New phone worth a second look
Usually, the announcement of a mid-range smartphone is very uninteresting. But Samsung has bucked that trend this week with the launch of the Galaxy A80, and with it, the reintroduction of a sliding phone. And a rotating camera.
I say reintroduction because technically this isn’t the first time phones have debuted these features. The Nokia 8110 Matrix phone famously slid open. And the Oppo N1, that launched in 2014, featured a single camera that rotated from a traditional rearfacing camera to a selfie one.
What’s different about Samsung’s new phone is that this rotating camera is excellent – previous rotating cameras managed to look a bit like something from a school project. And the sliding mechanism is even better. This is because the Galaxy A80’s slide action has a purpose, unlike the Nokia 8110 slide that was there purely for (questionable) aesthetics.
Flicking the Galaxy A80 upwards will a) lift the camera above the phone’s 6.7-inch FHD+ (1080 x 2400) Super AMOLED display, and b) automatically flip the direction of the camera from rear-facing to a selfie camera.
The camera setup looks impressive, too. Featuring a dominant 48-megapixel f/2.0 camera that is supported by an ultrawide 8-megapixel f/2.2 camera, and a third ToF (time-offlight) sensor.
The Galaxy A80 also features a 3700mAh battery that supports fast charging. There’s 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of onboard storage available. And it also has an in-display fingerprint sensor.
This innovation shouldn’t be ignored.
As you will have noticed, new high-end phones feature brilliant new displays that are creeping ever closer towards the edges of the device.
And the selfie camera is the last remaining scar on the front of modern smartphones.
This unique new design from Samsung will surely make its way on to Samsung’s premium devices. And it probably won’t stop there. Apple, Huawei, Google. All these manufacturers currently make do with unsightly selfie notches on prime smartphone real estate. Expect to see similar ‘‘innovations’’ soon.
The Samsung Galaxy A80 has a May 29 launch date and will cost €649 (NZ$1080). Available in three colours: Gold, white, and black.