Samsung Galaxy On7 Prime review: Good effort, but not enough

With the Galaxy On7 Prime number, Samsung is going later on its biggest competitor in Bharat. The visitor won't have it outright, but Xiaomi has probably given Samsung execs in the country many sleepless nights as it has taken over the budget segment of the smartphone market with devices that bear dirt cheap price tags for the kind of hardware they offer. In fact, Xiaomi has also come a long fashion when it comes to offering after-sales back up, and these days, there's pretty much no reason why you wouldn't want to go a Xiaomi smartphone over a Samsung device in the sub-Rs. 20,000 segment in India.

The Korean giant isn't shying away from trying, though. The Galaxy On7 Prime is the company'due south latest attempt to offer something close to the value-for-money proposition of Xiaomi'southward budget handsets, and likewise those offered by many other Chinese OEMs. When you look at the price tag, the On7 Prime number certainly has an impressive spec sail. A Full Hard disk brandish, 13MP cameras on the front and dorsum, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage at Rs. 14,990 (roughly $230) is nothing to scoff at when you lot consider Samsung's usual specs-to-price ratio. For Rs. ii,000 ($thirty) less, yous get the same specs but reduced RAM and storage (3GB and 32GB).

The Galaxy On7 Prime too comes with Samsung Mall, an app that lets users indicate the phone'southward camera at a product and see related items on various online stores. It's like Bixby Vision, only the Mall app also lets you lot buy products from various stores without leaving the app. Samsung Mall isn't going to exist exclusive to this telephone, just Samsung is still using information technology as a marketing highlight.

How well does Samsung Mall piece of work, though, and does the On7 Prime number have what information technology takes to be a viable alternative in the immensely crowded budget smartphone market in India? Well, let's discover out in this review.

Milky way On7 Prime review: Pattern

The Galaxy On7 Prime, for the well-nigh part, is a rebadged Milky way J7 Prime. The dorsum of the telephone, with its camera placement, is the aforementioned equally the J7 Prime's. The front end, meanwhile, is the aforementioned old setup Samsung uses on any telephone that doesn't have an Infinity display. What I similar is that on our gold review unit of measurement, the forepart side of the phone is colored a deep shade of brown, which looks classy. Where Samsung has cutting costs are the capacitive back and recent apps buttons. These aren't backlit, so yous might find yourself tapping the dorsum button a couple of times in the night to go far work.

The telephone has a metal unibody design that feels expert in the manus. It'southward not too lite, simply information technology's not very heavy, either. The aforementioned goes for the phone'due south thickness. Information technology'due south rather slim but doesn't skimp on features. You get two SIM slots, a microSD slot, and a 3,300 mAh bombardment simply similar the J7 Prime number. The habitation push button doubles up as a fingerprint sensor that's always agile, so at that place's no need to press the home button to unlock the telephone. Oh, and in that location's a notification LED likewise, a characteristic that Samsung finally seems to be making a standard across its lineup.

Display

The Galaxy On7 Prime doesn't get an AMOLED display, which, despite the depression price tag, is disappointing. The five.5-inch Full Hard disk LCD screen isn't bad. It's sharp, has fairly vibrant colors, broad viewing angles, and skilful brightness levels, just it's still an LCD panel that can't friction match the beauty of an AMOLED panel. There's no ambient light sensor on this phone, either. Information technology's been a long-standing omission on Samsung'due south budget phones, but in this day and age, it's a major point of contention and utterly inexcusable.

Also odd is the visitor's decision to omit the blue light filter option, just equally it had done on the Milky way J7 Max, another device that debuted in Republic of india. It's a standard software feature on Android these days, and in that location's no reason other than a half-hearted try at putting things together for Samsung India to be leaving the blue light filter out. The display also acts upwardly sometimes and doesn't properly annals taps. This was most noticeable when trying to utilize the phone while it was in my machine's mountain, and judging by other reviews, it doesn't look like it'due south a problem limited to my unit.

Camera

I'll come up straight to the point here: The thirteen-megapixel rear and front cameras (F1.9 aperture on both) on the On7 Prime number are good when the lighting's right, and likewise prone to photographic camera milkshake in other conditions. The camera shake upshot is a long-standing one for whatsoever not-flagship Samsung phone in recent years, and you have to muster all your volition to hold the photographic camera steady enough to go clear pictures indoors and in poor lighting. When the pictures do come out steady, they are pretty proficient for a budget telephone. Daylight pictures, in detail, come out well detailed and dissonance-gratis with the rear camera. For pictures confronting vivid light or the skies, the defended HDR mode is very useful, even though it requires y'all to stand all the same for a second or two till the phone is done saving the HDR image.

Yous tin become expert pictures indoors as well, but again, provided you agree the telephone steady enough. Colors aren't very punchy, though, and even HDR photos can't e'er provide you with enough detail in the dark areas of the scene. For low-calorie-free scenes, you tin can manually reduce the scene's exposure for better shots. There'south also a dedicated night fashion that can help capture more lite than normal, merely information technology almost never produces results that aren't messed up by camera shake. Not that information technology's surprising that pictures don't come well in the dark, as upkeep phones are still some ways off from getting high-end imaging sensors, peculiarly when you lot talk of Samsung'southward lineup, where every fleck of cost-cutting counts.

The selfie camera is a good performer outdoors during the daytime, just like the rear camera. The pictures don't offer every bit much detail as y'all'd like from a 13-megapixel photographic camera, simply it captures skin tones quite well and produces realistic colors. Performance isn't slap-up in low light, and once more, the result depends on how steady you hold the telephone. Sadly, you need an iron grip to get clean selfies in tough lighting conditions, and I failed at that in about every selfie that I didn't take outdoors on a brilliant and sunny twenty-four hours.

The Galaxy On7 Prime also comes with Selfie focus, a software-based bokeh feature. It doesn't work very well; the telephone seems to have issues clearly defining where your caput and body cease and where the background begins. It's especially bad when you have something large in the background, similar the car you can see in ane of the samples beneath. Having multiple people in the scene helps, merely only because the photographic camera doesn't accept as much of a background to mistiness in that case.

The On7 Prime number'south cameras accept another fob up their sleeve, and that'due south the social sharing feature. Once yous tap the social share button in the camera, you can add together contacts from WhatsApp and other social networks. Then, every pic yous take gets added to the queue for a particular contact; once you're done taking all the pictures y'all want to share, y'all send them across with a single tap. This removes the need to become and select those images from the gallery later on on. Not something everyone will use, but if you regularly share pictures with friends and family at events, parties, and elsewhere, it might appeal to you.

Note: The original photographic camera samples can exist seen in full resolution in this Google Photos anthology.

Performance

Similar any other budget phone from Samsung (or even a mid-range one from a yr or so ago), the On7 Prime gets an SoC that's geared solely towards power efficiency instead of performance. The Exynos 7870 has 8 Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.6GHz. Thankfully, the 4GB of RAM on our review unit of measurement helped go along things running smoothly for the most part in 24-hour interval-to-twenty-four hour period usage. The hiccups arise when you try to switch betwixt two apps (past double tapping the recent apps key) in a hurry; apps too accept some fourth dimension to open. For instance, you'll ofttimes encounter the intro splash screen in Samsung's proprietary apps, like the Phone or Gallery app, earlier they load. This happens despite the 4GB of RAM, and so I'm guessing the processor gets a major part of the blame.

I besides ran into some stutter after extended periods of usage, so maybe the RAM management is an issue besides, making me wonder how well the 3GB RAM variant performs. For gaming, don't expect loftier-stop titles to take practiced frame rates; the Full HD resolution no doubt becomes a fleck as well much to handle for the processor. Equally for that fingerprint sensor, it'south a striking and miss when it comes to how quickly it responds to your finger when the phone is locked and the screen is off. It can be almost instant at times, just it tin as well completely miss out on detection and require yous to try over again on other occasions.

Audio and Call Quality

The Galaxy On7 Prime gets a side-mounted loudspeaker, like to most of Samsung'south budget and mid-range phones in recent months, just the company seems to accept opted for a lower-quality component for the On7 Prime. The speaker isn't very loud, and it produces tinny sound that, at times, feels distorted even at less than the highest volume levels. That means using earphones with this device is a must, only Samsung decided to not include a pair in the box. Conspicuously a cost-cut measure, and while we weren't able to test quality over bones earphones, performance was lacking on the AKG earphones that come arranged with the S8 and Note viii. At that place'due south next to no bass, and things sound shrill and uncomfortable unless yous're listening to modernistic tracks with good bit rates.

Call quality was acceptable, with clearly audible voices on both ends of a call. Network reception can be problematic in basements and underground parking lots; the phone seems to go along to hold on to the network in such areas, only calls or mobile data don't really work. Thankfully, it's not a problem in other areas, and both the first and second SIM get practiced reception equally long as y'all stay at ground level.

Battery Life

The Galaxy On7 Prime has no bug lasting an entire day and on to the next morning time with light to medium usage. Heavy, continuous usage will bring downwardly battery life to less than a day, although getting the phone to driblet downwards to disquisitional bombardment levels was a rare occasion for me. Of course, navigation via Google Maps and gaming for extended periods can shorten endurance by a few hours, merely that's to exist expected from the 3,300 mAh battery. Fast charging isn't supported on the Galaxy On7 Prime, and a total peak-up from below 10 percent battery takes a piffling over two hours.

At that place are a handful of power saving modes congenital-in, including something called Southward Power Planning. We saw this feature on the Galaxy J7 Prime number, and I'll just betoken y'all to its review if you want more than details. Basically, S Power Planning tin save bombardment by limiting the phone to only calls or enable call forwarding when battery charge is extremely low. I never found myself needing to use any of these, but coupled with the usually dependable bombardment life on the J7 Prime, the power saving modes should come up handy when you really need to conserve the phone's charge levels.

Software

The Galaxy On7 Prime runs Android vii.i.1 Nougat with the Samsung Feel 8.5 UX, the same as the one that you find on the Galaxy Annotation eight. The features are express compared to the flagships, but however aplenty. Theme support, Multi Window multitasking, Dual Messenger for using ii accounts in apps that don't back up multiple accounts, Secure Folder, and Bixby Vision are some of the features y'all go. The abode screen works through swipes: an up or downward swipe to go into the app drawer and a swipe to the correct to launch Bixby Home. You can as well put all app shortcuts on the habitation screen by disabling the app drawer, which tin can be useful if y'all're moving from a smartphone from Xiaomi or another Chinese OEM that doesn't use app drawers.

The telephone too comes with Samsung Pay Mini. Samsung Pay Mini but supports wallets such as Paytm and India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) service, so it'south far from useful if you're already using dedicated apps for that. As far as software updates are concerned, I received one update during the review menses that didn't seem to alter anything, non even the latest security patch (the phone still runs the August security patch). It remains to be seen if Samsung will bring Oreo to the On7 Prime. If it does, it's likely to take a long time; Android P will probably be out by so.

Samsung Mall

Samsung Mall is a headline feature of the Galaxy On7 Prime, though it's not limited to this device and will run on other phones besides. The app is a accept on Bixby Vision and goes ane step further. Samsung Mall lets you lot add together items to a cart and buy them from diverse online stores, such as Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong, and Tata Cliq, without leaving the app. But, the checkout process is a bit long-winded. For each item y'all add, y'all must go through the store'southward webpage through the built-in browser, log in to that store if you have an account (a must if yous desire to apply Amazon Prime, for example), make the payment, then repeat the entire process for a product from another store.

Samsung Mall also lets you take pictures of items and see related products online (in addition to using voice search), but it's a hit-and-miss affair. Taking a photo of a pillow shows results for blankets and towels, which is adequately adequate, but accept a photo of the Galaxy S7 border and Samsung Mall will throw upwardly results for a Motorola telephone and cases for other devices. Trying to see results for laptops seemed to work well, although unnecessary results still show up.

The primary benefit I saw with Samsung Mall is that it regularly threw up voucher codes for diverse stores as notifications and likewise curates deals on the chief landing page. The visual search through the camera might ameliorate later on, but as it stands correct now, you're amend off using dedicated shopping apps for each store.

Conclusion

I'll exist honest: The Galaxy On7 Prime isn't a great upkeep phone, even if it's Samsung's best budget phone all the same for the asking toll. But there isn't annihilation that stands out in item. What does stand out is the fact that there's still no ambience light sensor, or that the phone isn't powerful enough to run high-end games. The cameras are good in natural lite just produce blurry images in other conditions, and the sound quality leaves much to be desired. The bombardment life is groovy, but that'south non a unique characteristic in this 24-hour interval and historic period.

If your budget is express to Rs. 15,000, and you must accept a Samsung phone, the On7 Prime is okay. But if your allegiances don't lie with a item visitor, you have alternatives similar the Xiaomi Mi A1, which runs Android One and therefore gets direct updates from Google. It besides has a better spec sheet, although the software features pale in comparison to Samsung'southward offer. Simply Xiaomi has a good culling in that instance likewise: The Redmi Note four costs much less and runs MIUI, which is as characteristic-packed as the Samsung Experience UX.

If you can increase your budget, the Milky way J7 Max is a improve choice, even though it doesn't have the best software performance. For slightly more money, you can as well opt for the Galaxy J7 Pro, which is a complete package that includes an AMOLED brandish and the full-fledged version of Samsung Pay. Once more, if you tin can't modify your budget, you could do worse than the Galaxy On7 Prime. Just you could also do much amend, so make sure to take a look at all options earlier spending your difficult-earned money.

Pros	Cons
Sharp, fairly vibrant LCD brandish	AMOLED display sorely missed
Cameras practice well outdoors	No machine brightness
In a higher place average day-to-day performance	Cameras struggle in tough lighting conditions
Great bombardment life	Not powerful enough for enervating tasks/gaming
4GB RAM, 64GB storage on a upkeep	No blue light filter
Premium metal blueprint, notification LED	Samsung Mall needs work
Samsung Mall is a neat idea