While the Samsung Galaxy A9 has been launched some two months ahead of the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge Plus, the midrange smartphone from the Korean tech giant was able to hold its own not only in terms of price but also in the all-important aspect of design.
After Samsung’s debacle that was the Galaxy S5 back in 2014, the Korean tech company has since opted to using metal in its smartphones.
In fact, metal has become the new plastic when it comes to handset design not only for Samsung but also the major smartphone makers in the world.
The design of the Samsung Galaxy A9 is actually part of its selling points that critics describe it as a solid and substantial smartphone, notes the Phone Arena.
The Galaxy A9 features an elegant glass exterior and it looks really fancy. It comes in three different colors including white, gold, and pink gold. The metal side frame is colored appropriately for the three variations of the Galaxy A9.
Samsung has also gone the extra mile of smoothing out all the edges, making up for a phone that feels genuinely good in the hand.
Excellent features and specifications
The Galaxy A9 is powered by a 1.8GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor and comes with a 3GB of RAM. It also packs a 32GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 128GB via a microSD card.
It has a 6-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 1080 pixels x 1920 pixels. The Galaxy A9 packs a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and an 8-megapixel front snapper, details NDTV Gadgets.
It also comes running on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop for its operating system out of the box but is capable of upgrading to the Marshmallow updates.
It is also a dual-SIM smartphone that accepts two regular SIMs. It has various connectivity options including Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, NFC, FM, 3G, and 4G.
The phone is also equipped with various types of sensors including a proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, accelerometer, and gyroscope.
The Galaxy A9 tips the scale at 7.05 oz or 200 grams, which is heavier than the iPhone 6S Plus which weighs 192 grams, or the Galaxy Note 5, which weighs only 171 grams.
Higher-tier handset
As a higher-tier handset, though not as high-end as the flagships of Samsung, the Galaxy A9 also features a fingerprint scanner built into its home button, just like the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy Note 5.
The scanner also works in similar fashion as it is mostly quick and responsive though its accuracy sometimes gets compromised once the user becomes a little careless with finger positioning.
But the phone is not water-resistant as much as the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge are. It is likely one corner that has been cut by the Korean tech giant in order to make the price of the phone more palatable to the midrange market.
At a price range of $450 to $500, the Galaxy A9 is simply more affordable than the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge. What’s more, consumers will have difficulty finding the difference other than the obvious in their prices and the water-resistant feature.
Samsung describes the Galaxy A9 as falling squarely in the premium midrange smartphone category.
The smartphone offers everything that the Galaxy S6 does but in a much larger package. As such, battery life and expandable storage are no longer issues with the Galaxy A9 as much as they do in the Galaxy S6.
While the display resolution and camera of the Galaxy A9 have been downgraded vis-à-vis the Galaxy S6, the midrange smartphone performs just as well as the Korean tech giant’s other high-end smartphones, making it a handset that is so easy to love.