Samsung Galaxy Alpha Review: Beautiful, Comfortable, Flawed

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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Nokia’s HERE Maps Beta listed on Samsung App Store, new APK (v1.0-172) leaked

Nokia had announced HERE Maps Beta for Android last month, though exclusive to Samsung devices. Last week, an APK file of the HERE Maps (v1.0-124) was leaked and posted on MediaFire. It was first spotted by El Android Libre and was working fine on other Android smartphones but it later started showing expiration message. Now, a new version of HERE Maps (v1.0-172) has been leaked which no longer displays the expiration message in the pop up. According to AndroidMX, HERE Maps Beta has already been listed on Samsung App Store and looks like the screenshot below was taking using a Galaxy Note 4. You can download the new version of HERE Maps Beta (v1.0-172) from here. Do let us know if it is working fine on your device,

HERE Maps was also announced for Tizen based smartphones and wearable devices. The HERE for Gear app can be installed on Tizen based smartwatches while a specialised version of HERE Maps (Navigator) can be used on Gear S for navigation without a need for a separate smartphone.

Image Credit | Source

Review: Samsung Galaxy Alpha (SM-G850K)

Intro

While other companies have adopted metal frames or even metal unibodies for their smartphones, Samsung has stuck with its not-so-popular polycarbonate bodies. Some say the company has done that for far too long; we’ve always though plastic has its advantages, but the community kept screaming for more premium builds on Samsung’s flagships. Then the rumors cropped up that Samsung was working on a metal-framed device called the Alpha. We managed to get a hold of a few prototype pictures that confirmed Samsung was working on a phone with a premium build, and this week, we received a retail unit of the Galaxy Alpha from our friends over at www.28mobile.com(a Swedish-owned, Hong Kong-based retailer. If you want the Alpha, Galaxy S5 LTE-A or even the Galaxy Note 4, don’t forget to head over to their website.)
We put the Galaxy Alpha through its paces over a week, so let’s see just how premium the smartphone is and whether it lives up to expectations.

Design

Year after year, Samsung has used plastic builds for all their Android smartphones, while other vendors were shifting to more premium materials. Being the first metallic Android phone from Samsung we were expecting a lot from the Galaxy Alpha, and we can tell you that Samsung delivered big time. The Alpha just screams premium with its chamfered aluminum edges that surround the phone. As we have seen with the Galaxy Note 4, we are certain this will be Samsung’s new design language. What strikes us the most is the weight of the phone and how thin it is; that and the overall size makes it very comfortable to hold the phone in hand. It feels sturdy and compact – it’s a perfect mixture of metal and plastic, with the latter ensuring the phone is not slippery at all.

Let’s discuss the entire phone from side to side. At the front, you get a typical Samsung phone – there’s a hardware home button that also houses a fingerprint sensor, and touch buttons for going back and switching apps on each side. The back of the phone has a plastic cover with a very soft-touch feeling to it. It has the same dimpled back as the Galaxy S5, but the dots are closer together, giving it a more sophisticated appearance. There’s a protruding 12-megapixel ISOCELL camera on the back, and on the left of the camera we find the LED flash and heart rate monitor. On the lower part of the back cover, we get the typical Samsung logo.

Coming back to the front, we see the speaker grill at the top, with the usual sensors on its right and a 2.1-megapixel camera on the left. The right side of the phone houses the power button, while the volume rockers are on the left. The top of the phone houses the 3.5 mm headphone jack and a microphone for noise cancellation; there’s another microphone at the bottom, alongside the loudspeaker and a microUSB 2.0 port. The chamfered metal edges are interrupted by little plastic stripes for improving antenna reception – these look cool and only help the Galaxy Alpha in being the most beautiful phone ever designed by Samsung.

Interface

The Galaxy Alpha comes preloaded with Samsung’s TouchWiz UX, which is the same in look and feel as on the Galaxy S5. It’s the same old boring TouchWiz homescreen, with the only thing different being the weather widget which is now transparent. We have a feeling Samsung can’t decide what to do with their OS overlay. They’re slowly shifting but at the same time, losing direction. That isn’t a good thing, as their launcher lacks inspiration and everything is way too cluttered. Speaking of cluttered, the Alpha has some features that most will never use but are still present.

The phone packs a fingerprint scanner, which in our findings is a lot more accurate that the one on the Galaxy S5. The is maybe due to the fact that the phone is much easier to handle. What users need to know is that they should start swiping for the fingerprint sensor from the screen and on to the home button as the sensor is made out of two parts: one under the screen and the other in the home button. So, to get the best results, you will need to swipe down from the dots shown on the screen in a downward manner. We think Samsung could do a much better job explaining this to users, and maybe then the reviews of Samsung’s fingerprint implementation wouldn’t be as bad as they are now.

The so-called Toolbox from the Galaxy S5 is present here as well, which is basically a small sub menu that ensures you can quickly access your favorite apps. It’s a nice addition and barely takes space on the screen because of its small bubble shape, and it can be customized to set your own shortcuts. Then there’s Download Booster, which lets you download large files by downloading through the Wi-Fi and 3G/LTE connection at the same time, though it’s not a feature everyone will use every day. Ultra Power Saving mode is there as well, which will come in quite handy due to the small battery size on the device, but more on that later. Last but not the least, as all recent Samsung devices, the Alpha has My Magazine preloaded, a feature that can’t be turned off (unless you’re rooted.) It slows down TouchWiz a little but as does S Voice, which can be opened through the home button. We would suggest turning it off as otherwise the phone takes some time to go to the homescreen.

For a more detailed description on the “new” TouchWiz, have a look at our Galaxy S5 review.

Performance/ Sound quality

The Galaxy Alpha will come in two versions depending on the region it is released in, one with the Snapdragon 801 CPU and the other with Samsung’s Exynos 5430. We received the latter variant, which features four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.8GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores clocked at 1.3GHz in big.LITTLE HMP (heterogeneous multiprocessing) configuration.

The HMP configuration means that all eight cores can word at once and independently from each other, unlike the Galaxy S4’s Exynos 5410 CPU where the cores worked in a way that you could only use the A15 or A7 cores at any given time. The GPU backing the CPU is the ARM Mali T628, and there’s 2GB of RAM on-board.

The Galaxy Alpha is running the latest build of Android, namely 4.4.4 KitKat, and the overall performance of the phone is quite good. It’s speedy and flies through menus with ease; we did not notice any lag and performance is on par with current flagships. Two updates that improved performance and stability helped, and the 720p resolution of the display also added to the fast performance, as the processor and GPU didn’t have to push as many pixels. The only two things that take a second to load are the settings apps and the app switcher, though both open instantly the next time you open them, leaving little to complain about.

SamMobile reviews don’t include any benchmarks as they do not reflect real-life usage.

The Galaxy Alpha sports a Cortex-A5-based Seiren audio co-processor for the audio side of things. The sound through its down-facing speaker is not too loud but is very clear. The call quality on the Alpha is much better than on the Galaxy S5; the Galaxy S5 uses a membrane to waterproof its speaker, which isn’t the case on the Galaxy Alpha, resulting in clear and crisp sound. Playing music through the in-ear headphones almost made my eardrums pop – the output is insanely loud, but even at the highest volumes the sound quality is very clear (I tested this on the Sound Magic E10 earphones.)

Display

The Galaxy Alpha packs a 4.7-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 720×1280 pixels, structured in a Diamond (PenTile) matrix. This makes for a 312 PPI pixel density, which is enough for a screen of this size. The colors are vibrant and vivid and they seem to pop out of the screen. This is mostly due to the default display setting, which is called Adaptive Display and is oversaturated. Putting the display on basic mode makes it a lot more realistic with colors that are closer to real life. Samsung uses the Adaptive Display setting to showcase why its AMOLED screens are so great and how vivid they can be, but it always feels a bit too unnatural.

Viewing angles are great, but outdoors, performance of the display under direct sunlight is a disappointment. The screen can’t get too bright, unlike the Galaxy S5, meaning you will sometimes need to hunt for the shade to see who’s calling you or to properly read something on the phone.

Camera

The Galaxy Alpha produces great pictures in daylight and well-lit conditions, just like the Galaxy S5. Rumors were that the Alpha would have the same ISOCELL technology on-board as the S5, but instead of a 16-megapixel sensor, the Alpha features a 12MP ISOCELL sensor, as you can see in the picture below.

ISP Ver: SLSI means a Samsung made camera module.

Well, this is both good and bad news. Just like the Galaxy S5, the Alpha performs great in conditions with ample lighting and out in the sun, offering great detail and good color reproduction. But when it comes to low-light performance, the Alpha lacks detail and shots often come out very blurry and out of focus. Software stabilization doesn’t help here either; for example, in the dusk you need to hold your phone still for almost 20 seconds for it shoot the picture, which results in you shooting the picture too late or just giving up on trying to take one.

The camera has fast autofocus, and 9 out of 10 times it gets the focusing right. It occasionally missed its target but it’s not an issue that will irritate you in daily usage.

When you open the camera app, you will feel right at home as the Alpha has the same camera app that Samsung uses on all its latest devices. You will see buttons for HDR (with live preview), Selective Focus, and settings. Pressing the settings button will bring up the customization grid, and like the Galaxy S5, there are a plethora of options. There are different modes, including auto, beauty face, Sound and Shot, and Panorama, and you can download more camera modes from the Samsung store.

The Alpha’s camcorder capabilities are quite good. It ca shoot videos at 4K resolution with a bitrate of around 49 Mbps. If you want to use options like digital stabilization, you will need to scale down to 1080p mode, though the camera still captures enough detail meaning the drop in resolution won’t matter too much.

Battery

Unfortunately, the battery life of the Galaxy Alpha is its Achilles heel. The phone has an 1,860 mAh battery, which is not that big for a flagship. We have a feeling Samsung made a compromise here to make the device as thin as it is; with moderate use you will probably make it through the day, but will barely have 10 percent left by 11 PM. Thankfully, Samsung has decided to stick to its tradition of removable back covers, which means you can order a spare battery online and swap it in for those days when you heavily use your phone. (Our Korean review unit came with a second battery in the box, allowing me to use the phone extensively when reviewing it.)

Wrap Up

The Galaxy Alpha is almost the complete package for, but that’s also a shame given it doesn’t live up to its full potential, as there are some positives and a few negatives.

It’s a good thing to see Samsung finally shifting to a more premium feel for its devices, with those gorgeous chamfered edges and a size that feels just right. It took them a long time, but Samsung has made a beautiful phone that deserves all the praise it has been getting. Its performance is on par with current flagships; it’s screen is not great but is certainly good enough, being vivid but not so bright, making it hard to read outside in direct sunlight.

If you only have one battery and are a heavy user like me, you will need to charge the phone every day in the evening, though we suggest you buy a spare battery or keep a portable charger with you to avoid the annoyance of running out battery when you really need it. Which brings us to the second negative: its price. At the time of this review, the Galaxy Alpha has a retail price of €589, which is a bit hefty for this phone, as good and high-end as it is.

All in all this is the most beautiful phone Samsung has ever made, and to a great extent its design makes up for its flaws. Not all of them, but can I live with those flaws?

The answer to that question would a yes. The bottom line is that I love using the Galaxy Alpha more and more each day, though it certainly took Samsung a while to get me there.

Samsung expects improved profits from its Apple chip deal

Samsung is expected to start producing processors for its clients, including Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD by the end of the year using its new 14nm fabrication process.  Kim Ki-nam, President of Samsung’s semiconductor business and head of System LSI business, announced in Seoul that once they start supplying these chips to Apple, their profits “will prove positively”. The Apple A8 processing chip which used in the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus is based on 20nm technology and is currently being made by two contract makers, Samsung and Taiwan’s TSMC. According to sources of ZDNet Korea, Samsung is producing around 30 percent of the total volume of A8 chips while the rest are being manufactured by TSMC.

As per the knowledge of same sources, Samsung already has a contract in place to product the next generation of Apple processors, the A9 which will be based on 14nm process. TSMC, which is the largest contract chip producer, is expected to manufacture its next generation chips using a 16nm process so Samsung has an advantage over them. Samsung claims that their 3D FinFet chips would be 35 percent more energy efficient, will have 20 percent faster processing performance, and will be 15 percent smaller when compared to current generation 20nm chips.

Even though Samsung is the global leader in producing memory chips, it faced huge losses this year due to lowered demand from Apple. Apple has been constantly decreasing its dependance of Samsung for producing chips which are used in its devices. Samsung is also facing a lot of competition in the mobile processor market from Qualcomm and MediaTek. The only brands using Exynos processors in their devices are Samsung and Meizu.

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10-2-2014 Firmware Updates: Galaxy Core 2, Galaxy Tab S 8.4, Galaxy Note 3 Neo, and more

Samsung has a plethora of phones and tablets in its lineup, and regularly releases firmware updates for various devices. These can include major updates, which bring a newer version of the OS to a particular device, or minor ones that improve performance and stability and fix bugs. Software updates for Samsung devices roll out in various regions every day, and you can find out which firmware updates were pushed out by the company over the last 24 hours through our firmware list.

As usual, you can download each of these firmware from our firmware section (simply enter your device’s model number to view all firmware for that device) in order to update manually, or as a means to return to your phone or tablet’s stock software