Samsung has a line of mid-range and low-end smartphones, with the former class dominated by the likes of Galaxy A9, Galaxy A8, and Galaxy A5 as well as the newly launched Galaxy C5 and Galaxy C7, and the latter has the likes of Galaxy J1, Galaxy J2, and Galaxy J5, among others.
While a number of these handsets has already received 2016 upgrades, Samsung has yet to do the same for the 2015 Samsung Galaxy A8. The phone came to life back in July last year and since it is now a year old, it is just about time that a revised version comes in. Well, according to the latest reports, we might soon have this phone in Samsung stores and other retailers.
According to a report coming from GFXBench, Samsung has the Galaxy A8 2016 in the works and in fact, the benchmarking platform already has a detailed list of specifications that the South Korean company will include in the handset.
The phone will come with model number SM-A810. Going with Samsung’s trend of upgrading models and their model numbers, there is no doubt that this handset is the successor to last year’s Galaxy A8, which has model number SM-A800. Unlike last year’s version which packed a phablet-sized 5.7-inch Full HD Super AMOLED screen with 1080p resolution, it seems this year’s model will reduce the screen size drastically to just 5.1 inches.
This is the same screen size you get on the standard Samsung Galaxy S7, but the Galaxy A8 2016 will retain the Full HD resolution used on last year’s version as opposed to the QHD resolution available on the former. Under the hood, this year’s model will come with an octa-core Exynos 7420 SoC that has a speed of 2.1GHz and a RAM of 3GB. If you remember very well, this is the same hardware configuration you find in last year’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. This should mean you get the same performance levels on this year’s Galaxy A8 as what you get on the 2015 flagships. As for the storage, there is 32GB, which should also have room for expanding via a microSD card.
There is more coming from the benchmark leak. Apparently, the back of the phone will also borrow the same 16MP snapper used on the S6 as well as the front-facing 5MP camera. Even though Android 7.0 Nougat is just around the corner, the benchmark shows that Samsung Galaxy A8 2016 will still be powered by Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box, but with a possible Nougat update to follow later, probably next year.