The Galaxy A series of phones by Samsung have done well here in Australia in the past few years. They are typically a mid-range phone with some decent specs but rarely have the design of their flagships. Next year this is set to change if rumours and leaks of the A8 and A8 Plus are true.
Rumours have begin leaking in the last week or so that strongly suggest the A8 (2018) (and A8 Plus) will feature a 6.0 inch “Infinity Display” along with dual front-facing cameras. Not only that but the much criticised fingerprint sensor location has been moved to below the camera instead of next to it.
Samsung’s “Infinity Display” is an 18:9 aspect ratio (or close to thereof) display with minimal bezels on all sides of the phone. Samsung are yet to bring that to anything other than a flagship but have most likely seen other manufacturers do it (added to the success of the display on the S8 and Note 8) and have decided to trickle that down to the mid range phone. The A8 Plus display is apparently going to be a 2220 x 1080 pixel display.
The dual front cameras is interesting considering the rear camera is a single shooter. You would expect the dual front-facing cameras to be used for portrait mode that is so popular these days — except Samsung are calling is a “Live Portrait Selfie”. The front facing cameras are 16MP and 8MP cameras while the rear camera is a 16MP camera.
According to the leaked manual the buttons will be on-display buttons (soft buttons) due to the bezels being too small to house any capacitive buttons. There is also mention of Bixby and Bixby Vision in the manual. The fingerprint sensor is apparently the same size as in the Galaxy S8 but turned to landscape and positioned below the camera rather than next to it. Finally sanity prevails at Samsung.
Unfortunately the phones will launch with Android 7.1.1 but will support Samsung Pay.
Along with the manual we have also seen a spec sheet for the A8 Plus (2018) leaked that show the phone will be powered by an octa-core Exynos 7885 SoC, 6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage with a expandable microSD slot. The battery is 3500mAh and is non-removable owing to its IP68 water resistance.
Unfortunately the manual and leaked video have been removed but as seen above you can see that next year’s mid-range is basically last year’s flagship. Due to this we have no doubt that the 2018 versions of the A8 and A8 Plus will do very well in Australia should they make it to our shores.
We hope to review one during the year this time so we can pass on our thoughts of it to you.
Still too close to the camera.