Technology obsession can border on the pornographic. Extreme close-ups capture every detail, gush over every curve. People describe soulless bits of plastic and metal as "attractive" and "stunning." (We draw the line at "sexy.")
For a premium smartphone to make it in this vain consumer world, it
needs to look the part. That's what Samsung's Galaxy Alpha is all about.
Arriving exclusively on AT&T for $200, the same price as the
company's flagship Galaxy S5, the new 4.7-inch Galaxy Alpha doesn't try
to cram all the world's best specs under its hood. It's definitely
high-end, but it's more about building a good-looking phone that easily
fits your hands and pockets. Wrapped in an aluminum frame with chamfered
edges instead of Samsung's traditional plastics, the Alpha is Samsung's
attempt to finally join the "metal means premium" world and hang tough
with the iPhone.
If you ask me, it's the best looking smartphone Samsung has ever made. But it's not enough to make me want to buy one.
Design
Aluminum frame, chamfered edges, a thin chassis, rounded 90-degree
corners with tiny breaks for the antennas. Sound familiar? Many have
charged Samsung with deliberately trying to copy the Apple iPhone's
design, and the Alpha looks more like an iPhone than ever. But
crucially, it looks like an iPhone 5, not the new iPhone 6. Did Samsung
skate to where the puck was instead of where it was going to to be?
But it's hard for me to complain about who plagiarized who when I'm
actually holding the thing. Combining its thin design and re-imagined
trim, this is the most comfortable Samsung smartphone I've ever held.
For one, it's incredibly light. Compared to the iPhone 5, which actually
received
complaints for how light it was,
the Galaxy Alpha is only 3 grams heavier at 4.06 oz, yet it comes with a
larger 4.7-inch screen. It's like Samsung took a rolling pin to the
iPhone 5's chassis. For me, the size is a perfect fit: my thumb's able
to reach all corners of the screen one-handed.
Still, I'm not a fan of the volume rocker's location. In my dominant
right hand, I had to really reach for the button anytime I wanted to
adjust the volume, especially if I was in need of more decibels. If you
use your phone with your left hand, though, your thumb will naturally
fall on the keys.
If you do care about how the Galaxy Alpha stacks up to the new iPhone 6 — which you very much might if you're shopping for a smaller phone — they're both about the same size now! Both have 4.7-inch screens, though the iPhone 6 stretches a bit taller because of the room needed for its circular home button. Both are very thin, though the Galaxy Alpha's a practically imperceptible 0.2mm slimmer. And both have slightly protruding cameras, though I couldn't care less.
At the $200 base price, the Alpha wins out on the storage front with
32GB compared to the iPhone 6's 16GB, but you're stuck with that amount:
though you can buy a higher-capacity iPhone or stick a microSD card
into your Galaxy S5, the Alpha doesn't have a microSD slot. There is
indeed a removable back so you can swap out the 1860mAh battery, though,
and that stippled back cover is less egregious than Samsung's previous
Band-Aid look. Dare I say, it's actually elegant.
Using It
For a week, I used the Samsung Galaxy Alpha as my main smartphone, only
switching to my Nexus 5 for the occasional text. And every time I was
forced to reach for my year-old Google phone, I somehow found it bulky
and awkward even though I've never felt that way before. You know how
after a bit of weight training, running and jumping and lifting suddenly
doesn't seem so hard? This felt like just the opposite.
The ubiquitous reaction from anyone I handed this phone to was one of genuine surprise. "Wow, this is Samsung? It's so light."
Then they'd actually turn it on. Compared to the delightful 1080p (and
up) panels you're probably used to in today's top-tier phones, the Alpha
only has a 1280x720 Super AMOLED display, and it uses PenTile subpixel
technology to boot. That boils down to a screen that's not as sharp
and noticeably more bluish-green than other displays out
there. On the S5 and other Galaxy devices with high pixel counts, it's
not such a big deal, but with only 312 ppi the aquamarine tint is hard
to ignore. This wasn't something I magically discovered when comparing
to an iPhone, either: the very first time I booted it up, my reaction
was an immediate "what… is going on here?"
The Galaxy Alpha runs Android 4.4.4 with its own TouchWiz UI. Much like
the Galaxy S5, it comes with a PeeWee's Playhouse list of features
including a heart rate sensor, fingerprint scanner, and the Samsung's S
Voice digital assistant. All these features work pretty well. Sure,
every once in a while the heart rate sensor wouldn't pick up anything,
and as Google Now gets better and better S Voice feels like redundant
software, but none of it is by any means terrible. Except for the
TouchWiz news reader My Magazine that's annoyingly just a swipe away
from your home screen. I still hate that thing. Luckily, you can turn it
off.
One TouchWiz feature I've always enjoyed is the Multi Window mode which lets you run multiple apps in separate windows simultaneously. I've now realized that I really only like it on the Note 3's giant screen. On the 4.7-inch Alpha, its utility significantly diminishes. My favorite, and maybe only, use case I had for the feature was a pairing of Chrome and Google Maps. But I soon got tired of dealing with the dinky screen size.
At least the Alpha doesn't skimp on horsepower: in the United States,
you'll find the same 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 chip and 2GB of RAM from the
Galaxy S5. Despite TouchWiz being a mess of features and icons and
redundant services, the experience was incredibly fluid. Not once did a I
see a hiccup, stutter or delay.
Camera
When I reviewed the new Moto G, I loved the layout of its camera app.
Everything was tucked out of the way, ready to be summoned at a moment's
notice, but hidden so that you could actually see the photo you're
taking. The Moto G had two softkey buttons to switch to the front facing
lens or record video. That's it. The Galaxy Alpha has
ten, including settings, HDR, selective focus, a "mode" key, a
gallery button, a capture button, and on, and on, and on. It's a
microcosm of what Samsung needs to fix across its entire TouchWiz user
interface.
Once you're actually taking pictures, the Alpha's 12-megapixel shooter performs decently well. It's not quite a Galaxy S5 camera,
but it impressed me with the amount of detail it captured in well-lit
images and how it retained definition even after a healthy amount of
pinch-and-zoom. In low light, though, I ran into noise and blur. Indoors
turned out noisy and low-light shots were pretty dark and blurry
without the Galaxy S5's optical image stabilization to assist. Still, I
captured a couple shots in a shadowy club that I was pretty happy with,
so it's not impossible to use.
Like
The Galaxy Alpha may take design cues from Apple's last-gen handset,
but Samsung refines them here. It's the meeting of design and comfort
that many manufacturers tend to botch one way or another. If this is
what we can expect from Samsung design going forward, I'm excited.
The performance also doesn't disappoint. It's fast and fluid.
An 1860 mAh battery may not sound large enough for a premium
smartphone, but I still got a full day (8am to midnight) on a single
charge. That includes 16 hours of phone calls, listening to music,
checking notifications, taking pictures and video at said shadowy club,
and streaming
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
No Like
The screen is irksome. It's not horrendous: in fact, watching movies
wasn't too bad at all, but the pixel density and color quality just
don't compare to other smartphones you can buy for $200 on contract.
TouchWiz is still cluttered and the problem only gets worse on a
4.7-inch screen. Busy notification windows and tons of Samsung specific
apps with varying usefulness make me long for stock Android.
No expandable storage. 32GB is more than you get with a similarly
priced iPhone 6, but it'd be nice to have a 128GB microSD card riding
shotgun when capturing videos in 4K.
Should You Buy It
If you're OS agnostic? No, buy an iPhone 6. iOS 8 is a much more pleasant experience than TouchWiz.
Do you basically want an iPhone running Android? The Alpha is about as
close as you'll get. That's by no means a knock against Samsung's design
chops. The company took what people loved about the iPhone 5's look,
added some Samsung personality, and came up with a phone that looks
great. But it's not the no-compromise mini flagship smartphone you're
probably looking for.
Do you need more storage? You might consider the upcoming Samsung
Galaxy Note 4, which starts with 32GB and has a microSD slot for 64GB
more. If phablets aren't your thing, even the generously sized 5-inch
HTC One (M8) will give you 64GB of goodness. There's also always the
Galaxy S5 if you don't mind a return to a primarily plastic existence.
The Alpha feels like a precursor of what's coming, the internal concept
before a much more robust "Beta" comes along. Whether that next phone
is simply the Galaxy S6 or another phone altogether doesn't really
matter. The Alpha holds undeniable promise, but it's promise that has
yet to be realized.
Samsung Galaxy Alpha Specs:
- Network: AT&T
- OS: Android 4.4.4 with TouchWiz UI
- CPU: 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801
- Screen: 4.7-inch 1280x72o Super AMOLED (312 PPI)
- RAM: 2GB
- Storage: 32GB (no microSD expansion)
- Camera: 12MP rear / 2.1MP front
- Battery: 1860 mAh Li-Ion
- Dimensions: 5.21 x 2.58 x 0.26 inches
- Weight: 4.06 ounces
- Price: Starts at $200 with a two-year contract
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