Samsung recently changed its strategy for the mid-range smartphones and decided to offer premium features on budget devices first, even before offering such features on its high-end flagship phones.
In line with that strategy, the South Korean giant has announced its latest mid-range smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018) which is the world’s first smartphone to come with a quad-camera setup on the back, stacked vertically. It comes shortly after the company launched Galaxy A7 (2018) with triple-camera setup.
The quad-camera setup on the smartphone includes a 24MP main sensor, an 8MP ultra wide 120-degree sensor, a 10MP telephoto lens, and a 5MP sensor for capturing depth information that enables capturing images with bokeh effect. On the front side, there’s a 24MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture for taking selfies.
The Galaxy A9 (2018) features a 6.3-inch Super AMOLED display with 2220 x 1080 pixels screen resolution. The company has decided not to offer a notch display, which is currently the trend in the mid-range segment.
Under the hood, it is powered by a capable Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 octa-core processor with four cores clocked at 2.2GHz and other four cores clocked at 1.8GHz, coupled with Adreno 512 GPU. It packs 6GB/8GB of RAM and comes with 128GB of internal storage.
It also has a microSD card slot, allowing you to expand the phone’s storage capacity up to 512GB. The phone comes with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor. Connectivity options on the device include Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0 LE, GPS/A-GPS, NFC, and USB Type-C port.
Unfortunately, the smartphone runs on an older version of Android operating system, Android 8.0 Oreo even though it’s been months since Google released the latest Android 9.0 Pie. Given that Samsung has been notoriously slow in providing major Android update, we don’t expect the phone to get Android Pie update anytime soon. The phone is powered by a 3,800mAh battery with adoptive fast charging.
The Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018) comes in Caviar Black, Lemonade Blue and Bubblegum Pink colors and the pricing starts at 599 Euros (approx. $690 or Rs 51,300) in Europe. It will be rolled out to other markets from next month.
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