Before the good variety of Chinese phones flooded the Indian market, Samsung was the undisputed hero of the mid-range segment. And while their flagships have been ruling the roost for many years now, and continue to do so even today, their grip on the mid-range segment has been loose for a while now. But with the new Samsung Galaxy A8(Rs 32, 500), it looks like Samsung is strongly looking at changing that.
The Galaxy A8 has a lot going for it right off the bat – it’s the slimmest smartphone Samsung has ever made, it has a powerful octa-core processor, and the display is just great.
Phablets are not our favourite category of smartphones, but this one seems different right off the bat. The 5.9mm thickness keeps the phone easy to manage and at 150-odd grams, it’ll not feel like a brick in your pocket, as many phablets do. The all-metal body makes it sturdier than its plastic counterparts, and the metallic rim gives the A8 a classy look overall. The speaker is questionably placed right next to the rear camera, which results in muffled sound if you have the phone placed back-down on a surface.
The Home button has a fingerprint sensor, and a pretty impressive one at that. Though there’s a second’s lag before your finger unlocks the phone, the sensor works really well identifying your touch from different angles. So even though I recorded my touch on the device vertically, I could place my finger horizontally and the phone would unlock.
The 5.7 inch display looks impressive and sharp. The colours were bright and visibility was high even under direct sunlight. It has a resolution of 1080p but the 386ppi pixel density makes it look really clear. Overall, it is quite an impressive screen, with no issues like textual ghosting when scrolling at high speeds.
Samsung has really learned that less is more with the Touchwiz UI. The device holds back on shoving any kind of bloatware on you, giving you only the essentials on first boot. The interface is clean, works without any hiccups and sticks quite close to the actual Android experience. If you happened to be a fan of Samsung’s pre-installed apps, worry not, you still have the option to download them from the Samsung store.
For a mid-range phone, the A8 does pack a punch. It performed without a hiccup when multitasking between a number of apps, and gaming performance was great as well, though the device’s temperature does tend to rise quite quickly when doing so. That said, it never got uncomfortably hot, and I could game easily for over an hour at a stretch.
While benchmarking, AnTuTu gave it a score of 50, 071