Introduction
A couple years ago, we actually reviewed the original Samsung Galaxy A8. It was a nice phone with premium build material but was also priced similarly to certain flagship smartphones during that time. Just before 2017 ends, Samsung announced the Galaxy A8 (2018) and A8+ (2018). The Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018) is more like the successor to the Galaxy A5 (2017), while the Galaxy A8+ is more like the successor to the Galaxy A7 (2017). Thankfully, we managed to get the Galaxy A8 (2018) before the company launches the device. Without further ado, here’s the full review!
Same Design Language
Like last year’s Galaxy A series, the Galaxy A8 (2018) has the same design language — glass front and glass back. The biggest difference is the front of the phone now occupied by the 5.6-inch Infinity Display, which means there’s no space for the front-mounted fingerprint sensor.
Having the glass back design means the phone is slippery and prone to fingerprints. The good news here, Samsung has finally placed the fingerprint sensor in the right position, just below the camera lens!
Similar to last year’s Galaxy A series, the phone has three slots (two for SIM and one for MicroSD). The side houses the SIM 1 slot, while the top one has the second SIM slot as well as MicroSD card slot.
The bottom of the phone still houses a USB Type-C port, microphone, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The speaker is still on the right side of the phone, above the power button. Overall, Samsung didn’t really make a huge change in terms of design, more like polishing last year’s design and adding the trend in. Not to forget the phone is also IP68 water and dust resistance.
5.6″ Infinity Display
The Galaxy A8 (2018) sports a 5.6-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED Infinity Display, which has the aspect ratio of 18.5:9. As usual, it remains one of the top-class displays thanks to the deep blacks and eye-pleasing colors. Nothing much to say to be honest, as the verdict is same!
Exynos 7885 SoC
Powering the Galaxy A8 (2018) is the 10nm 14nm Exynos 7885 processor with 4GB RAM and 32GB expandable storage. Performance won’t be as good as the Galaxy Note8 or Galaxy S8 as it is a mid-range processor, but it should be able to get the job done easily with some minor stutters or hiccups here and there.
We’ve already mentioned that the fingerprint sensor is now finally in the right position, and it works well too! Besides fingerprint sensor, you can also unlock the phone using the face unlock feature. It’s not as safe as the iris scanner and won’t work under the low-light condition as it uses the front camera to recognize your face. However, my experience was great as it works pretty fast, but the phone can be unlocked even without looking at the screen, just like the OPPO F5. To be safer, you can actually turn off the “Faster Recognition” option in Settings to increase security and make it harder to unlock using an image or video.
Same Software Experience
The Galaxy A8 (2018) runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat with Samsung UX. The software experience is pretty much similar to the Galaxy S8, which means you’ll get Bixby Home on the left page of the home screen. You can turn it off, though. In case you didn’t know, Bixby now also supports Mandarin Chinese.
The phone now also has on-screen Android buttons, similar to the Galaxy S8/Note8. You can swap the Back and Recents buttons and even customize the background color of the navigation bar. Unlike its flagship brothers, you can’t hard press the home button to wake up the screen in Always On Display mode or back to home screen when using an app in full-screen mode.
Other features like Always On Display, Split Screen View, Game Tools, and Samsung Pay are still available for the phone. In summary, the Galaxy A8 (2018) has most of the features found on its flagship brothers.
Dual Front Camera
For the first time, the Galaxy A8 (2018) comes with a dual-front camera setup — 16MP f/1.9 + 8MP f/1.9. Its dual front camera comes with Live Focus feature, which lets you take a selfie with nice background blur effect. As for the rear camera, it packs a 16MP f/1.7 shooter with PDAF tech, which has a slower focusing speed compared to Dual Pixel.
Image quality generally is pretty good, its Live Focus feature on the front camera works impressively, especially the edge detection. Additionally, you can also adjust the background blurriness before or after you take the shot. Of course, if you wish to take a selfie with a clearer background, you can always switch to the secondary selfie camera. The rear camera takes great photos as well, but sometimes getting the closer subject to focus is quite tricky.
3,000mAh Battery
Juicing up the Galaxy A8 (2018) is a 3,000mAh battery, same as the Galaxy S8. In terms of battery life, it’ll last through a day for moderate usage, but I found that the Galaxy S8 has a better battery life (in Full HD+ mode).
Based on my test, I was able to get slightly more than 3 hours of screen-on-time. The device also supports fast charging as well, charging it from 15% to 100% took me around an hour and 30 minutes.
Final Words
The Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018) is just like a mini S8 with some compromises here and there. There are many things to love about this phone, from the nice design, Infinity Display, to the impressive dual front camera, this is really a winning mid-ranger. New year, new phone, the Galaxy A8 (2018) is really not a bad choice. Unfortunately, the price of the device remains unknown, we’ll update the pricing once Samsung launched the phone on January 17th.
Update: The Samsung Galaxy A8 is officially priced at RM1,799. Full story here!
Yay
- Beautifully made
- Infinity Display
- Impressive dual front camera
Nay
- Phone is slippery
- Slow camera focusing speed
- Not so good battery life