Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Samsung looks to Huawei for inspiration, and the new Galaxy A7 is born

By
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Samsung has announced the 2018 Galaxy A7, its first smartphone with a triple-lens rear camera, following in the footsteps of Huawei’s excellent P20 Pro. However, this is a Galaxy A series phone, not a Galaxy S, so it’s not going to challenge the Huawei phone in terms of outright speed and ability. Instead, it will be a slightly more-affordable route into the world of three-lens mobile photography.

We’re used to dual lenses on phones today. What’s the big deal about three? The primary lens has 24 megapixels and an F/1.7 aperture, and it’s matched to an 8-megapixel ultrawide lens, and a 5-megapixel depth lens. The camera takes separate photos with the main lens, where four pixels can also combine into one for improved low-light photos, and with the wide-angle 120-degree field of vision lens. Switching between the two lenses this way mimics LG’s approach to a regular and wide-angle lens setup. The depth lens enables Live Focus portrait shots, just like the Galaxy S9 Plus and the Galaxy Note 9.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The front camera has 24 megapixels and uses clever software to create a bokeh-style blurred background, plus some studio lighting effects too. All this is viewed on a 6-inch Super AMOLED screen with a 2220 x 1080 pixel resolution, and driven by a 2.2GHz octa-core processor which, although it’s not mentioned, we expect to be a Samsung-made Exynos chip in most places the phone is sold.

Recommended Videos

The design is simple by Samsung’s standards. The lenses are set inside a rectangle on the left-hand side of the rear panel, which is made of glass. There are bezels above and below the screen on the front. The one aspect that does make the phone stand out is the fingerprint sensor, which appears to be mounted inside the sleep/wake key on the side of the phone.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Android 8.0 is the operating system — not Android 9.0 Pie, sadly — and there is a choice of 64GB or 128GB of internal storage space with 4GB of RAM, or a special 6GB/128GB model too. The Galaxy A has a MicroSD card slot, Dolby Atmos sound, a 3,300mAh battery, and a choice of blue, black, gold, or pink color schemes. If you’re hoping to use Android Pay, Samsung says NFC will only be included on some versions. Samsung Pay will work normally though.

Related

The 2018 Galaxy A7 will be sold in Europe and Asia, but the price and release date have not been confirmed. It’s also not the only new Galaxy A series phone we’re expecting from Samsung either, as the company will hold a dedicated online event for a new A series on October 11. The teaser says it’ll be “4x the fun.” Does this mean it’ll have four lenses on the back, as arguably the A7 also has four lenses in total. We’ll see in the near future.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Andy Boxall
Andy Boxall
Senior Mobile Writer
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
This is your best look yet at the Samsung Galaxy S24 series
Leaked renders of Galaxy S24 series in purple.

Just over a week ago, a handful of purported real-life shots of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra appeared online predicting a slightly refined look. Now, the folks over at Windows Report have shared alleged product renders of the entire Galaxy S24 trio ahead of a rumored January 27 launch. 
It seems the in-hand photos of the Ultra trim, which appeared on X (formerly Twitter) a few days ago, were the real deal. Samsung hasn’t given any aesthetic makeover to the top-tier model -- the flat sides are here to stay, and so is the floating ring aesthetic for the camera lenses at the back.
The only two key changes are a different material for the frame and a couple of new colors. Shoppers will have the option of a new yellow shade that was recently seen on the Samsung Store-exclusive variant of its Galaxy Z flip foldable phone. Then there's a new purple trim, which looks identical to the same shade on the Galaxy S23 FE, down to the contrasting metal frame polish.
Gray and black will be the other shades on the table. The biggest change is that Samsung, following in the footsteps of the iPhone 15 Pro, is reportedly using Titanium for the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The regular and Plus variants will likely stick with armored aluminum and a glass back with Corning Gorilla Glass protection.

The rumored specification list is your usual flagship-tier affair and includes Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, a 120Hz OLED display, 12GB RAM, up to 1TB storage, and a 5,000mAh battery.
The report notes that the vapor chamber cooling system inside the S24 Ultra will be nearly twice as big as its predecessor's, which was already in a league of its own. Buyers can expect the phone to maintain its cool during demanding tasks such as gaming, high-res video capture, and generative AI-aligned tasks.
The camera hardware also remains the same as this year's Ultra phone, save for a curious change to the zoom camera. Instead of a 10-megapixel periscope camera with an industry-leading 10x optical zoom output that we saw on the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the upcoming phone is said to embrace a 50-megapixel sensor, but with a lower 5x optical zoom range.

Read more
Does the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 have a headphone jack?
Timer running on the Galaxy Z Flip 5 cover screen.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is here, and it's flippin' marvelous. It's largely just Samsung that has defined the nascent flip smartphone market, and while flipping and folding phones haven't quite broken into the mainstream yet, the Z Flip 5 is sure to tempt more and more people into buying into the future of smartphone design. The biggest new addition to the Z Flip 5 is the larger outer screen, which is a big upgrade over the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4's much smaller display and worthy of rivaling the Motorola Razr Plus's impressively large outer display.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is a fantastic piece of tech, packed with the latest and most powerful hardware Samsung can get its hands on. But what about a piece of very old tech? What about the humble 3.5mm headphone jack? Does Samsung's latest flip phone have room for a headphone jack, or does the Z Flip 5 follow the same trend of the last few years in omitting the venerable port?

Read more
There’s a big problem with Samsung’s new Android tablets
The back of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra.

“Android tablets are a lost cause.” I come across this recurring theme more often than I would like, but there’s some truth to it. As someone who pushes Android tablets as a daily workhorse, I’ve defended on numerous occasions how the ecosystem has matured over the past few years after Android 12L and foldable arrived on the scene.

But compared to the iPad, Android tablets keep falling short. With every brand trying to create its own unique software flavor for tablets that vary dramatically in terms of firepower, no two Android tablets seem to offer a uniform experience. iPads, on the other hand, do deliver experience uniformity irrespective of the screen size.

Read more