after months of anticipation (or not?), Samsung has finally make Galaxy Alpha official and boy, are we surprised. it actually ditches plastic frame in favor of, you guessed it, metal frame, matched to curved corners and a tactile soft back cover that still looks suspiciously like the Note 3 and Galaxy S5. according to Sammy, it has taken a fresh design approach, which from the look of it, doesn’t quite look a whole lot of different. we might be wrong. after all, we are just looking at some marketing images. measuring just 6.7mm thick or about 1/16″, the Alpha is powered by Octa Core processor, comprising of a Quad 1.8GHz and a Quad 1.3GHz, supported by 2GB RAM. it has a 4.7-inch HD Super AMOLED display and runs off Samsung-skinned Android 4.4.4 KitKat.
imaging department is covered by a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2.1-megapixel item over at the front, and it also boasts Ultra HD 4K recording (3,840mm x 2,160 pixels, in case you need a little refresher) at 30 fps. it has 32GB worth of internal storage and that’s that. there’s no microSD card slot, so you are basically stranded and have to depend on cloud storage services. other worthy mentions include Samsung’s Ultra Power Saving Mode, Download Booster, LTE Cat 6 radio supporting up to 300/50Mbps download and upload speeds, wireless ac, Bluetooth 4.0 BLE, ANT+ support, NFC, a 1,860 mAh battery, and the usual expanded serving of sensors including accelerometer, gyroscope, geomagnetic, hall, light, proximity, gesture, fingerprint and HR sensors.
Samsung yearns to maintain the “flagship Galaxy” experience with the Alpha, but aside from the metal frame, specs are, well, ‘just cool’. price is telco and region-dependent, so we can’t say how much it will cost. as for availability, September is the month to look out for if you are up for the metal frame Galaxy Alpha. why am i not feeling excited? scroll down for a family photo.
