Zee Media Bureau/Vibhuti Jaitly
New Delhi: Samsung has often been criticised for the design of its smartphones and for using cheap plastic for its bodies
But the Korean giant's new offering Galaxy Alpha smartphone comes with a bit of refreshing look as it has a metallic frame on the sides of the smartphone. It can be touted as the best looking smartphone by far from Samsung.
While Apple is going opting for bigger screens, Samsung on the other hand, is going for smaller screen, atleast in this case. Let's quickly review the Galaxy Alpha smartphone.
Display & Design
The entire body is predominantly made up of plastic and only the edges of the phone are of aluminium. The chamfered edges look a bit similar to Apple's.
Talking about the display, Galaxy Alpha sports a 4.7 inch Super AMOLED HD display which is crisp and bright. It has struck a balance between size and resolution as the AMOLED panel has 320 pixels in each inch.
Hardware and Software
The smartphone comes pack with Exynos 5 octa-core chipsetrunning alongside 2GB of RAM. The phone offers 32 GB (25 GB user usable) storage space which can't be expanded. Galaxy Alpha runs on Android 4.4.4 KitKat operating system which can be upgraded to Android 5.0 Lollipop at some point before the close of the year.
Camera
Camera is always a plus point for the Samsung phones, especially when it comes to balanced images. The point and shoot experience is solid for the 12MP LED camera. For shooting a selfie, the phones sports a 2.1MP front-facing camera which ensures that the picture retains focus.
It has tonnes of manual options for avid photographers. Many modes for clicking pictures are available such as beauty face, panorama, virtual tour and many more.
The minus point is the pictures clicked in low lights are not that great and are of inferior quality.
Battery
Galaxy Alpha comes with 1,860 mAh battery. Battery isn't the forte of Samsung and hence the battery lasts for about 6-10 hours on a normal usage. For avid smartphone users, consumers should make use of power-saving and ultra-power saving mode for a lasting usage. By turning on power saving mode a single charge can last upto 39 hours, sans the internet browsing.
Conclusion
It is a well-designed smartphone by Samsung with a good camera. It has a few negative points but the design and looks make up for them. Also, if you are looking to buy a smartphone in Rs35,000-40,000 range then this can be a good choice.
