacable due to the phones construction but the less demanding hardware doesn't take it's toll on it, and I get two full days per charge with my usage pattern, this does include a fair bit of WiFi access. From about 20% a full charge takes about 2 hours.
O2 recently rolled out 4G in my area and the A3 works great on 4G - switching between modes without any issues.
WiFi is single band only - there is no 5Ghz option, not a real issue, but my router has the 5Ghz band available too, so not being able to connect to it was a bit of a let down, as I have found 5Ghz does give better performance over 2.4Ghz.
Obviously the phone doesn't have the bells and whistles of a high end Samsung but if you are after a smartphone with a reasonable spec, that looks and feels great, with a good build quality, that copes very well with everyday normal use and you want the option to have some everyday additional apps then this is worth considering.
