Samsung today announced the Galaxy Alpha, an Android smartphone that breaks ties with Samsung’s plastic past and introduces metal.
The Galaxy Alpha has a metallic frame forming the four outer edges of the device, which has a glass front and textured plastic back panel. At 6.7mm thick, the Alpha is one of Samsung’s thinnest phones. The Alpha features a 4.7-inch 720p display and is powered by an octa-core processor (four 1.8GHz cores and four 1.3GHz cores). It includes 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, but does not support microSD cards.
The Alpha has a 12-megapixel main camera and 2.1-megapixel user-facing camera along with a wide number of Samsung’s camera tools, such as Shot & More, Selective Focus, and Beauty Face.
It can shoot 4K (Ultra HD) video. Connectivity functions include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, and NFC. The Alpha also offers Ultra Power Savings Mode, Download Booster, Quick Connect, and Private Mode, which can be secured with a fingerprint thanks to the fingerprint scanner built into the home button.
Samsung said the Galaxy Alpha will ship beginning in September. It will be sold in a variety of colors. Samsung did not detail which markets will see the Alpha first.
