Samsung has officially revealed the specs of its upcoming Galaxy A8 and A8+ smartphones, well in time for CES 2018 in January.
Looking a little like a Pixel 2 XL rather than just its flagship sibling the Galaxy S8, the Galaxy A8 will come sporting a 5.6-inch Super AMOLED ‘Infinity Display’ which stretches right up to the sides of the handset but doesn’t curve like that of the Galaxy S8. Nor does it have the resolution, offering 1080 x 2220 rather than Quad HD+.
The Galaxy A8+ has the same design but comes with a slightly larger 6-inch display running at a the same Full HD resolution.
Both handsets have bezels at the top and bottom of the screen that look to be a little larger than those found on the Galaxy S8, though for a non-flagship phone the Galaxy A8 still looks like a premium handset.
Pushing pixels to the Infinity Display is a octa-core chipset in the ARM’s big.LITTLE layout, with two cores running at 2.2GHz for demanding tasks and six cores with clockspeeds of 1.6GHz to handle less straining workloads and help maintain battery life.
On the Galaxy A8 the chipset is matched with 4GB of RAM, while the Galaxy A8+ gets 6GB. The differences extend to the battery size as well with the former having a 3,000mAh power pack and the latter sporting a 3,500mAh battery.
On board storage measures in at 32GB or 64GB for each phone; Samsung hasn’t mentioned that there’ll be a microSD slot for expanding this capacity.
Slightly disappointing is that the Galaxy A8 will come running Android 7.1.1 Nougat rather than Android 8.1 Oreo, meaning users will have to wait for Samsung to roll out the latest version of Android to their handsets.
A host of other features are on offer to compromise for this, including fast charging via USB Type-C, IP68 water and dust resistance, and a whole host of sensors such as a fingerprint scanner, barometer and proximity sensor to enable all manner of tracking and biometric features.
One of the standout specs of the Galaxy A8 looks to be its camera setup.
The rear camera has a 16MP lens with an f1.7 aperture; the Galaxy S8 has arguably one of the best cameras on a smartphone and the Galaxy A8’s specs look comparable. There’s no optical image stabilisation on offer, but Samsung promises its digital stabilisation will help the Galaxy A8 snap decent low light photos.
The front camera has a dual lens setup with one 16MP lens and an 8MP lens. Users can switch between each lens to “take the type of selfie you want” or used in tandem to get bokeh blurred background in portrait images. There’s also support for stickers, filters and a beauty mode, which should please demanding selfie snappers.
There’s no word on pricing or exact release date for the Galaxy A8 and A8+ but the phones is set to launch at some point in January in black, orchid grey, gold and blue colour options.
No doubt there’ll be more to see from the Galaxy A8 at CES 2018.
Related: Best Android phones of 2017
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
