Samsung Galaxy On5 Pro Review

Last year Samsung announced two devices under the On series, the On5 and On7. Now Samsung has upgraded the specs of the device and launched them as On5 Pro and On7 Pro. The On5 Pro is Amazon exclusive and comes with 5 inch HD display and is powered by Exynos Quad Core processor with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage.

It also comes with 8MP rear camera and 5MP front camera along with Android 6.0 Marshmallow. So how does the On5 Pro perform in the segment? Let’s find out in this detailed review.

Design and Build:

There hasn’t been any design changes in the Samsung’s mid range and budget segment for quite some time now. Samsung has been maintaining the same design for almost all of its budget and mid-range phones and same is the case with Galaxy On5 Pro. The device looks dated in terms of the design and the build quality also looks average. It has almost similar design as that of Galaxy On5 released last year and there isn’t any change. The phone comes with chrome finishing on the sides similar to the J series. The power button is located on the right side while the volume keys are on the left panel. The audio jack and micro USB charging slot are located at the bottom. The front panel houses the 5-inch display, three buttons with the physical home button.

The rear panel has faux leather like finishing which was first found on Note 3. The 8MP rear camera, flash, and speaker is located on the rear panel. The phone comes in gold and black variants. While the device is pretty good to hold for the form factor, the design and build quality is pretty average considering the competition is offering better design and build in the price point.

Display:

The phone comes with a 5 inch HD display (1280 X 720p) with a TFT LCD panel instead of the regular IPS LCD panel found on most of the phone today. The TFT panel provides a decent display for the device. While the brightness levels are sufficient, the colors are not impressive, particularly when you see the AMOLED display on Galaxy J5. Samsung has opted for the cheaper TFT panel and the display looks out-dated. There is no additional protection offered on the display. The touch response quite decent. Similar to J5, the On5 Pro also misses out on ambient light sensor and it comes with an outdoor mode.

Software:

Samsung Galaxy On5 Pro runs on Android 6.0.1 which is the latest version of Lollipop and has the custom Touchwiz UI from Samsung. The skinned UI offers a good amount of features including a custom notification center which is customizable. The phone comes with an app drawer and Samsung has not bundled any bloatware with the phone and hence you don’t have unnecessary apps taking up space or running in the background. The UI is pretty similar to what we see on other Samsung devices.

The phone also comes with theme manager, where you can download themes using a Samsung account and customize the phone. There are a quite a lot of themes available for download. Samsung has also included few useful apps like calculator, Memo, voice recorder, radio, S Planner and Smart manager.

The phone also comes with Smart Manager which can manage the battery storage, RAM and also make the device secure. It also has the new S Bike mode introduced with J3 (2016) which is basically a do not disturb mode when you are driving or riding a bike. The phone also comes with ultra data saving mode and ultra battery saver mode which are quite handy.

Performance:

The Samsung Galaxy On5 Pro runs on Exynos Quad core processor with 2GB RAM. Samsung has improved the RAM from 1.5GB on On5 to 2GB on On5 Pro. The overall performance of the device was fairly good on moderate usage and we did not notice any issues. The software is optimized for the hardware. The gaming performance of the device was not that great and we encountered lag and frame drops when playing graphic rich games. The heat generated while playing games was considerably low.

Multi-tasking was decent on the phone, we ran multiple apps in the background including games and there was close to 1GB of RAM available.

The phone supports 4G LTE and has dual SIM card support. The call quality on the phone was decent and we didn’t notice any issues with calls. The speaker output was decent for a mid range phone.

The phone comes with 16GB of internal storage and out of which close to 10.5GB was available in first boot. Samsung has again upgraded the storage on this device. While you can expand the storage via micro SD card, but you cannot install apps directly onto the SD card. One of the missing features on the On5 pro compared to competition is the fingerprint scanner.

Camera:

While most of the OEMs are concentrating on providing great camera experience even in budget segment with 13MP camera, Samsung has opted for an 8MP sensor for the rear camera and a 5MP front-facing selfie camera. The camera interface is exactly the same as that of J series and comes with auto mode, pro mode, panorama, continuous shot and beauty shot.

You can also take photos with effects. The interface offers decent features for a budget smartphone.

Now talking about the camera performance, it was a mixed bag. While some of the daylight shots came quite good with decent colors, few others had poor color reproduction. So basically the camera quality isn’t consistent. The low light images had lot of noise and weren’t great. The phone can record videos in 1080P and the quality is again average. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.

Battery Life:

Samsung Galaxy On5 Pro features a 2600mAh battery and this is good capacity for a 5 inch device in the mid-range segment. The phone does give good battery life in normal usage which includes calls, browsing, email, casual gaming and social networking apps. We tested the battery on multiple instances and found that if you are an average user, you can easily get a day or more with the battery on this device.

Verdict:

Priced at Rs 9190, is the Galaxy On5 Pro value for money? It is tough to recommend the Galaxy On5 Pro at this pricing when the competition offers much better devices in the form of Redmi Note 3, Coolpad Note 3 Plus, Le1S and many more. The On5 Pro is an upgrade over On5, but still lacks many features including the TFT display, lack of sensors, lower MP camera and also poor build and design. If you are looking for a Samsung phone below Rs 10,000, then the Galaxy On5 Pro is worth buying, else you should be looking at better options.