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The Galaxy Alpha marks a departure from Samsung’s usual design philosophy, and rocks top-notch specs too. Features like the built-in fingerprint scanner and heart rate monitor we saw on the Galaxy S5 have made their way to the Alpha too, but sadly, the latter isn’t impervious to water like its more accomplished sibling. With the metal frame as its mainstay, we wanted to know whether the Galaxy Alpha can impress us overall as a compelling option and prove its mettle as a worthy daily driver. And that’s exactly what we hope to accomplish with this review.
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Samsung Galaxy Alpha
Review in pictures
The #1 gadget research website in India
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First they frame me
The Alpha is the first Galaxy smartphone from Samsung to use metal
Features a metal frame that makes it look like the Apple iPhone
Screams premium in a way no other mainstream Galaxy smartphone has done in
the recent past
Thanks to its 4.7-inch screen, slim bezels and svelte profile, the Alpha is very
compact and great for one-handed use
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Elegant looks
The metal frame adds to the Galaxy Alpha’s premium feel and elegant
looks
Subtle chequered pattern at the rear
The rear panel is removable and gives access to the replaceable battery
and the nano-SIM slot
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Screen test
The 4.7-inch screen offers a
resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels
resulting into a pixel density of
312ppi
The 720p screen resolution seems
low for a premium device like this
However, the Super AMOLED display
on the Alpha is bright and vivid and
we didn’t really have any issues with
it while using the device as a daily
driver
It doesn’t score as high as IPS
displays when it comes to colour
accuracy and viewing angles, but
graphics and text look quite sharp
and legibility under direct sunlight is
fine too
Display settings include a glove
mode and various screen modes to
let you tweak the output as per your
liking
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Shooting shenanigans
The Samsung Galaxy Alpha offers a 12-meg primary shooter capable of 4K video recording, along with a rather mundane 2.1-megapixel front shooterThe shooting modes available cover Beauty face, Shot & more, Panorama, Virtual tour, and Dual camera, and you can download a few othersOther features such as HDR Burst mode and Selective focus are there too, and you can also make use of a bunch of live filtersYou can also tweak settings like ISO, white balance and exposure
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Pleasing results, overall
The image quality is extremely
pleasing overall, especially
when shot in daylight
The autofocus speeds are quite
fast, but the same can’t be said
for the capture speeds and
sometimes, this can result in
blurry shots if the subjects are
in motion
The camera’s low-light imaging
prowess isn’t too impressive,
and it tends to churn out noisy
results when there isn’t enough
light
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Sunlight
Low Light
Touch the wiz
The Alpha runs Samsung’s Touchwiz
UI atop Android KitKat 4.4.4
As usual, you get features like the
Flipboard-powered news aggregator
dubbed My Magazine, along with
Multi Window and a tweaked
notification shade with quick settings
Loads of other features crammed in,
including a handy Download booster,
an Easy mode, Private mode and
Direct call
There’s an Air View feature that
gives you thumbnail previews of
content such as images, videos and
calendar evens in S Planner when
you hover you finger a little above
the screen without touching it
Battery saving modes include the
Ultra Power Saving mode
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Frills galore
The fingerprint scanner
and heart rate monitor
we saw on the Galaxy
S5 have made their
way to the Alpha too
Setting up the
fingerprint scanner on
the Alpha isn’t as
problematic as on the
S5, and the feature
works fairly well. We
would still like to see
some more
improvements though
The heart rate monitor
at the rear is tough to
locate by feel, but does
its job
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Testing out its mettle
Powering the show is an Exynos 5 Octa 5430 SoC which utilises a pair of
quad-core clusters clocked at 1.8GHz and 1.3GHz. These are mated to 2GB
of RAM
There’s 32GB of non-expandable storage, out of which about 25GB is
available to use. USB OTG is supported, along with support for Indian 4G
bands
The Alpha proved to be an able performer and rolled over anything we threw at it – including multitasking and graphics-intensive games like Asphalt 8
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The battery keeps up
The 1,860mAh battery
doesn’t seem to great
on paper
Gave us 10 and a half
hours of run time in our
video playback test, but
the battery life isn’t as
good in real life
Can last about a day
with light to medium
usage
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At a glance…
4.7-inch, 1,280 x 720 pixel IPS
display (312ppi)
Exynos 5 Octa 5430 processor
(quad-core 1.8GHz and quad-core
1.3GHz)
2GB RAM, 32GB storage (non-
expandable)
12-megapixel primary camera,
2.1MP front
USB OTG, 4G, dual-band Wi-Fi
802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, A-
GPS, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, NFC
Android KitKat 4.4.4 with Touchwiz
1,860mAh battery
Fingerprint scanner, heart rate
monitor
Pros and Cons
Elegant looks and metal-reinforced buildCompact size great for one-handed useSmooth performanceLoaded with features
720p screenNon-expandable storagePricey
Pricing & Verdict
“The Samsung Galaxy Alpha is one of the best phones the brand has outed yet. Apart from its low-res screen and non-expandable storage, it’s difficult to find fault with it. Sure, the camera is scared of darkness and the battery life is average, but if you can afford it, it’s worth considering if you need a compact daily driver that doesn’t skimp on power or features.”
Price: Rs 39,990
