Samsung’s been heavily advertising the Galaxy A8 these days. They believe that the A8 is a winner for them in a premium mid-range smartphone category. But is the phone really worth all that hype at a price tag of Rs 32,500?
Let’s find out.
Watch: Review of Samsung Galaxy A8
Key Highlights: Samsung Galaxy A8
- Display: 5.7-inch Super AMOLED Full HD
- Processor: 1.8 GHz + 1.3 GHz Octa-Core Exynos
- RAM: 2GB
- Rear Camera: 16-megapixel camera with LED flash
- Front Camera: 5-megapixel
- Connectivity: Dual-SIM, 4G LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth, FM Radio
- Battery: 3050 mAh battery
- Price: Rs 32,500/-
What’s Good?
Samsung’s new design philosophy works like a dream for the Galaxy A8. The use of a metal frame, 2.5mm slim bezel design and big display works well on the Samsung Galaxy A8. The build quality is as good as it gets on a premium smartphone from any company.
The 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display is bright, crisp and just the right size to watch videos on a phone.
Samsung has used an in-house Exynos processor on the Galaxy A8 and this processor doesn’t heat up the phone.
The performance is smooth and lag-free, but we would have liked some more RAM on the phone. The competition to the Galaxy A8, the HTC E9+ offers 3GB RAM, so that’s a bit of a let down.
The user interface is fairly easy to operate and access. Samsung’s own bloatware on top of the Android Lollipop OS does not interfere with the functioning much. What we hated was that the company still goes for apps like Flipboard integrated onto the homescreen. That gets a bit annoying at times.
The Galaxy A8’s rear camera is one of the best in the class and always gives you a perfect shot just like its older brother, the Samsung Galaxy S6. The Pro mode gives you a lot of options to play around with and the Auto mode is flawless. The front camera clicks a perfect selfie nearly every time.
What’s Bad?
While Samsung has offered premium features on this mid-budget smartphone, they’re all the useless ones. The fingerprint scanner is even worse than what Samsung offers on the Galaxy S6. It’s tedious to set it up and then it’s just frustrating to make it work.
Suggestion to Samsung: If you cannot get something right, you should just let it be.
Though the phone has a 3050 mAh battery, the AMOLED display and the powerful processor drain it in less than a day with medium to heavy usage.
Sure it has a great display to watch videos, but it also has a pretty bad speaker which gives you off-balance sound and is also not loud enough.
There are phones in the market that offer something similar to the Galaxy A8 and while they’re not as beautiful as this one, they are still at least Rs 10,000 cheaper than the Galaxy A8.
Why Buy It?
Samsung Galaxy A8 is a good smartphone that offers everything you need but paying a premium of Rs 32,500 is a bit much.
It competes well with the HTC One E9+ and even beats it in some areas. It looks great, but the top of the line Galaxy S6 is just Rs 6,000 more.
And what it offers in terms of specs you can get on another smartphone for Rs 10,000 less.
Overall, we felt that this phone came out of Samsung’s stable when the Samsung Galaxy S6 got married to a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and lost its identity in the process.
We say go for the Samsung Galaxy A8 at your own risk.
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