If you’ve liked how Samsung’s flagship offerings this year looked but felt they were way too expensive, Samsung is now providing you with options like Galaxy A8 and A8+ 2018 editions. After a lot of rumors these phones just went official, this article with walk you through about all you need to know about them.
Although Samsung has made the A8 and A8+ official by launching them in their home country, Korea, the rest of us has to patiently wait till CES 2018 to get our hands on the device. The pictures and sneak peak videos are already surfacing the internet, from these leaks the phones look absolutely gorgeous.
The S8’s infinity display is here too and it might have lost out on few pixels on its way down the price tag, it did retain the 18:9 aspect ratio as well as the slim bezels. Samsung Galaxy A8 has a 5.6” inch screen and the bigger brother A8+ has 6”inch screen, with super AMOLED panel and a resolution of 2220 x 1080 which is really commendable.
The tall display and the minimal side bezels means that the fingerprint scanner is moved to the back, and here where these phones have an advantage over the flagships. Samsung has decided to place the scanner just beneath the camera and this seems to be a much better placement. It is rumored that even the Galaxy S9 will follow the same design trend, thank you Samsung!
The speaker too has been shifted to the top right edge of the device, much like the J7 Prime, and keeping up with Samsung’s recent trend with their mid-rangers the USB type-C port, the headphone jack and the ip68 water-resistant are available on these devices. In another first for the series Samsung has included two high powered Cortex A73 cores, so both phones comes with Exynos 7885 chipset underneath with Mali G71 GPU pulling the graphic duties. This hardware makes them an extremely good mid-ranger at least on paper.
The A8 backs 4GB of RAM while the A8+ has both 4GB and 6GB of RAM options with 32GB as well as 64GB internal storage variants with both models. Backing up this all is a 3000mAh battery on A8 and 3500mAh on A8+. So with moderate screen, less power hungry internals you may expect the phone will last a day on a single charge.
Samsung claims to put in a lot of work in the camera department. The rear camera is a 16-mp sensor with f/1.7 aperture and it comes with the EIS and they call it Video Digital Image Stabilization, so Samsung’s mid-rangers do have good cameras. Given the wide f/1.7 aperture here the shooter will hold to the expectations.
The front camera setup has major change here with dual camera setup, one is 16-mp f/1.9 shooter while the other is 8-mp but retains the same aperture at f/1.9. This two combined are used to shoot with a feature what Samsung called it as ‘Live focus’. This is basically is a portrait mode with a selfie camera with us being able to see the blurry effect even before the picture snapped.
Samsung has done really well in the software department, from camera software sporting usual host of features and modes to some new features like the hyper-lapse mode, the addition of new feature just doesn’t stop here, they also added a facial unlock mode. The features are great but phones launching globally in January 2018, the A8 and A8+ are still coming with Android Nougat onboard.
Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018) Specifications:
- Android 7.1.1 Nougat OS
- Dual SIM Support
- Fingerprint sensor
- 5.6 inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED display
- 1080 x 2220 pixels resolution
- Octa-Core (2.2GHz Dual + 1.6GHz Hexa) Exynos 7885 14nm processor with Mali-G71 GPU
- 4GB of RAM
- 32GB and 64GB Internal Storage memory, Expandable up to 256GB using microSD card
- 16 Megapixel rear camera with LED flash and f/1.7 aperture
- 16 Megapixel front camera with f/1.9 aperture, secondary 8 Megapixel camera with f/1.9 aperture
- Water and dust resistant body (IP68)
- 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2.4/5GHz), Bluetooth v5, NFC and USB Type-C
- 3000mAh battery with adaptive fast charging support
Samsung Galaxy A8+ (2018) Specifications:
- Android 7.1.1 Nougat OS
- Dual SIM Support
- Fingerprint sensor
- 6 inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED display
- 1080 x 2220 pixels resolution
- Octa-Core (2.2GHz Dual + 1.6GHz Hexa) Exynos 7885 14nm processor with Mali-G71 GPU
- 6GB of RAM with 64GB storage, 4GB RAM with 32GB storage, Expandable up to 256GB using microSD card
- 16 Megapixel rear camera with LED flash with f/1.7 aperture
- 16 Megapixel front camera with f/1.9 aperture, secondary 8 Megapixel camera with f/1.9 aperture
- Water and dust resistant body (IP68)
- 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2.4/5GHz), Bluetooth v5, NFC and USB Type-C
- 3500mAh battery with adaptive fast charging support
Now we have now concrete pricing news as of now, but few sources claim that the pricing will be around or under $500 that would translate to roughly 35000/- Indian rupees. The A9 dropped to 32,500/- it means the new 2018 series will be around the same price bracket. With Samsung’s brand value, the build, the ip68 rating along with additional front camera with live focus, will that be enough to lure prospective OnePlus 5T Mi Mix 2 buyers. Let us know about your answers.
