It's official the handset is now listed on the Korean manufacturer's China website and we can finally say that the company's thinnest phone to date is a reality and relieve ourselves of the sea of information that has been bombarding the rumor mill.
The Samsung Galaxy A8 has a metal frame with a curvature very similar to that of the Galaxy S6, but the glass on the back has been replaced by aluminum, as is typical for the A-series. The handset has a profile of just 5.9mm and packs a 5.7-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display, yet still manages to keep thinks on the light side weighing in at 151 grams - quite modest for a phablet.
Under the hood, there is a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC, with one cluster of Cortex-A53 cores working at 1.0 GHz and another ticking at 1.5 GHz. RAM is 2GB, onboard storage can be either 16GB or 32GB and there is also a microSD card slot. The memory expansion slot is shared with the second SIM slot so you can't get both dual-SIM and microSD at the same time, though.
In terms of connectivity the Samsung Galaxy offers 4G LTE, dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS with Glonass and Beidou support, as well as NFC.
The camera setup consists of a 16MP main shooter with OIS and a bright f/1.9 aperture.
Another high-end feature present in the Galaxy A8 is a fingerprint reader, just like the flagship models. The unit is powered by a 3,050 mAh battery and Samsung promises 304 hours of standby time. As far as we currently know, color options include white, black and gold.
According to a report out of China the Galaxy A8 prices will start at 3,199 CNY or about $515 for the 16GB version, those who opt for double the internal storage will have to pay 3,499 or $565. If that seems a bit excessive for a mid-range smartphone bear in mind the fact that this is Samsung’s most feature-packed mid-range smartphone ever and also the thinnest handset it has ever produced.
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