It has been a long time coming, a couple of months ago there were rumors about a new member of Samsung’s Galaxy A series, which stands for mid-range devices with premium designs and build quality. Then, those rumors pointed to a smartphone with a very large screen but a very slim profile, the name of the phone was Galaxy A8, fitting nice with the new naming scheme adopted by the company, as the number means that the screen is larger than any of the rest of the devices integrating the Galaxy A series. More recently, the phone was spotted in brochures and even in real life photos, suggesting that the official announcement wasn’t too far away. Today, the Galaxy A8 is finally official, so all of the rumored specs can now be confirmed.
Samsung claims that this is their slimmest phone yet with a 5.9 mm thickness, although it states that this measurement belongs to the thinnest point of the phone. While keeping it very thin, the company still managed to make a battery with the large capacity of 3,050 mAh inside. The main camera has a 16-megapixel sensor with a f/1.9 aperture and it keeps the very useful quick launch feature by double pressing the Home button like in the Galaxy S6, the front facing camera is a 5-megapixel one and its software enhances selfies. Speaking of the Home button, it includes a fingerprint scanner, being the first device in the Galaxy A series to include such a feature.
The AMOLED display it’s definitely large, measuring 5.7-inches in its diagonal, but the bezels on its sides are very reduced, so the dimensions are 158 x 76.8 mm, it uses Full HD resolution. Powering up the device is an octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor clocked at 1.5 GHz, along with 2 GB RAM. The A8 is available in various storage options including 16 GBs or 32 GBs and the memory can be expanded with a microSD card (up to 128 GB). The phone is available in 3 colors options, white, black and gold and it can be purchased right now in China from Samsung’s website. Unfortunately, so far there is little word on availability in other regions.