The Samsung Galaxy Alpha has gotten some major exposure this week, and it’s not even Wednesday yet. But today we got some news of the Galaxy S5 LTE-A too, but that come slater, because it’s for Europe.
The Galaxy Alpha is the first metal-bodied smartphone from South Korean Samsung’s ranks in the company’s long line of popular polycarbonate phones. The Alpha has been leaked for over a month, and on Sunday we saw it finally get some premium spotlight time in Russia at a yachting event, whose proof of existence quickly disappeared from the Internet. For a while, many of us hoped and were even sure of the high-specced nature of the Alpha, especially given its name, but Sunday and today’s news shattered those and solidified the device’s more humble, mid-range ranking among Samsung’s ranks.
The device got a full set of leaked AnTuTu Benchmark test screenshots sent in to SamMobile, famous for their spot-on Samsung leaks, and we’ve got those down in a gallery below for your perusing pleasure. The device’s results back up Sunday’s leak from both Russia and Brazil, showing off the device’s modest specifications by today’s ridiculous standards.
The Samsung Galaxy Alpha will, and it’s essentially certain by now, have a 720p (1280 by 720 pixel) super AMOLED display, sized at 4.8 inches running in a metal frame and chassis, with a 12-and-2.1 back-front camera setup with 1080p recording capabilities (since Samsung’s Exynos chipsets cannot currently handle recording or playing 4K UHD video footage) as well as a pleasantly peppy processor arrangement. The Alpha reported that it has inside of its metal body a Samsung Exynos 5 series octa-core processor (the 5430 if you were curious), with two quad-cores paired up, but this time the chip comes with the capability to use all four of its A15 and all four of its A7 cores at the same time (called heterogeneous multi-processing) to process at a 1.3 Ghz clock speed, according to AnTuTu’s results (see the sixth image below to see that for yourself, if you want).
The device is interesting in that it comes with the regular 2 GB of RAM to back the processor, as well as in its pleasant-to-see 32 GB of internal storage, but unlike every Samsung device, except their partnering with Google for the Nexus S, S 4G, and Galaxy Nexus, the Alpha has no Micro SD card slot for expansion. Major shock there, so cherish those 32 GB of storage. The device also will reportedly not be IP certified, and therefore lacks the water and dust resisting capabilities of the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy S5 Active, whose dimpled back it shares, along with the Active’s corner design (go check out our coverage on the design for the look at those corners to compare for yourself). Now let’s get to the part I teased you with at the beginning, the Galaxy S5 LTE-A for Europe.
Not a typo, not a ‘ooh, you fell for it’ sort of leak. This information also comes from SamMobile, also in a set of AnTuTu and CPU-Z screenshots. The screenshots show us that there is a Galaxy S5 variant, the SM-G901F (close to the international SM-G900 of the Galaxy S5 housing an octa-core and no 4K recording, launched everywhere except the United States). The phone is interesting though. Based on the model number, and what the results show, the Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE-A model bound for Europe is almost identical, specifically with the 1080p (rather than the 2560 by 1440 pixel, 2K) display, with the same dimensions and sensors and cameras as the G900.
The difference is the inclusion of an Intel category-6 LTE modem, and the choice in processor. The Galaxy S5, G900, was launched with a respectable Exynos 5422 octa-core (four at 1.3 and four at 1.9 Ghz) processor with 2 GB of RAM to help out the show. But the G901F gets an entirely different (but identical to the Galaxy Alpha) processor, the Exynos 5430, with the multi-processing capability also present (check the sixth image for that, in the second set). That is a surprise and a half to me, and probably you too. LTE-A coming to Europe. There are a few things we don’t know, and that’s when the devices will officially be announced or launched, as well as what they’ll cost. But we do know they exist and will be in our sights for a while.
For the Galaxy Alpha:
For the Galaxy S5 Broadband LTE-A:
