Samsung Galaxy A8 (2016) officially unveiled: Galaxy S6 hardware inside a familiar body

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Samsung Galaxy A8 (2016) officially unveiled: Galaxy S6 hardware inside a familiar body
After being leaked online in a multitude of spots in the past few months, the Samsung Galaxy A8 (2016) was officially unveiled earlier today in South Korea. As the name suggests, this is an updated version of last year’s Galaxy A8. 

In terms of design, there aren’t too many differences between the Galaxy A8 (2016) and its predecessor: we get the same curves, the same metal build, as well as the slim profile that’s characteristic of Samsung’s Galaxy A series.
 
The display of the phone is a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED panel running at a resolution of 1080 by 1920 pixels. Although this is no QHD panel, the sharpness will suffice for most users. 

Under the hood, the Samsung Galaxy A8 (2016) is based on the same platform as last year’s Samsung Galaxy S6. This means that we get a Samsung Exynos 7420 chipset (with four ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores and four ARM Cortex-A57 CPU cores) paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of integrated storage. Unless you’re looking for extreme performance, this is a setup that offers plenty of processing power even for demanding tasks. 


The Galaxy A8 (2016) also makes use of the same 16MP primary shooter as last year’s Galaxy S6, which is definitely great news for mobile photography enthusiasts. On the front of the handset, an 8MP secondary shooter is there to take care of selfies. 

Other specs include a Samsung Pay-ready fingerprint sensor integrated with the physical home button on the front, Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with the new Grace UX that debuted on the Galaxy Note 7, as well as a 3300mAh battery. 

At the moment, we don’t know when or if the Samsung Galaxy A8 (2016) will make it to other markets besides South Korea, where the handset will launch as an SK Telecom exclusive. On Samsung’s home turf, the handset will become available for pre-order tomorrow, October the 1st, at a price of KRW 649,000. That’s about $580 at the current international conversion rates, and a bit of a high price given that the A8 is highly similar to last year’s Galaxy S6 in terms of internal hardware.

What do you guys think of the Samsung Galaxy A8 (2016)? Is anyone hoping for the handset to be eventually launched in the United States?

source: SK Telecom
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