Samsung Galaxy A8 star - advantages and disadvantages

In June 2018, Samsung presented its offspring Galaxy A8 Star with pomp. The presentation ended with an unpleasant misunderstanding, because the South Korean electronic giant, like its many Chinese colleagues, went to the trick: the novelty turned out to be a “twin brother” Galaxy A9 Star, intended for sales in the Chinese market. Why this move was made is not clear, because an experienced buyer has long known how to choose a smartphone, and will be able to distinguish the old model even under a new name.

At the presentation, Samsung identified the A8 Star in the niche of inexpensive devices, but the price of the smartphone was not announced.

Equipment

The Samsung Galaxy A8 Star smartphone is packed in a regular white cardboard box.

Inside it is equipped with the following items:

• Smartphone;
• Power Supply;
• Cable (cord length 1 m);
• Headphones;
• Adapter to USB Type-C.

About the headphones, it is worth noting that they became famous for their not the best quality. They can only be used for the first time, then they will definitely need a replacement.The headset sits uncomfortable in the ears, constantly falls out, the sound is the most mediocre. Therefore, lovers of music, audio books or radio are better off choosing a decent headset with high-quality sound transmission.

General characteristics

Your phone has the following sensors:

• gyroscope;
• accelerometer;
• proximity sensor;
• light sensor;
• barometer;
• compass.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 Star smartphone supports two SIM cards at the same time or one SIM card and MicroSD. Built-in memory can be overclocked with a memory card up to 512 GB.

Unlocking the device is carried out through a fingerprint scanner, which is located on the back. This turned out to be quite inconvenient, since the scanner is located at the level of the camera: you want to unlock the phone, but you feel for the camera eye. An alternative unlock is the recognition of the owner's face, but practice shows that recognition works only 2 times out of 5.

The smartphone runs on Android 8.0 Oreo, proprietary shell - Experience 9.0.

The main features of the new shell:

• there are four new keyboard themes;
• the “Keyboard” item in the “Settings” has been completely changed;
• added unique emoticons, emojis and stickers;
• new smartphone search;
• virtual assistant;
• on-screen settings are supplemented with fresh filters;
• now you can have two accounts at once in different messengers;
• new game mode;
• the ability to adapt games to the display;
• expanded mail management tools;
• cloud storage Samsung Cloud;

and others.

Design

Visually, the appearance of the Samsung Galaxy A8 Star smartphone can be called laconic, restrained, but stylish. The absence of the famous "monobrow" at the top of the screen has undoubtedly increased the popularity of this model. The manufacturer chose high-quality materials for the phone: the body is made entirely of glass framed by an aluminum frame.

The device is released in two colors:

• the black;
• white.

On the back cover are located: a dual rear camera, a flash and a fingerprint scanner. The camera, like on other Samsung devices, protrudes. Reviews of past devices by Samsung fans were full of dissatisfaction with the inconvenient location of the logo above the screen. Now the inscription has moved to the back cover.

Device dimensions:

• weight - 191 g;
• height - 162 mm;
• width - 77 mm;
• thickness - 7.6 mm.

The impressive size creates some inconvenience in use. The user will not immediately get used to working on it with one hand. It is worth getting a protective bumper for the phone case right away to prevent bumps from accidental drops, since the all-glass device is quite slippery.

Screen

Samsung is one of the best screen manufacturers in the world. Accordingly, the Galaxy A8 Star has a stunning Super Amoled screen with a resolution of 1080 by 2220 (FHD+). Advantages of Super Amoled Matrix:

• "real" black;
• instant response;
• saving energy consumption;
• excellent readability in the sun;
• thin display.

Diagonal - 6 inches. Useful display area - 80%.

Manufacturers far-sightedly abandoned the “bangs” and this made the device extremely convenient for watching a variety of videos or even movies.For protection, the smartphone has a protective 2.5 D glass with an effective oleophobic coating. In some reviews, experts talk about erasing this coating after a month, so a sticker on the screen of an additional protective glass is not superfluous. Moreover, Samsung is famous for the production of related accessories for its devices.

Sound

The device produces a good sound that is not annoying and loud enough. You can even hear some bass. There is a 3.5 mm headphone jack - this is a plus for music lovers, as modern flagships often refuse such connectors.

Many Android smartphones have become embarrassingly notorious for not being the loudest in listening to music and for having difficult controls. Samsung has created an application specifically for capricious and discerning music fans - SoundAssistant. This application is equipped with a huge number of sound settings, an equalizer. SoundAssistant also helps to manage sound not only on a smartphone, but also broadcast it to various other devices (PC or speaker), and the application also has special sound playback for games.

Performance

The smartphone has a Snapdragon 660 processor. Together with 4 GB of internal memory, it makes the device an excellent workhorse.

Processor cores (Kryo 260) are divided into two clusters:

1. Energy-saving (frequency 1.8 GHz) - reduces charge consumption;
2. Productive (frequency 2.2 GHz) - is responsible for the stable operation of the device.

Official dry characteristics give only a general idea of ​​​​the device. A clearer understanding of the smartphone will give its presence in any rating of the highest quality or powerful phones.They get into such top lists by passing various synthetic tests, where the devices receive points and are distributed in categories according to their capabilities. Today, manufacturers of popular models are striving to conquer the AnTuTu test. This information will help the buyer decide on the questions: “Which model is better to buy?” or “Which brand smartphone is better?”. Samsung Galaxy A8 Star scored 140,000 points in the AnTuTu test and earned 4 stars. Of course, it didn’t reach the flagship, but confirmed that it can cope with most tasks of increased complexity, run games at high settings, and play videos in 4K.

Information for active fans of mobile games: World of Tanks managed to give the same 40 FPS for 15 minutes, and PUBG Mobile - 35 for the same time. True, the device is very hot, which is a significant disadvantage.

Galaxy A8 Star, thanks to the Andreno 512 video chip, has rich graphics capabilities. The image of all applications will be on top.

Summing up the performance of the Galaxy A8 Star, it is worth noting that the device, of course, is powerful and can easily handle most applications, but you can’t call it smart.

Camera

Today, many manufacturers equip their devices with dual rear camera units. It may seem to an ordinary person that this is a tribute to fashion, it’s just that everyone is doing it now, but in fact this solution gives additional opportunities to the camera of an ordinary smartphone. The rear camera of the Galaxy A8 Star consists of a dual camera unit with a resolution of 16 megapixels and 24 megapixels.

With the dual rear camera, the A8 Star's shots benefit from the following:

• Bokeh effect - photos with a blurred background have long attracted photography enthusiasts.Now it has become possible on a regular phone and is available to everyone, and not just to owners of professional equipment;
• excellent detail is achieved by the fact that one sensor is responsible for transmitting the color of the image, and the other just for detail. The pictures are clear and contrast;
• excellent image quality even in poor lighting conditions;
• zoom without quality loss. Sometimes zooming in, you can blur the picture, degrade its quality. One of the cameras is equipped with a wide-angle lens, which allows you to zoom without loss of photo quality.

The pictures are of decent quality, with a good depth of field.

Sample photo:

Additional camera features of the Samsung Galaxy A8 Star:

• digital zoom;
• stabilization;
• autofocus;
• panorama shooting;
• touch focus;
• the possibility of geographic labels;
• white balance adjustment;
• self-timer;
• scene selection modes;
• HDR shooting.

The camera makes a delicate blur of the background and maximizes the detail of the subject being shot. How does the Galaxy A8 Star take pictures at night or in other extreme low light conditions? If you know the basic techniques of photographing, problems should not arise. Even in the dark, the photos are of high quality.

How to photograph at night:

Most reviews of this device call the device a selfie smartphone, and this is not surprising. After all, the “selfies” on a 24-megapixel camera with an aperture of f / 2.0 are simply amazing.Surely, the Samsung Galaxy A8 Star will become a reliable companion for many bloggers or just fans of social networks - the A8 Star camera has a large set of photo enhancers. Here you can easily disguise any flaws, correct defects, embellish reality and immediately put it on the network.

autonomy

On board the Samsung Galaxy A8 Star is a lithium-ion non-removable battery with a capacity of 3700 mAh. There is a fast charging function.

Results

Samsung has long occupied a leading position in the smartphone market and can easily compete with such a mastodon as Apple. Undoubtedly, Galaxy A8 Star will win its niche in the hearts of buyers. The diverse functionality of the device will satisfy the most extravagant selection criteria.

Samsung's refusal from cheap plastic to assemble the case in favor of aluminum and glass only benefited the Galaxy A8 Star. The design of the novelty turned out to be worthy and stylish, despite the performance of the device only in classic colors. The device is pleasant to hold in hands, it is solid and looks presentable.

Smartphone Samsung Galaxy A8 Star can be easily used as a navigator, as the device communicates via GPS, GLONASS. The satellite finds the device in seconds - no communication problems have been identified.

The device does not have a built-in radio, but Internet radio works fine, although it requires a constant and uninterrupted Internet connection.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 Star smartphone can become a Wi-Fi access point, that is, you can easily distribute your Internet to friends and family on any surrounding devices.

The huge screen with Super Amoled will provide excellent color reproduction, but Samsung tactfully keeps silent about unnatural reproduction of blue color and frequent burn-in of individual pixels.

• high build quality;
• concise design;
• big screen;
• protective 2.5 D glass;
• oleophobic coating;
• dual sim support;
• there is a fingerprint scanner;
• the presence of NFC;
• presence of ANT+;
• 3.5 mm jack (for headset);
• use of MicroSD;
• USB Type-C connector;
• great camera.

• poor choice of phone colors;
• powerful, but not smart;
• inconvenient location of the fingerprint scanner.

For the price, the Samsung Galaxy A8 Star cannot be classified as a budget device. The average price of A8 Star in Russia is 27,000 rubles.