Samsung's metallic Galaxy Alpha briefly goes up for preorder at an iPhone 6-worthy price tag
A certain UK online retailer that has leaked a thing or two prematurely before, posted a preorder page for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Alpha handset, which is widely expected to be an exquisite Android phone with metallic chassis - something that has been off-limits for Samsung so far. Judging from the leaked photos in the last few days, the Galaxy Alpha will pretty much blend in with the current design paradigm of Samsung in terms of shape and texture.
The retailer lists it as having a metallic finish, though, so there's a hint in the right direction for those who are jonesing for something more premium to arrive from Samsung in terms of design. The Galaxy Alpha specs that are cited in the listing, corroborate with what was leaked these few days already - a 4.7" Super AMOLED display with the decent 320ppi pixel density, and an octa-core Exynos processor 5433 processor that allows it to outperform older devices like the Galaxy Note 3. The rest of the specs include a 12 MP rear camera with "super-fast autofocus", 2 MP front-facing one, 2 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of non-expandable internal memory. Android 4.4.4 KitKat and a heart rate sensor should complete the feature list.
The big new additions to Samsung's mobile portfolio that will come with the Galaxy Alpha, seem to be the 6mm thin card-like metallic design, and the fast Exynos processor, which recently scored more than Snapdragon 805 on AnTuTu, and is expected to be present in the Galaxy Note 4 as well. This chipset hasn't been announced yet, but is widely expected to support LTE cat. 6 download speeds of up to 300 Mbits, if your carrier is up to those, of course.
All in all, the Galaxy Alpha is shaping up to be a strong contender with powerful internals, somewhat more premium design than the usual Samsung fare, and display panel that won't take an excessive toll on the battery life, so it might be an enduring athlete in that regard, too. Unfortunately, the preorder price tag for the handset has been pegged at the whopping £549 ($926) without subsidies, so we sincerely hope this is just a random preorder tag, and not Samsung's attempt to counter the iPhone 6 launch with something that has similar screen size, design and thickness, as well as a similar premium price tag. In any case, August 13th isn't far away, and that's the rumored date for the Alpha's announcement, so we should know more pretty soon.
source: Mobilefun.co.uk (cached) via CNET
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