From April next year, Samsung will release three updated models in its affordable Galaxy A smartphone line-up.

The Galaxy A3, A5 and A7 phones are each designed to offer Samsung services and design, including Samsung Pay mobile payment technology on the latter two, yet without breaking the bank.

The Samsung Galaxy A7 is the largest and best spec'ed of the bunch, with a 5.5-inch Full HD Super AMOLED screen, Cat 6 4G LTE, and a 1.6GHz octa-core processor.

There is 3GB of RAM on board, so it should move a fair lick, while the rear camera has a 13-megapixel sensor with optical image stabilisation thrown in to boot. There's a 5-megapixel camera on the front.

The Samsung Galaxy A5 is a similar device in specifications, but has a smaller 5.2-inch Super AMOLED screen and just 2GB of RAM.

Both devices come with 16GB of on-board storage as standard and have microSD card slots capable of expansion by up to a further 128GB. They also both come with fingerprint sensors and magnetic strip technology that, alongside NFC, enables contactless payments to be made at any checkout terminal you like.

The Samsung Galaxy A3 is slightly trimmed down in comparison, with no fingerprint tech, Samsung Pay and just a 4.7-inch 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED display. It also sports a 1.5GHz quad-core processor in preference to the octa-core chipsets on the bigger devices.

There's no optical image stabilisation on the A3 either.

All phones come with Android 5.1 Lollipop from the box and Samsung is yet to reveal whether they will be upgraded to Marshmallow in time. We are also awaiting pricing details, but they are not likely to be revealed until closer to release date in April 2016.