Over the last couple of years the Samsung A Series has become a hard-to-beat alternative to the flagship S series, thanks to the phones' excellent design and features. This new Samsung Galaxy A8 continues that trend with a stylish, feature-packed smartphone. And for a handset that's at a significantly lower price point than a flagship, many would be hard pressed to tell the difference.
A dual focus on fun
The A8 is the first in Samsung's A series to come with dual front-facing cameras, with 16- and 8MP sensors. The new Live Focus mode on the Dual Front Camera allows you to switch between the cameras to change the background, adding a 'bokeh effect' so you and your friends really stand out against a blurred background, or leaving the background crisp to show the world the awesome location you're standing in.
You can also customise your pictures with a variety of stickers and filters, as well as decorate them using facial recognition technology. Enabling Beauty effect before taking the photo gives you even better selfies and pictures, and the new Food mode is perfect for making your meal look extra yummy on Insta. Shaky video footage will be a thing of the past with video digital image stabilisation (VDis) technology, and with an added hyperlapse feature, you can now create time-lapse videos, letting you record, tell and share even longer stories.
Seen on screen
The Galaxy A8 features a 5.6-inch Super AMOLED display that looks great with its lush colours and deep blacks, making it ideal for long gaming or streaming sessions. Samsung refers to this as their 'Infinity Display', thanks to the taller and more narrow design with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio and edge-to-edge, almost bezel-less display. (The bezel is the 'frame' that surrounds the screen on a phone, and they've been getting thinner and thinner recently.) The phone comes loaded with the latest version of Android Nougat and will be fully upgradable to Android Oreo, which should start rolling out to Samsung smartphones soon.
The Galaxy A8 has 32GB onboard memory, and supports microSD cards so you can expand your storage capacity by as much as 256GB. It's the first in the A series to support Samsung’s Gear VR.
| Spec | Samsung Galaxy A8 |
|---|---|
| Screen size | 5.6" |
| Screen resolution | 1080x2220 pixels |
| Weight | 172g |
| OS | Android 7.1.1 Nougat |
| Memory | 32GB internal, 4GB RAM |
| microSD slot | Yes - up to 256GB |
| Camera: Main | 16MP |
| Camera: Front | Dual: 16MP + 8MP |
| Battery | 3000mAh |
| Colours | Black and Orchid Grey |
Works when wet
The Galaxy A8 has an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, meaning neither splashes nor rain will slow you down. And while you wouldn't want to take it with for an hour-long swim, you could happily drop it in a bath by accident and not worry about it turning into an expensive paperweight.
Get it now
Purchase the Samsung Galaxy A8 online.
