You could be forgiven for missing the launch of the Samsung Galaxy A8 as it didn’t make that much fanfare. Yet it is an important launch for the company. Available only in Asia right now, the Samsung Galaxy A8 is the thinnest phone the firm has made to date.
At only 5.9mm thick, there isn’t a lot of heft to the handset. That is the design intent of the A-series of phones. To make thin, all metal handsets that appeal on both a convenience and aesthetic level. From what we have seen so far, it delivers on both counts!
The phone itself has a 5.7 inch Super AMOLED screen running at 1080p and 386ppi. It uses a 1gHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chip which includes an ARM Cortex-A53, 64-bit processor and the Adreno 405 GPU. It also has 2 Gb of RAM, 16Gb of storage, 16 megapixel camera on one side and a 5 megapixel camera on the other. There is also a fingerprint sensor, gesture detector and a 3,050mAh battery. All fit into that very thin chassis.
If that wasn’t enough, there is also an NFC chip, GPS, microSD card for up to 128Gb, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 and 4G LTE hardware too. The Samsung Galaxy A8 will run Android 5.1.1 Lollipop.
Thin is beautiful
The handset measures 158 x 76.8 x 5.9 mm and weighs only 151g. It isn’t the smallest phone in the world but it is one of the thinnest. It is also one of the slimmest that has managed to shoehorn so much technology into it.
The desire to make more of our phones while also keeping them sensibly sized is a challenge to test the best engineers in the world. After Apple’s bending phone incident, manufacturers are understandably cautious about pushing the envelope too far too fast.
Given the strength of the competition between Samsung and Apple, we imagine a lot of testing has gone into making sure the Samsung Galaxy A8 doesn’t bend in the pocket or at any other everyday situation. Only time will tell on that one.
We like the Samsung Galaxy A8. It has decent amounts of power, a nice looking chassis and that thin look works for us. We could easily carry it in the inside pocket of our suit jacket without it bulging too much. It’s a small benefit, but an important one.
The Samsung Galaxy A8 has been released in Asia and should be making its way here over the next couple of months.
