The Samsung Galaxy Alpha demonstrates a desire for the manufacturer to revise its priorities a bit in design. Smaller and thinner than the Galaxy S5, he opted for aluminum edging and a 4.7-inch screen, and put as much about build quality on performance. A wiser choice than it seems, but at what price?
Galaxy Alpha marks a welcome break with the trends of previous models , especially the Galaxy Note and Galaxy 3 S5. Plastic is not a bad material itself, but the chrome edges should be banned forever from the vocabulary of designers: it’s awful, it’s “cheap” and it ages very badly
Video. Samsung Galaxy Alpha test:
Fortunately, the Galaxy Alpha puts things flat. By opting for aluminum, it shows even a really successful design of Samsung, it does not hold to much. Because outside this border with chamfers certainly reminiscent of the iPhone 5 / 5S, the rest does not betray the code of the manufacturer. Include a flexible plastic back with a texture quite similar to that of the Galaxy S5.
But the whole works much better than anything Samsung has presented since Galaxy S2. And it is precisely the latter is thought by manipulating the Galaxy Alpha by its delicacy, lightness and discretion. Alpha has absolutely nothing original, but it is nice to handle, well balanced and does not like having a low cost phone. We may regret the camera that frankly higher than the shell – it was well worth tackle Apple on Twitter – and a little too showy back metallic paint, especially on the silver version. The golden model is almost more discreet
Samsung is so design a bit more central to his concerns, but he abandoned the plug technique to much? Not really, but all is not perfect. The Super AMOLED screen, for example, shows a little too distinctly its Pentile matrix: the choice of a definition of 1280×720 pixels on a 4.7-inch slab is more relevant, but with the Galaxy S4 and its successor, it s’ was used to see the flaws of the Super AMOLED completely invisible to the naked eye on their high-end, and that’s not the case here.
The characteristics of the slab are a bit uneven. The most impressive AMOLED forces, is the contrast ratio which is simply infinite. Black is perfectly black! The brightness of 368 cd / m 2 is nothing special, and the temperature in the standards. However, the colors by default are still saturated, while alternatives Photo Basic or go a little too much in the other direction, so as to become dull.
Side processor, Samsung opted for a chip developed in-house, at least for the commercialized in France release. The Exynos 5430, latest version of the Exynos 5, clearly shows the big.LITTLE architecture with 4 cores at 1.8GHz A15 and A7 4 cores at 1.3 GHz. The hearts were going the relay depending on the complexity of the task, but unlike the first generation Exynos 5, they can operate simultaneously. As the recent Apple A8 SoC passes the burning of 20 nm. The graphics are a T628MP6 Mali 600 MHz, featuring six pipelines.
Imitating the Galaxy S5, Alpha adopts a fingerprint sensor on the back button to Home. And in a few months, Samsung has unfortunately not touched it: always require finger swipe instead of asking, it remains less effective than the last iPhone Touch ID and involves too high error rates again . The heartbeat sensor S5 is also present, and continue to question its usefulness on a smartphone
Despite the presence of a back -., And drums – Removable, Galaxy Alpha ignores a Micro SD slot. For some users, it may be bad news, recalling the limitations of the use of the SD card on the latest versions of Android. This choice is still offset by a storage capacity of 32GB base. This is the minimum that is expected in 2014, a high-end smartphone, and we appreciate that Samsung passes the bar, then some, Apple in the lead, continue to sell terminals 16GB in this price range
The rest of the data sheet ticks all the right boxes. 2GB of RAM, Bluetooth 4.0, LTE Category 6, Wi-Fi and NFC ac.
Galaxy Alpha is a pleasure to use … If you are not allergic to the Touchwiz overlay of Samsung. The interface is a little clearer in its latest versions, at least visually, but remains too loaded with additional applications. It is believed to uninstall, but false alarm: it’s actually a simple deactivation
Among the small annoying stuff, now we can get rid of virtual buttons in most applications where they are. annoying (games, video playback etc), we would really like that Samsung took the leap: the 2 touch buttons at the bottom of the smartphone are very easy to activate by mistake in the heat of a game in landscape mode
Apart from these two complaints, use of smartphone is simply lovely: the interface is perfectly smooth, the screen, despite the minor problems noted above, is very readable, audio quality while satisfactory during calls … nothing to report on these issues
camera sensor Galaxy Alpha has the same characteristic as that of the S5: the maximum resolution of 12 megapixels is 16: 9. The images produced are homogeneous and pretty clean with good light, but some details are a little too smooth.
In low light, however, we quickly noisy and blurry photos.
On the video side, there is a choice between 1080p at 30 frames per second and 4K. In both cases, we obtain good quality sequences, fluids, with a reactive tuning. But beware: as in other high-end smartphones, shooting 4K is limited to 5 minutes
When you push the Galaxy. Alpha into a corner, he continues to surprise us pleasantly: Exynos 5430 chip defends pretty well against the best moment of SoC, and is roughly on a par with a Snapdragon 800 or 801 or Apple’s latest chips with the usual caveats to observe the reliability of mobile bench. The CPU part seems favored by 8 cores, but graphics performance is also located in the top of the basket
In practice, it is true. The games tested are running optimally, with one caveat, however: depending on the title, some effects are not supported by the chip. For example, in Dead Trigger 2 by activating the highest level of detail, while Asphalt 8 rotates thoroughly lacking puddles even. This is only a very minor problem probably due more to developers who do not take the SoC supported.
With a battery capacity quite limited, we did not expect much from Alpha Galaxy for autonomy. However, the smartphone is doing quite well, without reaching prowess: after 5 hours of use mixing surf, game, picture / video and leverage the GPS capture, it loses about half of its capacity. One can hope to hold a good ten hours if not abused too intensive tasks like 3D gaming or 4K capture. In cases of force majeure, we can always go through the extreme power saving mode, which disables most of the functionality and interface to preserve the essential telephony features.
On a more specific use video playback, with screen at 100%, the 50% and Wi-Fi enabled, more than 8 hours of continuous running we take a 720p video in H264. Ridiculous: it’s better than the Nexus 5, the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6, and even approach the result obtained with an iPhone 6 Plus 5.5 inch screen which must consume much more in this particular scenario . However, we are far from Galaxy S5 which combines Super AMOLED screen with a battery of high capacity, combo winner for such use.
The Samsung Galaxy Alpha has many arguments for it: a neat, certainly a screen too saturated, but the impressive contrast, very good performance, and self-correct design. But his main fault is not the smartphone itself. Positioning is
For 649 euros (RRP), it is competing with “real” high-end offering better defined and slabs even more powerful processors. Conversely, a Sony Xperia Z3 Compact 0.1 inch closer, offers similar services for 150 euros less. A good device, therefore, but it will take a price drop to make it really interesting.
more
- Sleek design successful finish
- Good performance 3D
- 32 GB standard
less
- Price too high
- Fingerprint sensor impractical
- Too much duplication, too many options
Samsung Galaxy Alpha
Android Smartphone
Good
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