There’s a small club of smartphones that give the more expensive creme de la creme types a run for their money. At about half the price, they offer some pretty great features, though mostly not all at one go. The OnePlus 5T leads the pack, but there’s also the Honor View 10, Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 2, Nokia 8 (which is now a nice ₹28,999) and a few others. With its new Galaxy A8+ available since January the 20th, Samsung gains membership to this club.

The Galaxy A8+ has rather a lot in common with its expensive cousins, the Note 8 and the Galaxy S8, which is to be replaced by the S9 later this month. It isn’t quite as pretty but, in black or gold. It’s strongly built though it feels a little heavy and thick. This six-inch phone isn’t for those who dislike big phones because it’s definitely a bit chunky to hold and will probably get more so with a case, which it needs because of all the glass that incidentally loves fingerprints and smudges. With the finely tapered and curved glass edges of Samsung’s other phones missing, it does have a slabby feel, though it still looks like it means business and like it packs in something worthwhile — which it does.

Signature Samsung

First off, the 2220 x 1080 pixel screen is as gorgeous as Samsung screens tend to be. Rich colours and strong contrasts make it a pleasure to look at every time. As ever, there are many adjustments you can make — all you have to do is get right into the settings, which are all familiar Samsung fare for anyone who’s used one of the company’s phones before.

To get to the brilliant edge-to-edge screen or Infinity Display with its very thin bezels, you can use the fingerprint sensor placed just under the camera on the back. It isn’t as awkward as on the Note 8 but it’s still not the easiest to get to because this is a big phone. If you rely on the fingerprint sensor a lot, it’s still the OnePlus 5T that has a more accessible and faster one.

But face recognition (not iris recognition) is also supported on the A8+, so you can use that instead for a quick unlock. Otherwise, it’s the power button which is repositioned a little to make way for the phone’s speaker which has a new place on the top right edge.

Samsung has brought the always-on display to this phone so you can always see the time and notifications if that’s what you like. I’m beginning to get annoyed with always having to see notifications and finding it’s probably some scoundrel offering beautiful girls who will give me a massage or Zomato telling me it’s lunch time.

Another thing Samsung has brought in from its more expensive phones is water and dust resistance with its IP68 rating. So you can probably take a shower with it if you’re feeling adventurous.

Bixby, Samsung’s virtual assistant, is also present and accounted for on the A8+ though the button that triggers it off, which some people dislike while others don’t mind, is missing. Bixby has found an interesting positioning among virtual assistants like Alexa, Google and Siri, and can be used to create interesting routines or series of commands, but it does take some work from the user. Bixby Vision however, which looks at objects and brings up similar ones, is more easy to use via the camera.

Two faced camera

The dual front camera is a highlight on this device. What this does is to give that sought-after background blur when you take a selfie and switch between wide angle and regular when taking a shot. The front camera, a 16 MP and 8 MP set, does a good job with the blurring but the photo is a little softened in low light and colours are not as rich as with the rear camera in bright light. But for the most part, you can take good self and group shots.

The rear camera is a 12 MP with an f/1.7 aperture and in my opinion a good reason to pick up this phone. It performs well in low light and yields nice and bright pictures. People may complain about Samsung cameras over-saturating colours in an image, but many also find that quite a lot of fun. You won’t find 4K recording or optical image stabilisation and for that, you’ll have to consider a more expensive phone.

The OnePlus 5T is this phone’s biggest competition and it certainly has a head start in the mid-premium category. In fact, you might say that OnePlus started the category in recent times. While the A8+ has a lot going for it including water resistance, dual front camera and a great display, the 5T beats it on several counts. It’s faster, has 8 GB of RAM if you pick up that variant, and runs on the newest version of Android. Samsung is notoriously slow with its updates, if they come at all, with the result that most of its devices haven’t moved past Android Nougat yet. The 5T’s lighter interface also makes it faster not just in the near term but into the future, going by recent OnePlus phones. The 5T also runs on the Snapdragon 835 while the A8+ isn’t using an equivalent though it does have 6 GB RAM and 64 GB storage.

The A8+ has a 3,500 mAh battery and supports quick charging, has space for two SIMs and a memory card and comes in at a good price as an option for those who have always been Samsung users.

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