WORLD’S FIRST IN-DISPLAY CAMERA PHONE IS OFFICIAL: MEET THE SAMSUNG GALAXY A8S

The in-display camera trend officially starts today with the first ever phone to pack a camera “inside” the screen, albeit it’s only in a cut out hole and not actually beneath it. Nevertheless, the Samsung Galaxy A8s is the first device to launch with this tech and many are to follow the same path very soon.

So, let’s start with the display details. It’s what Samsung calls an Infinity-O display with a large 6.4-inch IPS Full HD+ (2340 x 1080) panel and a 19:5:9 aspect ratio, meanwhile the little camera cut out is 6.7mm in diameter. As we can see in some of the photos, the status bar has been aligned with the camera for a better look, that turns the display area above it into dead useless space though.

Beneath the screen that almost fully covers the front side for a 91.56% (thicker chin still there), we find a mid-range, yet powerful, Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 CPU paired with either 6GB or 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.

As far as cameras are concerned, the more interesting one, placed at the front, is of 24MP resolution and f/2.0 aperture with support for face recognition. Moving to the back, we find a total of three cameras: a primary 24MP snapper with f/1.7 aperture, a secondary 5MP for capture depth data and a third camera of 10MP with X2 optical zoom.

Finally, the Samsung Galaxy A8s is powered by a 3400mAh battery, there’s an USB Type-C port but no headphone hack, sports NFC, Bixby and runs Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box.

Samsung Galaxy A8s specifications

• 6.4-inch (2340 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ 19:5:9 2.5D curved glass display
• Octa Core Snapdragon 710 10nm Mobile Platform (Dual 2.2GHz Kryo 360 + Hexa 1.7GHz Kryo 360 CPUs) with Adreno 616 GPU
• 6GB / 8GB RAM, 128 GB Storage, expandable up to 512GB via micro SD card
• Android 8.1 (Oreo)
• Dual SIM
• 24MP rear camera with LED flash, f/1.7 aperture, 10MP telephoto lens with f/2.4 aperture and 5MP f/2.2 depth camera
• 24MP front camera with f/2.0 aperture
• Fingerprint sensor
• Dimension: 158.4×74.9×7.4mm; Weight: 173g
• Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2.4/5GHz), VHT80, Bluetooth v5, GPS + GLONASS, USB Type-C, NFC
• 3400mAh (typical) / 3300mAh (minimum) battery with adaptive fast charging.

Samsung did not reveal the price yet, which will actually be unveiled on December 20th. This is hopefully because the company wants to learn what the competition has to offer (Huawei Nova 4 ) and then aggressively price the device accordingly.