The Galaxy A9 Pro offers flagships specs at a mid-range price!
The Samsung A9 Pro the latest mid-ranger from the Korean company which offers flagship specifications like a 4GB of RAM and a gigantic 6-inch AMOLED display. It carries a price tag of 32,490 INR. Based on the specs, we can easily figure out that the similar hardware is available in other devices at a lower price point. But Samsung’s offering does come with the brand equity along with the promise of service. So let’s check out if the Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro is a worthy buy.
Design and Build
In terms of the design, the Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro is similar to the Galaxy S7 and also offers a 2.5D curved glass at the front. It has a premium metallic unibody with smooth glossy looks at the back. The edges of the device are made up of metal, and give it a robust build. Sadly, with a large 6-inch display, the Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro is quite big in size. It also makes it a bit difficult to use with a single hand. The phablet also has a considerable weight.
At the front, there’s Samsung logo at the top with sensors and camera. Whereas at the bottom, you’ll find the fingerprint sensor underneath the home key, along with backlit recent and return keys. The rear panel has the Samsung logo in the middle of the body, along with the camera at the top portion accompanied by an LED flash.
The power key is on the right edge along with the SIM tray slot, while the volume rocker is on the left edge. At the lower edge, there is a 3.5mm port, micro-USB port, and speaker vents. At the top, there is a microSD card slot.
Overall, in terms of design, the phone is quite premium. Despite of the bigger size, it feels good to hold and use.
Display
The smartphone has a 6-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. The pixel density is about 367 ppi. The display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 4. The display is smudge proof and does not attract fingerprint easily.  The viewing angles of the smartphone are really good and brightness is enough as it can be seen under direct sunlight easily.
Specification and performance
The Samsung A9 Pro is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor (4 x 1.8GHz Cortex A72  + 4 x 1.4GHz Cortex A53) which is paired with 4GB of RAM. The response of UI is good and I didn’t find any kind of lag while using it. I ran several apps and it was able to handle them very well, and there switching between them was also instantaneous. There is around 25GB of free internal storage out of the 32GB of in-built memory, and around 1.8GB of free RAM at any point of time.
The benchmark scores of the smartphone are 34,134 and 74,368 in Quadrant Standard and AnTuTu respectively. The scores are good for the given specification and matches other devices with same type of configuration.
The gaming performance of the Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro is good. I played high-end games like Modern Combat 5 and Dead Trigger 2, and there was no lag in it. Also, there was no heating issue in it.
It runs Android 6.0.1 Android Marshmallow with its own custom UI on the top of it. There is very less bloatware in it, like My Galaxy, S-Apps and Opera Max.
Battery and connectivity
It Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro houses a massive 5,000mAh of battery which offers a two-day backup with minimal usage. When used actively, it gives a full day of battery backup with a single charge. The power backup is simply amazing.
It is a dual-SIM smartphone with 4G LTE connectivity, both the slots accepts nano SIM card. But users can run 4G in only one of them at a time. In my usage, I didn’t find any issues like call drops in the Galaxy A9 Pro.
Camera
The rear camera is of 16-megapixel with f/1.9 aperture, OIS, and LED flash. The camera performance is very good and captured images contains decent amount of details. It lacks some of features like Slow-Mo and Time Lapse. But overall the camera performance is impressive. The low light performance is also very good and the LED flash also helps.
The front camera is of 8-megapixel and has f/1.9 aperture. The selfie shooter takes very good selfies but the image produced sometimes seem artificial. The given camera app has minimal functions and lacks some of customization modes.
Verdict
With all the given specifications and performance, it is a very good and worthy smartphone to buy. However, its biggest con is the price point of 32,490 INR. The similar kind of hardware is available in smartphones such as the Xiaomi Mi Max Prime, which is priced under Rs 20,000. Around Rs 30,000, you can look for options like the OnePlus 3, which offer better specifications.
