Samsung Galaxy A8 rumored to come with fingerprint sensor, may not be exclusive to China

posted by Mihai A.

May 20, 2015, 8:27 AM

Samsung Galaxy A8 rumored to come with fingerprint sensor, may not be exclusive to China

In mid-April, we covered a rumor that claimed to reveal most of the hardware specifications of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy A8. Back then, the all-metal Galaxy A8 was said to have a good chance of being exclusive to the Chinese market, but a new rumor suggests that the smartphone will also be released in other markets around Europe and Asia.

According to insider sources quoted by Sammobile, the Samsung Galaxy A8 will feature a fingerprint sensor. Allegedly, the A8 will come with a touch-based fingerprint reader, just like the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge, as opposed to the swipe-based fingerprint reader that Samsung included in handsets such as the Galaxy Alpha. Touch-based fingerprint readers are much more effective than their swipe-based counterparts, and are the same kind of sensors that Apple uses for its Touch ID fingerprint recognition system.

The same sources also claim that the Galaxy A8 will come with the Themes feature that Samsung included in the TouchWiz UI on the Galaxy S6 series. Allegedly, theme support will make its way to multiple Samsung smartphones in the future.

Like all the handsets in Samsung's Galaxy A series, the Galaxy A8 will most likely come with an all-metal build. The rumored specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset (four 1.7GHz ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores, four 1GHz ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores, and an Adreno 405 GPU), 2GB of RAM, 16GB of integrated storage space, and a sizeable 3050mAh battery. The display of the A8 is said to be a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED panel running at a resolution of 1080 by 1920 pixels (Full HD).

With a rumored thickness of just 5.9mm, the Samsung Galaxy A8 could turn out to be the thinnest smartphone that Samsung ever made. Although such a slim waist might seem a bit extreme given the rumored 3050mAh battery, the large footprint of the smartphone could well accommodate such a large battery despite the reduced thickness.

Until Samsung releases the Galaxy A8, we invite you to take another look at the thinnest Samsung smartphone currently available on the market, the 6.3mm-thick Galaxy A7: