February is looking pretty good for South Africa, with the first non-flagship device from Samsung to be graced with an Infinity Display due to become available.
Samsung’s Galaxy A-series phones are meant to be affordable versions of the S-series flagship devices.
Immersive and vibrant, the Galaxy A8 + performs well.
It uses Samsung’s brand new Exynos 7885 SoC with two high speed 2.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A73 cores and six supplementary 1.6 GHz Cortex-A53 cores, with an additional integrated ARM Mali-G71 GPU. There’s 6GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, with Micro SD support of 256 GB. The 3500mAh battery supports fast charging, but not wireless charging, and you could use it the entire day, and still have 15% on your device. Android 7.1.1 can be expected on this device.
The Galaxy A8 + features dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5, NFCm GPS and 4G with VoLTE. There’s a barometer and gyroscope, ambient light sensor and proximity sensor. The Galaxy A8 + didn’t get Bixby as a voice assistant, however it does assist with reminders of upcoming calendar appointments, as well as weather and news panels.
This is one of the first phones by Samsung to feature dual front cameras. Completely sleek, the front of the Galaxy A8+ is only broken up by the earpiece and dual front camera. The back camera is located on the upper middle and smoothly fits into the device without the protrusion consumers are used to, with a single LED flash on the side and the rectangular finger print sensor below it.
Both cameras offer 16 megapixels, sure to satisfy the inner selfie addict! Recording on the front and rear cameras go up to 1080p. (The camera app has stickers that are live and animated with sound. Bixby Vision assists with object and place recognition. There’s even a wide selfie mode !)
The device weighs 191 grams and is 8.3mm. Available in black and gold, both sides of this device are shiny.Galaxy A8 + is weatherproof, and certified IP68 for water and dust resistance. The screen is sAMOLED, with a resolution that is 1080×2220, and can be attributed to the unique 18.5:9 aspect ratio. Brightness isn’t an issue, with a variety of content proving to be clear.
While the placement of the speaker may seem strange, it proves to be effective as regardless of orientation or surface, the sound is loud and of good quality.
The default system keyboard is customisable and supports translation into various languages which could be extremely useful for travelling consumers.
The Dual Messenger apps are available on this device. This would allow you to clone apps, essentially use multiple accounts of the same app, which could prove quite useful for the everyday entrepreneur. With an excellent GPU, large games load quickly and the device actually doesn’t heat up.
With the device due to become available in South Africa in a matter of days, it’s sure to be a crowd pleaser!
