Just as I was complaining about how huge the OnePlus 7 Pro is, here comes the Samsung Galaxy A80 to demolish that perception. It’s somehow even bigger, heavier, massive rather and we unboxed it below. Launched in Europa on July 1st, the device has both a sliding mechanism for the camera and a rotating mechanism. It’s got a big screen and it’s our first contact with the Snapdragon 730 CPU.
It comes in hues like Phantom Black, Angel Gold and Ghost White and it’s priced at $780, quite a bit for a midranger. Since it’s an unboxing, let’s see what’s inside the box. We get a charger, an USB Type-C cable, headphones (more premium than usual), manual, warranty and SIM key. Made of glass and metal, this phone feels like it’s a hybrid of Xiaomi Mi Mix 3, a bit of Oppo Find X and the ZenFone 6 even.
This comes at a price: a thick and hefty body that weighs 220 grams. It measures 9.3 mm in thickness and packs a Super AMOLED screen with a 6.7 inch diagonal and a 2400 x 1080 pixel resolution. It’s got an atypical aspect of 20:9, hinting at a potential move to 21:9 like Sony and Motorola did. Inside we find a Snapdragon 730 CPU, 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, plus a microSD card slot.
A 3700 mAh battery is also in the mix and honestly I was expecting more. At least we have 25W fast charging. The Galaxy A80 is a dual SIM machine with LTE Category 11 and WiFi a/b/g//n, plus Bluetooth 5.0 and USB Type-C. There’s no audio jack here, but there’s an in-display fingerprint scanner. Dolby Atmos is also here. Now here we are with the camera, serving double duty: main camera and selfie camera.
It’s a triple mechanism, that’s available as a main camera sans effort, but it needs to slide up and then rotate for selfies. It includes a 3D Depth camera, a 48 MP F/2.0 cam and an 8 megapixel ultra wide shooter, plus LED flash. The main sensor is familiar, the Sony IMX586, already seen on the OnePlus 7 Pro, ZenFone 6 and Honor 20 Pro. It’s got the whole Quad Bayer thing going on.
There’s also Live Focus, AR Emoji and 4K video capture. Android Pie is in the mix, with One UI and somehow Samsung decided to promote this as a device for live streaming and vlogging. Rather heavy for those actions… The camera mechanism is motorized and I’m betting it’s much more complex than the ZenFone 6 one. Sadly, I’ve also seen a few flips of it malfunctioning and getting stuck.
I guess I’ll see if it happens to us, as we prepare the review. In the meantime, I feel it’s too pricey and too heavy for me. You can get it here.
