Samsung Alpha - My review
Firstly it was nice to receive a nicely packaged phone. Its box was both compact and robust with no wasted space and contained everything one needed to get started.
The phone on the other hand was a breath of fresh air. Its style very reminiscent of the iPhone 4 with its aluminium frame.
I have never really considered Samsung for a handset as even their premium handsets look and feel cheap and plastic so if Samsung continue with this premium styling I may reconsider my choice in future.
Handling the phone is very nice and unlike most other Samsung phone has a firm a solid feel with no flexing of any parts thanks to its aluminium frame.
Now its unboxed comes the job of charging the unit. Wow! A real battery that is user insert able and replaceable so heavy users can buy a spare, a great idea and best of all it has not compromised the phones thickness. (A note to all manufacturers who seal the battery in the phone on the grounds it aids slimness! It’s not true just built in obsolescence). Sadly the battery charger itself was pretty large and clunky. If other manufacturers can manage a charger the size of a slim line mains plug so it should be possible for Samsung too.
Sadly the battery cover was back to Samsung’s cheap and cheerful plastic so too was the phones chassis, but give Samsung their dues the chassis was solid with no wasted space.
I think the biggest disappointment was the lack of an expandable memory card slot, so not unlike Henry Ford you can have it in any size so long as it’s 32GB. For what is a semi premium phone and a pretty costly one at that the omission of expandable memory is a costly mistake on Samsung’s part.
An overnight charge and it’s time to rock n roll. Powering up the phone one is faced by a super bright and vibrant display. OK it’s not the highest of resolutions but let’s face it unless one is in league with the opticians a visit will soon be required if you have intentions of watching movies on such a screen size. Really in all honesty I cannot fault the screen, for its size it’s perfect. Sound was not too bad either with a more than adequate volume level. A little tinny but as most users tend to use earphones to listen to music it’s perfectly acceptable.
Touch response was both quick and accurate. Streaming video was good and so too was its 4G upload and download speeds. Not much more one can ask from it. Good to see some thought had gone into the choice of processor and graphics processor. Gamers will not be disappointed.
The camera whilst pretty modest does have the benefit of 4K video, although you will need upgrade your television to see the benefits of it. Colour rendition is good and the colours vibrant on the OLED screen. Sharpness while not the best is almost unperceivable on such a small screen. The only downside of the camera is it’s not flush with the body so the fashionistas out there will still have something to comment on.
In conclusion it’s a well presented phone and hopefully something that Samsung will work on. Better still instead of following in Apples footsteps with an Aluminium frame maybe Samsung should take a radical departure and make a frame and chassis from magnesium for a truly premium phone design
Again the lack of expandable memory will have killed it for many potential users and the excuse of its not required because of the inclusive cloud storage is misleading. Using the cloud to upload and download too eats into ones data allowance.
Unfortunately compared to the likes of lesser and cheaper Samsung mobiles it’s overpriced for what you get I would not value it at above £200.
Let’s hope Samsung take note of the criticism and build on this and win a few more customers from the likes of Apple and HTC.
Come on Samsung, follow through and make this a base design for all Samsung mid to premium phones
