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Samsung likely wanted to save the surprise on the Samsung Galaxy Alpha details for themselves, but MobileFun seems to have, well, spoiled the fun. Teehee. The company accidentally published a product page for the phone (cached page here) giving us the rundown on all the relevant details we care about. So what have we learned?
Well, it has pretty good internals. Great internals, actually. Aside from the display — a 4.7-inch 720p affair — the Samsung Galaxy Alpha can go toe to toe with any smartphone out there. Here are the highlights if you’re interested:
- Display: 4.7″ Super AMOLED with 1280 x 720 pixels (320 ppi pixel density)
- Memory: 32GB
- OS: Android 4.4.2 (KitKat)
- Processor: Octa-core Exynos
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, EDR, LE, Micro USB, GPS
- Sensor: Fingerprint Scanner
- Camera: 12MP with superfast autofocus, LED flash, video and secondary 2.1MP camera
That’s about all we get as the product page didn’t include any photos of the thing. Recent leaks have confirmed the device’s metal build, though, so there’s no mystery as to how it looks. And we’re sure Samsung won’t be trekking away from their usual TouchWiz UX on top of KitKat configuration. Anything else we’ll want to know will have to come from an official announcement or another timely intern mistake. Either way, stay tuned.
What a let down. They’re not going to compete with the iCrap with that.
Of couse they won’t, actually I think Samsung makes far worse phones than Apple..
I’m not sure that’s even “opinion,” as you can objectively compare the two and see that Apple wins on every category. I’d be curious to hear any area where a Galaxy phone objectively beats the iPhone.
The only thing I love about the GS5 is the screen and how true the blacks are contrasted.
What specs wouldn’t compete? If the only let down here is the resolution, the iPhone 6 is expected to have a 960p display which isn’t a noticable difference, still not full HD and nowhere near LG G3 territory.
Actually who cares if you can’t spot the difference from a distance of your hand? Believe me, Apple knows what they’re doing… with lesser resolution, you’ll get much higher and smoother graphic perfomance and that is crucial for the satiety of eyes.
…and better battery life which is probably the #1 issue all smartphone consumers care about.
The higher res (i.e. 1080p) phones are almost indistinguishable from the iPhone 5s screen anyway, so it’s just a marketing gimmick. When you look at the detailed scientific reviews of smartphone screens, iPhones almost always come out way above the pack in terms of color accuracy, brightness etc.
Android 4.4.2? Samsung that slow?
iPhone 6 KILLLLER!!! NOT! lol
iPhone 6 is dead before it arrives as was every iteration minus the original iPhone, specs are always behind flagship android and even windows phone.
except that their phones perform extremely well, displays look good, and they outsell rival flagships. Love them or hate them, but they are far from dead on arrival.
The specs may be behind Android flagships, but the software is built to get the best performance out of subpar specs. Look I hate iPhones, but their build quality is amazing, and for what they have in them, they do run pretty well. I’m sitting over here with a G3, and I’ll bet there are still some things iPhones can do faster than it.
Yeah there are idiots born everyday.
Uh, no. iPhone’s do not perform extremely well, especially when compared to Android flagship phones. They do lag, especially as iOS has grown and gained more features, the iPhone and iPad has struggled to remain as smooth as it used to be.
The battery life on the iPhone has never been great, as it barely beats out feature phones in real world battery usage, not the flaky video looping tests that some tech sites use to provide battery life results.
I agree with you on the battery, but even two generations old iPhones run smoother than most Touchlag phones.
Now you’re just openly lying. Way to go.
Sure they can get laggy after they update. Can’t deny that. However, a fresh iphone performs excellently. Even my girlfriend’s iphone 5 performs better than most 2012 flagships i have touched (my brother’s Evo LTE, my mom’s GS3, and my Nexus 4).
Yeah android big dogs have better battery life that’s for sure. But i was simply saying, screen quality and UI performance is just as good as any other high end android device.
LOL. Yeah, DOA. I’m sure Apple is TERRIFIED right now.
You still think specs drive device sales? That comment alone showed us all how little you understand the smartphone market.
Yeah I know it just as much as you know how to read! Apple always has outdated specs in their devices hence the SPECS are dead, I never said the phone was DOA just that the specs are always outdated but take it as you want.
“iPhone 6 is dead”
“I never said the phone was DOA”
Seriously?
Read the rest of the comment not just that! Seriously?
Unless you meant Fire Phone…
Samsung is competitive with Apple in some ways tech-wise, but for them to not include the latest version of kit kat or even Android L on the phone is kind of inexcusable in my opinion… and the screen is too small now for me! And I need to do something about their build quality.
Android L is not ready yet.
Been working awesome for me in almost everyway , on my rooted N5 , it’s been my Daily Driver for 3 weeks now ,love the teal color aspects……..
Think about what you said, then edit it please.
Isn’t it a little bit too early in the day for you to already be drunk?
“They” need to do something about their build quality… not me! Lol
This is what you get when you start chasing it rather than leading it.
4.7″ screen! :o finally a normal smartphone again, what about RAM? if it’s 2GB sounds great… the only problem is that is Samsung
Yeah, the tech giant that has over 70 years of history.
Yhea, making those plastic cheap phones (and selling it expensive) with the worst layer of android ever made called Touchwiz.
Congrats. You attracted lot of haters with a false statement (at least with part of it). Those plastic cheap phones (at least GS5) cost $256 to produce (without taking in account the freebies which add aditional cost to a single unit) while the premium iphone 5S costs $207, hence your argument (of being cheap regarding fincancial point of view) is totally invalid. I agree with touchwiz (mostly regarding its inconsistency in UI design such as colour palette which makes it look very win98). Yes it is slower than the others, but not very important if you consider a trade off with the features.
Well that’s some very expensive and over priced crappy plastic, I don’t care how much it cost it feels cheap, that’s the point… and please don’t talk me about that icrap, look where you are phandroid.com, who cares about that? go to another place mentioning that.
“but not very important if you consider a trade off with the features”… what the heck? that “trade off” is useless if your software is buggy, software is the first thing that makes your hardware useful or not, why on heart would I want a quad core phone if ti lags and freeze!?
I don’t think you have the right to tell me where to comment. You can always flag my comments if you think they are inappropriate for this site. This last comment is pure hatred and nothing more. I used iphone 5s as a reference for being “premium” (and not in a positive way). Sorry but I can’t deal with half-baked comments with excessive hate.
Don’t get melancholy because I didn’t accept you ideology with the icrap being “premium”, those are overpriced phones, not premium… besides that all what I said is a fact, but it’s OK, if you can’t take it, leave it ;)
70 years of ripping other company’s ideas off. Seriously, Samsung has ALWAYS been the ultimate KIRF manufacturer. Go do a little research for yourself and you’ll see what I mean.
The few things that are of their own design are absolute crap that is widely panned by both users and reviewers, like touchwiz and the physical design of every device they make. The only thing they get right is the internals, which these days doesn’t mean a thing. every phone at that price level is a beast.
There’s a reason their business is crumbling right now.
All the big names (not just in tech) are at certain points KIRF manufacturers. Don’t point the finger to Samsung only. The second paragraph is your opinion and just that. If end users don’t like Touchwiz they have the option to skip it by choosing another provider.
You know, some companies will occasionally lift a small yet interesting feature from a competitor. It happens. But the evidence shows that Samsung’s business model is based on this kind of theft, and not just on the small stuff. Go read their history rather than debating it on some forum – facts are facts.
Also, it’s not “just my opinion” that touchwiz and the physical design of their devices tend to get widely panned by users and critics alike. Go look at the reviews. Many (if not most) cite things like terrible UI, bad material choices, goofy useless features and, even worse, “features” that don’t even work as advertised like the heart rate monitor, fingerprint etc.
By the way, the great irony here is that I have a GS4 in my pocket right this moment. But lord I can’t wait to get into something different and never buy another Samsung device again.
Irony? More like hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy? How so? Am I somehow obligated to defend and promote the devices I own? Only a child thinks like that.
I bought this device expecting something on par with the HTC One or iPhone, considering it costs the same amount. After the few months of use it became apparent that those were unfair expectations – from a physical design and UI point of view, it’s more on par with the budget level phones. Samsung just happens to have a huge marketing budget that they leverage to make people think otherwise.
The one (and possibly only) bright spot on this phone is the camera, but heaven help you if your subject is moving or there is less-than-perfect lighting.
Hypocrisy as you own a mobile device from a company that you seem to have a vendetta against. If you saw they were so wrong in their ways, why line their pockets? So that makes your argument of bashing a company as a whole lose much of its credibility, if not all.
In terms of the Galaxy line, I agree, bad software, gimmicky hardware, over saturation of the market, etc.
Obviously I didn’t know these things about either the device OR the company before I bought it. Most of my knowledge about their practices came to light in the recent vanity Faire article, and when I went to do my own research I was shocked.
The build won’t change a thing. They need to rebuild their horrible skin. It’ll function the same way regardless of what the phone is made out of. Metal equals super powers or something? It’s no different then the other million variants they pushed out. They’re starting to remind me of the senseless people who buy the same shoe over and over because it’s in a different color. Same case here. Ugly skin that’s cluttered, unorganized, still looks like gingerbread, lags, way to many features and stuff put all in your face with annoying notifications, and more. There are a couple of neat features I like on there, but I can definitely live without. The most interactive part of the phone is the UI.
This is a Galaxy S3 with updated internals…As much as I hate TW..this may be cool option since love my GS3..my eyes are on Sony Z3 compact tho…or Nexus 5 2014…
It’s an updated s2 if anything
But the s2 had a 4.3 inch 480×800 AMOLED display…The S3 had a 4.8 720p SAMOLED display..The S2 topped out at 16GB where as the S3 topped out at 32GB..12MP camera compared to the S3s 8MP…Same octacore processor as the international GS3..we do t even know if its clocked higher…you are looking at the aesthetics of the device….but this hardware is more comparable to the S3 than the S2…just saying…
Exactly. I am looking at the aesthetics, and they are of an s2. And, like I said, the internals are updated. Making it much more like a modern day s2 than an s3.
They have got to do something about touch wiz and get away from their cookie cutter smartphone designs. This design is just bad ,it looks like an iphone got with a galaxy s2 and had a ugly ass baby.
I think 720 is adequate for a 4.7 inch phone. I think their main reasoning behind it is probably to conserve battery life.
And I’m cool with that.
4.7 and 720 should be the standard for smartphones, every other bigger than that should be considered as a phablet to preserve the 4.7″ phones development.
Phones are built mostly based on what consumers want. That’s exactly why the iPhone 6 will come in two sizes and both are significantly larger than last year’s model. Apple has been stuck on the small screen phones for a long time, but it was costing them market share, so they caved and are going to introduce a “Hummer phone” that Steve Jobs once claimed no one would buy. I see no reason the term “phablet” needs to exist, especially when the line is so blurry. If you like a phone with a smaller screen, buy one with a smaller screen. For me personally, if it fits in my pocket and can make phone calls, then it’s a phone. I currently have a Droid Maxx and it has a 5 inch screen and it doesn’t feel at all “tablety” to me. I do think it’s somewhat crappy that lately most phones that have smaller screens also have lesser specs.
720p is fine for a 4′ iPhone. It is not good enough for an M8 sized screen.
M8 is 5 inches while this one is 4.7 inches. So I assume you’re ok with the 720p resolution in this case?
Supa fast!
That was my biggest takeaway from this.
One glaring omission to me is the lack of any mention of a microSD card slot. Besides a removable battery, that has always been Samsung’s thing. I wonder if it’s true and if it is, how many sales are they going to leave on the table because of it?
how can we compete with th iphone? Make a phone that looks exactly like it!…samsung mobile ideology
How does it look exactly like an iPhone? Looks exactly like the Galaxy S2 to me.
which looked like an iphone