Review : Samsung Galaxy A8
The Galaxy A8 is the biggest of the A series with a 5.7" Super AMOLED screen like the last three Notes. It only has a 1080p resolution though, like the Note 3, so it's not as superbly crisp as the Note5 but not bad either at 386ppi (close to the iPhone 6 Plus 5.5" 1080p display).
Like the Galaxy Note5, the A8 has a metal frame, but it's lighter and thinner. At only 5.9mm thick it limbos lower than any other Galaxy yet and even most other phones on the market. Surprisingly, this didn't come at the expense of battery capacity - the Galaxy A8 actually tops the Note5 in this category.
The good news keeps rolling in when we get to the camera too. A 16MP shooter adorns the back with an f/1.9 aperture (sound familiar?). For selfies there's a 5MP f/1.9 camera. What's missing compared to the Note5's camera is OIS and 2160p video capture.
Key features
- 5.9mm slim metal chassis; Corning Gorilla Glass 4 front, plastic back
- 5.7" 1080 x 1920px Super AMOLED display with 386ppi
- 64-bit Snapdragon 615 chipset; octa-core CPU (quad A53 at 1.8GHz + quad A53 at 1.3GHz), Adreno 405 GPU; 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM
- -OR- 32-bit Exynos 5430 chipset; octa-core CPU (quad A15 at 1.8GHz + quad A7 at 1.3GHz), Mali-T628 MP6; 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM
- 32GB of flash memory; microSD card slot
- Optional dual-SIM (microSD goes into SIM2 slot)
- Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with TouchWiz UX
- 16MP camera with f/1.9 aperture; 1080p video capture
- 5MP/1080p front-facing camera, f/1.9 aperture
- Cat. 6 LTE network support; Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4/5GHz); GPS, GLONASS; Bluetooth 4.1; microUSB 2.0 with OTG
- 3,050mAh non-removable battery
- Fingerprint scanner
- FM radio with broadcast recording
Main disadvantages
- The battery is not user-replaceable
- No IR port
- No enhanced resistance to liquids or dust
- No stereo speakers
- No NFC, so no Samsung Pay
Samsung Galaxy A8 official images
You won't be short of security features thanks to the fingerprint sensor though. However, there's no NFC so you will be missing out on Samsung Pay.