Samsung Galaxy A8 Star

While Samsung has been ruling the flagship market for quite some time, the Samsung A8 Star is here to take up the mid-range challenge as well. Priced at ₹ 26,990, the A8 Star has a fierce competition to face, but it has a great brand name holding it up.

Samsung may not be the phone that turns out to be spectacular for any mid-range user. But it is still able to top one of the benchmark tests and keeps its grounds with its other mid-tier users. It is a worthy phone for anyone looking for a high mid-range performance but does not want to go for flagship sets.

The Galaxy A8 Star is a hefty phone that is on the heavier side with a weight of 188 grams, measuring about 162.4×77.0×7.55mm which is too big for one-hand use. It has a glass back like many modern flagship products, and as a result, the back can become a fingerprint magnet easily. It is recommended to use a case with it. On the rear panel, there is a dual-camera setup which is placed vertically. The circular and squarish fingerprint scanner is fitted at the back-centre which is easy to reach. On the bottom, there is the 3.5mm headphone jack which is satisfaction for average users, and it also arrived with the modern USB Type-C jack. The only problem is that while being sturdy, the phone fails to be manageable in one hand.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 Star has a 6.28-inch FHD+ with a display of 1080×2220 pixels. It has the modern Super AMOLED Infinity Display which is excellent for the deeper colours. The display is sharp, and it provides a depth to the dark colours like black due to the AMOLED screen. It features a Blue light filter which limits the blue glare so that it is not hard on our eyes. However, the viewing angles are not as great as when tilted it can range from green to blue hues.

The Galaxy A8 Star is fitted with the Octa-Core Snapdragon 660 with four cores running at 2.2GHz, and the other four is clocked at 1.8GHz. It is also partnered with the Adreno 512 GPU. The performance is quite smooth and does not freeze or stutter. However, when it comes to gaming, the weak GPU shows its lack of graphics processing power. Light games run smoothly, but when it comes to heavy games, there are some noticeable frame drops. However, benchmark tests put it as one of the top sets compared to its competitors capping at 141387, easily beating rival Nokia 7’s 140506 and Huawei Nova 3i’s 138862.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 Star has a 16MP primary rear camera with LED Flash and an f/1.7 aperture. It is partnered with a 24MP secondary rear camera as well. The daylight shots taken on this phone turns out to be quite good capturing enough details and producing well-exposed photos with a great dynamic range to it. The autofocus is snappy and helps in taking good macros. There is a Dual-camera Live focus which blurs the background quite accurately making the subjects pop out.

Low-light performance, however, turns out to be average with a lot of visual noise. When the flash is turned off, low- light images fail to capture details as well.

Samsung A8 Star has a 24MP camera with f/2.0 aperture. It is excellent for capturing decent selfies especially when HDR mode is on. The beautification option works well and adjusts skin tone very well.

The Galaxy S8 Star features Live Focus which helps to adjust the bokeh effect. It allows the user to control the blur and also provides a preview mode to see the picture before saving it.

The Samsung Galaxy A8 Star comes with a massive 3700mAh battery which also features fast charging. As a big battery phone, the A8 Star does not falter. When it is put up for light and moderate use, it can easily get you through two days of runtime. Intensive tasks like Netflix, gaming or YouTube can get you an easy one day. Plus it arrives with fast charging taking just 44 minutes to get from 0 to 50% and another hour to get to 100%.

Samsung Galaxy A8 Star is a good phone when you consider the price bracket that it arrives in. It tops the phones present in the similar range when it comes to performance. It also has a decent set of hardware fitted to it. However, it is priced a tad bit on the higher end with respect to the features that it provides makes it a poor value-for-money phone. OnePlus 6 or Asus Zenfone 5Z are better variants at a more economical bracket with regards to their hardware specifications.