Samsung Galaxy A8s

The premium brand Samsung attempt to spread throughout the smartphone market brings the Samsung Galaxy A8s. Priced at Rs. 29,999, this phone is indeed a market attraction with the massive brand name that backs it.

Samsung Galaxy A8s is both a looker and a decent photo clicker, but it does falter in some aspects. One of the main ones is its performance. Astonishingly, Samsung Galaxy A8s fails to beat its competitors in performance despite having the same processor. If you are a Samsung fan, then this could be a phone you might like.

However, this phone does not live up to its name and is not a recommended model.

Samsung Galaxy A8s comes with a glass back and a solid build. The glass back does make it slippery, but otherwise, it looks premium. It is quite sleek, and the front looks a bit similar to the Samsung S9. The phone fits comfortably in your hand. The volume rock button and the power button is made of metal and is not jittery.

The phone is quite light. At the back, you have the triple camera setup with the primary camera marked. The left side hosts the Bixby button too. The phone does not come with a 3.5mm headphone jack, a sad but expected movement to new handsets. It does not have a notification LED as well.

The Galaxy A8s arrives with a 6.4 inch IPS display with a punch-dot camera. Of course, it does not have the deeper blacks of the premium AMOLED screens, but it is plenty bright. However, the color tends to bleed around the edges as well as around the front camera.

This feature has been successfully handled by Honor View 20. It has a high brightness of 520 Lux, which makes it legible outside. However, the uneven color and white balance are noticeable.

The performance of the phone is not up to the mark. Different phones with the same processor have performed better. There is a bit of animation lag, and when multitasking with various apps, the phone tends to lag a little bit. The fingerprint scanner is quite snappy, but the same cannot be said about the Face Unlock, which takes over a second to unlock the phone.

Plus, the speed of the Face Unlock depends on the lighting conditions too. High-end games like PUBG can run in high settings without much problem. There might be rare stutters, but overall, the games are highly playable.

Samsung Galaxy A8s has three cameras on its back, with single Phase Detection autofocus. The primary camera is a 24MP with an f/1.7 aperture camera, which is supported by a 10MP camera and a 5MP camera. The camera quality is quite disappointing.

In proper lighting conditions, the camera is capable of holding plenty of details. The images come out sharp and appreciable. However, in low light, the photos turn out to be a bit grainy. Due to the poor display, the photos also appear washed out. It might have been better if Samsung had gone for the Dual Phase Detection autofocus.

The phone can record 4K videos, but it does not have Electronic Image Stabilization with its 4K videos. Thus, you will end up having jerky shots. In low-light, the phone ends up capturing grain in videos too, and the focus becomes slow as well. 1080p video recording is smoother.

The front has a 25MP camera and clicks decent selfies, but its image processing is aggressive, making it look unnatural. The portrait modes turn out to be okay.

The Samsung Galaxy A8s comes with a 3400 mAh battery. The battery is quite good and can offer about 10 hours of on-screen time. Tests like running Netflix for 1 hour found that the battery lost just 8%, which is very impressive. However, the phone is quite slow to charge taking about 2 and a half hours to reach full charge.

Samsung Galaxy A8s is an impressive set that accomplishes a lot. It has a near-premium design and a decent battery too. The cameras may be weak in low-light, but in proper lights, it performs reasonably well. The IPS display does not have the punchiness of AMOLED screens, but it’s passable.

The only problem is with the performance which is unexpectedly choppy. If you are a Samsung fan and can go without the premium AMOLED Display, then this phone can be great for you. However, you should not keep expectations very high, as with any premium sets of Samsung.