KEY FEATURES
- Android 4.4.4; 12-megapixel camera;
- 4.7-inch display; 4G LTE; NFC;
- Bluetooth 4.0; 720p HD Super AMOLED display;
- 1.8GHz and 1.3 GHz Octa-core; 2GB RAM;
- 32GB storage; 4K video at 30fps; fingerprint sensor;
- heart rate sensor;
- Manufacturer: Samsung;
- Review Price: £549.00
WHAT IS THE SAMSUNG GALAXY ALPHA?
The Galaxy Alpha was the first step in Samsung's transition to metal phones. It's not metal and glass like the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, it's more like the Galaxy Note 4 – a metal edge with a plastic back cover. So it hasn't opted for an entirely metal body like the HTC One M9, but it's a significant move away from Samsung's usual shiny and faux-leather plastic towards better quality materials.
In terms of specs it rests somewhere between the S5 Mini and the Galaxy S5 in Samsung's 2014 smartphone line-up, the 4.7-inch Alpha has the same sized screen and costs the same as the iPhone 6 Plus. Samsung is clearly hoping to take a big chunk out of Apple's phone sales.
But while this is an excellent 'small' Android handset in its own right we can't help feeling that it doesn't do things differently enough from the larger S5 – apart from the design that is.
SAMSUNG GALAXY ALPHA – DESIGN
The metal frame is the stand-out feature here, but it’s the weight – or rather lack of it – that makes the biggest first impression. It weighs just 115g, making it lighter than the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 (129g), the S5 Mini (120g) and only slightly heavier than the iPhone 5S (112g). The lightness likely has a lot to do with the fact that there's still plenty of plastic to balance out the more expensive, and heavier, materials.
Samsung still uses a dimpled soft-touch back, although the dotted pattern is more discreet and softer than it is on the S5 and the S5 Mini. The back is also where you'll find the heart-rate sensor, next to a 12-megapixel camera with LED flash.
Up front, the bezel around the sides of the screen is nice and slim, while the dotted theme from the back continues quite prominently on the front. You might not notice it, but we couldn't help feeling it was slightly naff and would've been better left plain. The home button with its metal trim is a familiar sight and also supports the fingerprint-recognition technology that was first introduced on the S5.
The Galaxy Alpha alongside the HTC One Mini 2
And so to the metal. Samsung uses an aluminium frame around the edges of the Alpha, including the buttons and volume rocker, replacing the usual faux-metal plastic trim. It's difficult not to immediately think of the iPhone 5S when you get your hands on it. The metal has a cold, flat feel with an anodised finish to give it a similar metallic sheen to Apple's smartphone, but different to the more rounded and soft iPhone 6 design. The corners are gently raised to help gripping it in landscape mode, and it really does the trick of making this a much more attractive phone.
The problem, however, is that there’s still a great deal of plastic here, and it's not really in the same league when sitting next to HTC’s all metal phones. It's a lovely handset to grip, though, and 4.7 inches appears to be the magic number for a so-called ‘smaller’ phone. In that respect, the Alpha is more manageable in one hand, although the corners can dig in to your palm ever so slightly.
The comparisons with the iPhone don’t end there. The volume rocker is on the left edge and the speaker is on the bottom edge next to the micro-USB charging port. Like the S5 Mini, the Galaxy Alpha misses out on USB 3.0 support.
The Alpha is just 6.7mm thick, so it’s a slim phone as well, but it's not water- and dust-resistant like the S5 and the S5 Mini.
The back is still removable, as is the smaller-capacity battery, although there’s no microSD card slot, and now you’ll need a nano-SIM. It’s those kinds of design inconsistencies across the Galaxy phones that can be really frustrating at times, though in this case it does make it easier to switch from an iPhone, which was perhaps Samsung's aim.
SAMSUNG GALAXY ALPHA – SCREEN
The Galaxy Alpha features a 4.7-inch 720p HD screen, so it doesn’t match the S5’s Full HD resolution and has more in common with the 4.5-inch S5 Mini. The 312ppi pixel density is short of the 326ppi squeezed of the S5 Mini, though the difference is negligible and it's about the same as the iPhone 6.
Samsung still employs a Super AMOLED panel with the same PenTile array, which, as explained in our S5 Mini review, can lead to some fuzziness up close. You can still expect an exceptionally bright screen with impressively deep blacks, though colours and contrast tend to look more erratic on the Alpha.
Running a video comparison next to the S5 and the S5 Mini, the Alpha still delivers a sharp 720p HD display, with good brightness and sharp, detailed images. The differences with the 1080p screen on the S5 are more noticeable. The faces in the episode of Justified we watched showed more detail, with more natural colours. Colours are more accurate and richer on the S5. The differences between the S5 Mini aren't so apparent, and there's very little to choose between the two smaller Samsung phones.
This is a solid-performing 720p HD screen on the whole. It’s just a shame Samsung didn’t give it the same Full HD treatment as the Galaxy S5, especially when you consider the difference in price.
SAMSUNG GALAXY ALPHA – SOFTWARE
The Alpha runs on Android 4.4.4 KitKat – at least until the Android 5.0 Lollipop update – overlaid with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI, which has evolved into a much cleaner and not-so-bloatware-filled place in recent years.
Swiping left reveals the new My Magazine UX, which is essentially a Flipboard rip-off, and the new-look, jam-packed Settings menu is also in place. It’s always good to have full control over as many aspects of the phone as possible, but some will find it an overwhelming place to hunt around initially.
Samsung still manages to squeeze in some of its own apps to accompany the selection of Google and Google Play apps already pre-installed. S Planner, the My Galaxy app store, Siri-rival S Voice and S Health are all present. Some are invariably more useful than others, but the key is that they're not thrust upon you. In the 32GB model, 6GB of that storage is taken up by software required to run the phone, so without a microSD slot to expand it, there's really around 26GB to play with.
Similarly, as is the case with the S5 Mini, not all of the software features make it onto the Alpha. Most are gesture-based, which you can live without, and modes that take full advantage of a bigger screen. This is largely the same experience as found on other Galaxy phones. Things run slickly and you’d be hard pressed to feel like you were greatly missing out on anything.
SAMSUNG GALAXY ALPHA – PERFORMANCE
One thing the Galaxy Alpha isn't short of is power. It’s the first Samsung phone to include a Exynos 5430 octa-core processor made up of a quad-core 1.8GHz Cortex A15 core configuration and a 1.3GHz Cortex A7 core. Essentially, four of those cores are there to handle more demanding tasks such as gaming, while the other four are there to help use the power more efficiently. It’s equipped to handle higher-resolution 2K displays – not relevant for the Alpha – and to handle 4K video shooting, which is something the Alpha can do.
There’s a Mali T628MP6 GPU to accompany it and 2GB RAM, so it’s well equipped for most tasks and a bit more. General navigation and getting around has a nice zip to it, and games run without any hitches.
The benchmark scores back up just how much power is on board here. In the Geekbench 3 benchmark test, the Alpha delivers a blistering 3124 multi-core score, putting it way ahead of the S5 Mini (1134) and the Galaxy S5 (2830). When you match that with how it works in real terms, there’s probably more power than the Alpha actually needs, and it doesn’t really tap into its full potential.
SUMMARY
OUR SCORE:
USER SCORE:
SAMSUNG GALAXY ALPHA – CAMERA
The Samsung Galaxy S5 has one of the best all-round smartphone cameras, and the Galaxy Alpha's is more or less as good.
There's a 12-megapixel main camera sensor based on Samsung's own ISOCELL technology with an accompanying LED flash. That's down from the 16-megapixel one on the S5. There's a decent 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera, with which you can shoot Full HD 1080p video when you're not snapping selfies. The main sensor, like the S5's, can shoot 4K video, which is handy if you have a 4K TV or laptop for displaying the Ultra-High Definition footage.
Adopting the same new camera features means the Alpha also includes phase-detection autofocus. We've gone into greater detail about what this means for smartphone cameras in our Galaxy S5 , but in essence the Alpha should focus faster than phones with contrast detection.
Core camera settings all appear to be intact, so you still have access to the new selective focus mode and manual features such as adjusting white balance and exposure levels. You can still capture panoramic pictures and add more shooting modes by downloading additional ones from the Galaxy Apps store.
As you can see from the photo sample below, shooting in Auto mode delivers bright, sharp image quality with nice natural colours. Up close, quality is not far off what the S5 is capable of, either. There's just a little more sharpness from the bigger Galaxy phone. You're not getting Nokia Lumia 1020-style results, but in the right light, you can get some well-balanced images.
12-megapixel photo sample produces sharp, detailed images
Samsung Galaxy Alpha photo sample up close
The same shot with the Galaxy S5. It's very hard to tell the difference; if anything the Alpha has slightly superior depth of field
HDR mode is where the Galaxy Alpha excels. Its ability to brighten up shadowy elements in otherwise brightly lit shots really impresses. The two samples below give you an idea of how much processing's involved in the HDR mode. The bridge in the first photo is very dark and colours are particularly drab. When you switch to HDR mode, the difference is immediately obvious.
HDR mode off
HDR mode on
For low-light photography, there's a pretty standard LED flash and Samsung's software-based image stabilisation to help shooting in darker conditions without having to heavily rely on the flash. In practice, the image quality isn't on par with when conditions are more accommodating.
Noise is more apparent than it is for daylight shooting, and turning on the stabilisation only marginally improves matters. Colour accuracy is one of the more positive elements of taking pictures at night, but on the whole, it doesn't really match the One M8 in this particular department.
Shooting indoors in low-light is more of a challenge for the Galaxy Alpha
Taking pictures outdoors at night, the camera also struggles for sharpness
One place where the Alpha is on par with the S5 is video recording. You get all of the same modes and the ability to shoot up 3840 x 2160 Ultra High Definition resolution in 16:9 screen ratio, or drop down to 1080p, 720p and a more share-friendly 680 x 480 VGA quality.
There's video stabilisation on board to help keep footage from becoming a jittery mess. You can also shoot in slow motion, or fast motion if you want to be a bit more creative. Video quality isn't entirely free from some shakiness and audio pick-up isn't fantastic, but it produces colourful, sharp footage.
SAMSUNG GALAXY ALPHA – BATTERY LIFE
One thing the Galaxy Alpha doesn’t inherit from the Galaxy S5 or even the S5 Mini is the battery life. There’s a removable 1860mAh battery, which is smaller than the one inside the cheaper S5 Mini (2100mAh), no doubt to accommodate the Alpha's more slimline design. While it’s capable of getting you through a day, it struggles to match the S5’s two-day stamina.
Samsung does still include the useful Ultra Power Saving mode to push things further, but it doesn’t take much gaming or video streaming to bite into the battery life.
In general use, browsing the web, gaming, checking on Twitter and watching video, the Alpha can safely make it into the evening and can max out at a day and a half. In more extreme testing, running an HD video on loop, it manages on average 10 hours, which is about an hour less than the S5 Mini under the same conditions, and about the same as the iPhone 5S manages.
From a 30-minute charge when the battery is entirely flat, it will top up by around 25%, so it's at least a reasonably swift charger.
When you know what Samsung is capable of delivering, it’s a shame the Alpha doesn’t quite give you the same excellent battery life.
SAMSUNG GALAXY ALPHA – CALL AND SOUND QUALITY
Call quality is average. Not bad, but not great, either. Samsung does include a noise-reduction feature in the Call Settings to supress background noise during calls, but even without that we found call quality to be reasonably clear and without any dropouts.
Samsung's mixed things up on the speaker front, moving it from the rear to the bottom edge next to the charging port, much as it is on the iPhone. Holding it in landscape mode does mean there's still a tendency to cover it and muffle some of the sound. What's more disappointing is that it doesn't show any real improvements on the S5 or the S5 Mini. It's still loud above anything else, but doesn't come close to HTC's BoomSound speakers for warmth or bass.
SHOULD I BUY THE SAMSUNG GALAXY ALPHA?
The Samsung Galaxy Alpha conjures up some mixed feelings. This is undeniably the best-looking phone Samsung's come up with and is clearly a direct rival for the 4.7-inch iPhone 6. The metal frame is beautifully integrated into a still predominantly plastic design, and on that front it's a step in the right direction. It's something that should have happened a long time ago.
The big problem here is that, despite costing more than the Galaxy S5, it doesn't best the larger Samsung phone in any way other than its premium build quality. It doesn't have a Full HD 1080p screen, you can't dip it in the bath, there's no microSD card slot and it can't match the Galaxy S5 for battery life. When you compare it to the cheaper S5 Mini, it's only the camera and the metal frame that really separate the two phones.
If you're sold on Samsung's Android approach and want a more attractive, smaller phone, the Galaxy Alpha is more appealing than the S5 Mini. If you're hoping for the best experience on a Samsung Galaxy phone, then the S5 is still the one to go for.
VERDICT
The Samsung Galaxy Alpha is a beautiful-looking phone; it's just a shame it misses out on some of the S5's most impressive features.
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