Gadgetory

what's going on guys long hair from Android authority and Samsung just released another device into their a series lineup that's bigger more powerful and thinner but is it worth the buy this is the samsung galaxy a8 so this year Samsung finally decided to completely ditch the use of plastic going all-in with more premium materials and a new design for their smartphones and the galaxy a8 continues that trend just like previous Samsung a series devices the a8 utilizes a metal unibody design and continues Samsung's move away from practical features like removable batteries in favor of a better build quality Shefford edges go around the entire metal frame and the body has been mostly rounded off along the corners and back with the exception of the sides featuring some very prominent angles at only five point nine millimeters thick this is Samsung's thinnest smartphone today and for a phone made entirely of metal it manages to stay pretty light at 151 grams the a8 also carries some very thin side bezels which helps make it more manageable in one hand in terms of width but it's still a rather tall phone the metal build and super thin profile of the a8 is an awesome combination but despite how great it feels in the hand it can still be pretty unwieldy at times especially with such a large screen and the smooth metal back is quite slippery which makes the phone feel even less secure during one-handed operation the buttons and ports are in identical locations to other galaxy a devices with the power button comfortably placed on the right micro USB and 3.5 millimeter headphone jack on the bottom a single speaker mounted on the rear next to the camera and volume buttons on the left but they're choked up extremely high on the chassis making them very uncomfortable and awkward to reach also on the left are dual SIM card slots one of which doubles as a micro SD card slot for extra storage and of course a Samsung device would not be complete without the typical home button and capacitive keys on the front the screen on the AAA is a Super AMOLED panel that measures in at 5.7 inches and the large size makes it great for movies games web browsing and pretty much anything else you typically want to do on a phone it's got all the characteristics that you would expect from a Samsung made AMOLED screen like great viewing angle fools high brightness good outdoor visibility and vibrant saturated colors that makes the elements pop off the screen it's a 1080p panel which falls short of the quad HD standard in today's current crop of flagships but the AAA isn't a flagship and most people will find 1080p to be more than enough for a screen on a phone there's still plenty of sharpness and resolution to be had for a very enjoyable experience when reading text and various other content driving the everyday performance is the Qualcomm made Snapdragon 615 a pretty common processor in the mid-range smartphone market there's 2 gigs of ram on board and general everyday performance was pretty good and ran smoothly whether I was multitasking browsing the web or playing graphically intensive games it does suffer from some home screen stutters every now and then especially when scrolling in and out of Flipboard but this was also a problem on the Galaxy s6 and Samsung hasn't done much to alleviate that problem on the a8 otherwise the a8 handles itself well and in the grand scheme of things the performance is on par with other smartphones that are similarly Specht hardware wise the usual connectivity options like Wi-Fi Bluetooth NFC and LTE cat6 are all available but it does not support 4G bands in the u.s. 3G data speeds however work just fine on t-mobile and AT&T the am in either 16 or 32 gigs of storage with the option to expand up to an additional 128 gigs to store all of your media samsung also brought the fingerprint sensor of the s6 over to the a8 and it seems to work just as well as it does on the s6 unlocking the phone relatively quickly the setup process is identical utilizing a series of repeated presses until it completely captures your fingerprint and you can store up to a maximum of four fingerprints at one time speaker quality from the rear mounted speaker isn't the best it doesn't get very loud so it can be very tough to hear in noisy environments and being mounted on the rear certainly doesn't make it any better it's also somewhat tinny and hollow sounding so the media experience is definitely lacking at least when it comes to great sounding audio despite how thin the a8 is Samsung was able to pack a pretty large 3050 milliamp hour battery inside and battery life has been really good having that 1080p Super AMOLED screen definitely makes a difference here the phone also idles extremely well losing only between 2 to 3% overnight so even with heavy usage of a lot of gaming and YouTube watching I was still able to squeeze out 4 hours of screen on time with over a day's worth of standby time simply because of how well the phone idles now on a more normal day where I mostly stuck to social media and web browsing screen on time reached upwards of almost 6 hours so whether you're a heavy user or a light user you really shouldn't have any problems with getting through a full day on this device the camera on the rear is a 16 megapixel sensor just like the s6 but unlike the s6 the AAA utilizes ISO cell technology instead of a Sony sensor which means no optical image stabilization but it does carry an aperture of f1 the front camera is a 5 megapixel wide-angle lens that's actually capable of taking some pretty decent selfies but the default beauty setting is a little aggressive so you'll want to tone it down if you prefer a more natural looking image the camera interface is mostly the same as what was introduced on the s6 it's a much cleaner more simplified UI with only a few shooting modes like panorama continuous shot night and a pro mode for full manual controls coming pre-loaded but if you were a fan of Samsung's many other modes you do have the option to download them all individually the main difference is the absence of HDR auto and the HDR toggle is buried within the rest of the shooting modes making the experience of switching back and forth between HDR and auto mode a little bit clunky and slow what isn't clunky and slow is the shutter speed it's nice and quick making it really easy to snap photos and the resulting images are quite good they're very sharp with plenty of detail especially in above-average lighting conditions and there's still a good amount of clarity even when zoomed in the images are colorful and saturated as you would expect from a Samsung camera making for some very crisp and vibrant images dynamic range is already pretty good as is but HDR should you ever need it does a great job at introducing some extra detail and color without appearing overexposed or unnatural even without oh yes the camera does really well in low light and the F 1.9 aperture obviously makes a huge difference here images still exhibit amount of color and sharpness and there's not a whole lot of noise reduction going on which really helps maintain a respectable level of detail for the software the AAA is running the typical TouchWiz interface on top of android 5.1.1 lollipop this is the much leaner more revamped version of TouchWiz that we originally saw on the s6 so there's a lot less Samsung bloatware and unnecessary features but because this particular review unit comes from SK Telecom a carrier in Korea there's quite a bit of SK Telecom apps pre-installed most of which will probably be of no use to anyone using this device elsewhere Samsung's more popular and arguably more useful features like multi window for split screen multitasking and the smart gestures like palm swipe to capture a screenshot or flipping the phone over to mute a phone call or alarm are all available on the a8 the new themes engine that was first introduced on the s6 is also included on the AAA to help you easily customize and change the overall look of the UI if you're not a fan of the blue and green TouchWiz color scheme which I don't think very many people are the theme store is constantly growing and it's much more robust now than it was during its initial inception and with so many different styles you should be able to find at least a few that would suit your taste the Galaxy AAA is currently available in select markets like China India and Korea and if the release of previous a-series devices is any indication it is highly unlikely that we'll see it coming to the States the cost to import one through sites like eBay will run you upwards of $800 and at that point you're obviously better off buying a flagship like the s6 or the LG g4 or a device like the idol 3 which offers a very comparable experience for a fraction of the cost overall the AAA is a solid mid-range device that gets a lot of things right like the build quality camera and battery life but the price certainly puts the AAA in no-man's land here in 2015 there's plenty of great mid-range devices that are hitting the sub $300 price point and with flagships like the Moto X style and oneplus 2 on the horizon the AAA isn't exactly a bargain by no means do I think anyone would regret their purchase of the a8 but when looking at the current smartphone landscape the AAA is certainly one tough pill to swallow as always guys thank you so much for watching this video if you did joy please give it a thumbs up down below we definitely appreciate it and also subscribe to the channel which is also down below if you haven't already and if you want to see more here from us at andrew authority make sure to check out the links over here on the side and feel free to follow me on any of my social media links you'll see those around this area right here and don't forget to check out the website as well and Jordan 30.com because we are your source for all things Android