Update: Samsung has confirmed to techradar it has no plans at this time to bring the Galaxy A series to the US or Australia.
Original: Samsung has just announced two new mid-range phones for 2016 in the form of the Galaxy A3 and Galaxy A5.
While neither will excite you like the Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge, these phones may be set to impress when we know how much they'll cost.
There's no word on the prices just yet, so it's quite hard to judge whether it'll be worth picking one of these up when they go on sale in the UK on May 5.
What we do know though is what the phones offer, with Samsung's Galaxy A5 coming with a 5.2-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display, while the Galaxy A3 has a smaller 4.7-inch, 720p version.
Middle of the road
It's not certain what processor tech is used in either phone, but the octa-core Galaxy A5 is clocked at 1.6GHz while the quad-core A3 comes in at 1.5GHz.
There's 16GB of internal storage and a microSD slot supportting cards up to 128GB on both. RAM wise you're looking at 1.5GB on the Galaxy A3 and 2GB on the Galaxy A5.
Both phones have the same camera tech with a 13MP sensor on the back – which boasts Optical Image Stablization - and 5MP selfie cameras. Each camera features an F1.9 aperture lens for improved low-light images, compared to the last Galaxy A camera range.
The updated Galaxy A5 also comes with a fingerprint sensor and fast charging battery tech for the first time.
Disappointingly both phones are still running Android 5.1 Lollipop software meaning the OS is set to be quite dated right out of the box. We expected to see Android 6 Marshmallow software here, especially as it's almost a year old now.
It all comes down to the pricing of these handsets though. If these come cheap it may be a good option over a flagship Samsung device.
