2019 has been an amazing year for smartphones so far. We’re at the forefront of hardware innovations like notch displays, multiple cameras, flip cameras, dual-displays, foldable screens and more. These trends have shaped the smartphone industry and Chinese phone manufacturers have been at the top of the list of credits. Flip cameras have been a hype but many people like it. This time around, it’s Samsung who has broken new ground by introducing the Galaxy A80. This phone comes with a triple, rotating camera, a full-screen display and a large battery. The phone is priced currently at Rs. 47,990*, so let’s see if it meets everyone’s expectations.
Design and Build
The Samsung Galaxy A80 feels premium. The first thing you see is the massive 6.7-inch display with slim bezels and no notch. Samsung calls it, Infinity Display. The Galaxy A80 is huge! You feel all of the 220 grams in your hands. The glass back is impressive too, since the world’s first rotating triple camera resides here. It is the biggest change seen from Samsung, who has taken the route away from the pop-up camera trend. The camera setup protrudes out, so you need to be careful while placing the phone flat on its back. The only area of concern is the motor mechanism inside the phone that makes some sound.
The screen and the silver metal rim blend well with the glass back. The only minor concerns are that it collects fingerprints and smudges on the way. Our review unit was the Ghost White variant; there are also the Phantom Black and Angel Gold variants.
The right side of the phone houses the power button, while the left has the volume keys. The phone is longer and wider, so the buttons are not easy to access. The base of the phone holds a SIM card slot along with a single speaker grill and a USB Type-C port. The single speaker feels inadequate, but we’ll get into that a little later. The absence of the 3.5mm port is no surprise, if you have been following recent trends.
Features
The Samsung Galaxy A80 is ‘Built for the Era of Live’. The rotating camera is its major highlight. Geared with high-quality front and rear camera lenses, you no longer compromise while clicking photos and videos on the Galaxy A80. The 48MP Main camera lets you click brighter and sharper photos during the day and night. The 8MP ultra-wide lens with its 123-degree angle ensures you capture everything around you.
The Galaxy A80 screen is great to look at. It is equipped with a full HD+ Super AMOLED screen that runs a resolution of 1080 x 2400. It is brighter and colourful. Samsung promises the A80’s Infinity Display will provide a full-screen, distraction-free experience. Samsung has also emphasized it has replaced the earpiece with a vibrating display. This means the A80’s screen vibrates like a speaker.
The A80 features an in-display fingerprint sensor used to unlock it. Surprisingly, there is no face unlock feature. The phone is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G octa-core processor, while the 8GB of RAM provides the performance boost. The A80 comes with 128GB of internal memory, but it isn’t expandable. This is enough to store a ton of photos, apps, movies, music and videos. The A80 has 3,700 mAh battery with a 25W Super-Fast charging technology. At its price, the battery capacity seems too low. In fact, the recently launched Galaxy A70 priced at near half the price of the A80 has a larger battery. The Samsung Galaxy A80 runs Android 9 with an overlay of Samsung One UI. The interface is clean and simple, and there’s lot of space left unused inside the settings tab.
Performance
The Samsung Galaxy A80 is pretty impressive by its looks and features. A rotating camera is the A80’s party piece. However, the phone is expensive just for one innovation. The first few minutes of using it, we were lost inside the full screen display. It renders brighter colours, deep blacks and wide viewing angles. With no notch or bezel, this phone’s screen is amazing, and this is how we wanted phones to be.
The A80 is not just tall, it is also wide and bulky. A large display and the camera module at the back add weight to the phone. Reaching every corner of the screen with one hand feels like a thumb-stretching exercise. There is a one-handed usage mode to shrink the screen, but we didn’t find it useful. The text and the app icons appear too small then and if you have broad fingers, this does not help.
Talking about the A80’s highlighted feature, the rotating camera is fun and exciting. The movement of the camera isn’t as fast as other phones. The camera clicks bright and vibrant photos, but with average detailing. The photos were not sharp, and the objects in the background appeared washed out in some photo modes. Photos shot in dark areas were not great either. There is a murkiness in every photos we clicked. Surprisingly, the 8MP ultra-wide and 3D Depth camera capture good photos. We then switched the camera to take selfies and the camera app has fewer camera modes there. The Portrait and Ultra-wide angle camera modes were very interesting. They let you choose the field of view and offers options for customization.
We ran a couple of benchmarks to check the phone’s performance. It earned decent single and multi-core scores of 2,492 and 6,620 respectively. The 3D Mark benchmark gaming benchmark recorded an OpenGL score of 2,392, whereas the Vulkan score was 2,255. These indicate that the A80 can handle gaming effectively. We played some graphic intensive games such as FunRace 3D, Asphalt Nitro car racing game and PUBG. The gameplay was smooth and fast, with no stuttering.
We also ran the AnTuTu benchmark that tests the overall CPU, GPU and the memory performance of the phone. The A80 earned 205,635 as the benchmark score, which is a decent score for a phone at this price. We had also loaded the Samsung Galaxy A80 with movies and full HD videos. The Galaxy A80 with its full HD screen is great to watch content on. In terms of audio quality, the speaker grill on this phone is placed in such a way that it gets covered when holding the phone in your hands.
Talking about the interface, Samsung has paid a lot of attention to the wallpapers, widgets and icon customization. The Settings menu has everything grouped together with a lot of space left unused. The phone comes with many pre-installed apps, with Samsung’s default apps such as Samsung Health, Samsung Pay, etc. as part of the bundle.
The A80 takes a little longer to boot than we’d like, and the in-display fingerprint unlocking feature is not very reliable either. A full screen fingerprint scanner would have been appreciated.
Conclusion
Samsung always designs something innovative and the Galaxy A80 is a good example of it. The phone is equipped with the great features, a premium design, a rotating camera and a large 6.7-inch Infinity Display. With the rotating camera mechanism, it seems Samsung has taken a different route of innovation. In terms of performance, the A80 better fits the bill. However, with many phones offering better specs on paper, the price of the phone could be a sole reason to choose something else.
*Prices are subject to change. Kindly refer to the product catalogue for latest prices and details.
