There's been quite a bit of buzz recently about the metal-framed Galaxy Alpha, and for good reason. Metal is a material seemingly left behind by Samsung in recent years, both for cost-related reasons, and the general design direction moving toward polycarbonate materials. The Alpha aims to end Samsung's hiatus from metal by being the first device to feature a prominent metal flair from Samsung for a long while. But the design details that should make the Alpha stand out upon release go far beyond the premium metal frame.
Samsung designed its new phone to not only be attractive to the eye, but sturdy against the ground. Curved corners on the device serve to meet both goals. While everyone knows that smooth, refined corners give the device a sophisticated, premium look, you may not realize that traditionally the weakest part of a phone is the corner. When your treasured smartphone slips from your hand and falls, tumbling sickeningly through the air, the corner is going to be the spot to catch the brunt of the force. A curved corner is wider, and the extra surface area spreads the impact out further along the frame of the phone, potentially saving the internals from damage.
Lastly, the Alpha is coated around popular gripping points to prevent slipping and give the device a warmer feel to contrast the cool, metal frame.
Are you excited about the Samsung Galaxy Alpha? I know I am. Leave a comment below to share your opinion with us!
Source: Samsung Tomorrow Blog
The problem with the Galaxy Alpha is it has no memory card slot like the Galaxy S3/4/5
If the charging port /USB port gets damaged you won’t be able to transfer files to & from a PC (good luck with Kies).
And the front of the device is wasting more real estate than the S4. There is a lot of space that could have been used for the screen. So, the device screen 4.7 but the height & length of the Alpha is close to the S4 which has a 5.0 screen.
So, its thinner , more sturdy but it could have been smaller. Why shrink the screen but still have the device so tall? Guess they are saving that for the S6 :P
I love the design… but I still dislike their bottom buttons (hard-press home button and barely-visible capacitive buttons). Also TouchWiz and Samsung’s UI has been atrocious on most of their phones and tablets the last several years (slow, candy-colored, not as intuitive as other manufacturer UIs), so hopefully they’ve cleaned that up as well.
In my opinion it doesn’t get any better. If you can’t see the capacitive buttons you can always go into settings & change the duration so that they stay on longer. The home button is a blessing, its a alternate for waking up the phone instead of overusing the power button. Makes taking screen shots easier (like the iPhone) and when your device freezes you need all the physical buttons you can get. But you can always go to LG or HTC since neither use a physical home button.
As for Touch Wiz … everyone complains that its slow / bloated /looks fruity… But, really, its one of the better looking Android OS. HTC’s audio/video players are bland & their OS looks boring. LG is trying to copy Samsung’s & they even stole the “pop-up” play feature (which people called a gimmick when Samsung did it).
There is no other Android OS that has better sound than the “SoundAlive” stock music player. Even on iOS you would have to go to the app store to find something comparable. Granted, SoundAlive is stronger on the S3 & S4 than the S5 but nothing comes close to it.
And the stock video player has motion thumb nails & chapter previews for the videos on your phone. I don’t see anyone else doing that. And people can say its a gimmick, but these smart phones cost so much, the stock software should do better than what we normally get.
I don’t consider it one of the better-looking OS’, I consider the iPhone to have always been the best-looking OS with stock Android being 2nd, HTC’s being 3rd, and everything else being gravy. Samsung’s is way down the list, just because of their fruitiness, over-colored, over-whiteness, oversized fonts, choppy scrolling, and wonky TouchWiz and Settings UI.
Samsung may innovate a lot of things but that doesn’t mean their UI looks good or runs well. I was playing with the Galaxy Tab 7 3.0 and it runs slow, and I discovered it has a “Marvell” processor, which is a low-end chip (the equivalent of a Celeron on a Windows PC). The Galaxy Tab ran fast when it first came out, there’s no reason the 3.0 shouldn’t run as smooth as a Nexus 7. Samsung has just over-baked their UI and undercooked their processors in the last few years unfortunately.
Hopefully the Galaxy Alpha will be a major improvement in these areas.
The processor is not that big of a deal. On a old phone (2010) sure but not on a new phone from 2014.
The phones out now are leaps & bounds above the processors of 2 years ago. But, because of software updates, internet throttling, higher res videos / pictures / games etc processors run slow. And manufactures do this on purpose so that we want to get a new device.
The Alpha is suppose to have “eight” cores , but who knows how fast it will run in the real world.
Yes, Celeron is entry level for Intel, but a PC /Note book processor usually performs more instructions than those found on a tablet/smart phone.
Plus Celeron is just the name of the product line, the same as Pentium & the Corei family. The actual processors under the hood have different code names. So you could have 2 Celeron brand CPU’s but with different processors under the hood.
The processor doesn’t matter if the tablet runs fast, which the Tab 7 3.0 didn’t. That’s the only reason I even know what processor it has. Maybe a slow, laggy, choppy tab is your cup of tea, but I certainly left it sitting on the store shelf. If that had run fast, I’d probably be reading it right now. The original Galaxy Tab is actually more responsive; pathetic.
Also what it doesn’t seem you’ve done is test it against other tablets; the Nexus 7 runs fast almost all the time. The Galaxy Tab 7 3.0 runs slow doing many of the same things. It’s not about the content, it’s about Samsung cheaping out on the hardware. Nevermind my taste for the UI, it’s just a piece of crap tablet, and maybe you should read the article about it being the worst tablet of the year. You’re really arguing for a Celeron-like processor? Go ahead, recommend an overpriced tablet that doesn’t even run as well as an Ellipsis.
Physical home button… Is this thing even running Android?
:D Yes, it should be. Never iOS aka Apple and Nokia makes most of the Windows Phones.
The home button is no a problem. The Galaxy S2 didn’t have one, but the Galaxy S3 /S4/ S5 all have physical home buttons.
This is good if you just transitioned over from an iPhone or you have big hands. Also, because they are “more sensitive” you might accidently activate a “capacitive” home button more frequently than a physical one.