Samsung Galaxy A8 review: The A lister

Samsung is feeling the heat from Chinese smartphone vendors launching feature-rich smartphones at competitive prices. The Korean giant, after introducing J and E series, has now launched another smartphone in its A series, the Galaxy A8 .

Galaxy A series smartphones are focused towards offering flagship-like performance at a not-so-expensive price. And Galaxy A8 is the sleekest smartphone (it is 5.9mm thin) from the Samsung stable. The phone has a metal frame that gives it a premium feel. It has an excellent 5.7-inch full-HD AMOLED display that offers bright colour reproduction. Overall, the Samsung A8 looks good even with the typical Samsung design language. Samsung has added a fingerprint scanner to the home button below the display. It weights 151 grams, which means it is not too heavy to hold.
 
Performance: It is powered by the company's Exynos 5430 processor and is paired with 2GB of RAM. The performance of this smartphone is smooth but there was some lag while launching apps. It runs on the Android Lollipop operating system and has got the Samsung TouchWiz UI onboard. The UI looks neat but you can get rid of it using a third-party launcher. Web browsing and video playing went smoothly but it heated up after a few minutes of continuous use. The sound output was loud and watching videos a great experience. It has got 32GB internal storage and supports expandable memory of up to 128GB.

Camera: Samsung has added a 16MP camera but it isn't on a par with what Galaxy S6 or even Galaxy Note 4 offered. The camera app has four key modes, including HDR, Pro, Auto and night. The images were sharp, offering great colour reproduction. The Pro mode is a good mode for those who like to play around with camera settings. It isn't as good in low-light conditions but still offers much better results in comparison to other smartphones. There is a 5MP front facing camera too that can be used for capturing selfies.

Battery: The 3050mAh battery is a plus. It lasted over a day on an average while we used all main features such as push email client, Facebeook, Twitter, calling, browsing and camera.

Bag it or Junk it:  A good mid-high range smartphone from Samsung worth Rs 30,948.
Price: Rs 30,948
Plus: Design, Performance
Minus: TouchWiz