Samsung’s new Galaxy A80 is a smartphone that’s nearly all screen on the front, thanks to slim bezels and no visible front-facing camera.
But that’s because the three cameras on the back of the camera are also the phone’s front-facing cameras. When you fire up the camera app and switch to selfie mode, the camera section slides up from behind the screen and the camera module actually flips around to face forward.
It’s not the first all-screen phone we’ve seen with slide-out cameras in the past year. But it might be one of the most unusual models.
The Galaxy A80 features a 6.7 inch, 2400 x 1080 pixel AMOLED display, an octa-core processor (with two 2.2 GHZ CPU cores and six 1.7 GHz cores), 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage.
It’s powered by a 3700 mAh battery and supports 25 watt fast charging. The phone also has an in-screen fingerprint reader.
But it’s the phone’s three cameras that really makes the Galaxy A80 stand out:
- 48MP F/2.0 primary camera
- 8MP F/2.2 123 degree wide-angle camera
- 3D depth sensing camera
While the Samsung Galaxy A series phones are typically cheaper and less powerful than Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S and Galaxy Note phones, the company has also made a habit of introducing new features first in its A series.
For example, the company’s first phone with a camera cut-out in the display was last year’s Galaxy A8s. That feature found its way to the Galaxy S10 a few months later.
Does that mean we’ll see rotating cameras on an upcoming Galaxy Note or S series phone? I have no idea. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
There are a few down-sides to the design: the Galaxy A80 has no microSD card reader and no headphone jack. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see those omissions in a next-gen flagship, but I know a lot of folks would be disappointed.
Samsung also recently launched the Galaxy A70 smartphone with a somewhat less unusual design. It has three rear cameras, but they don’t rotate. Instead there’s a waterdrop-style notch for a 32MP F/2.0 selfie camera on the front of the phone. Samsung calls this its first phone with an “Infinity-U” design.
The rear cameras include a 32MP F/1.7 primary camera, an 8MP F/2.2 123 degree wide angle camera, and a 5MP F/2.2 depth camera.
The Samsung Galaxy A70 has an octa-core processor with two 2 GHz CPU cores and six 1.7 GHz cores, 6GB to 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a microSDXC card reader.
It has a 6.7 inch, 2400 x 1080 pixel display, a 4,5000 mAh battery, fast charging support, and an in-display fingerprint sensor and face recognition support.
A good idea with the rotating cameras, but they did it wrong: The cameras are blocked in the middle position. It should be possible to shoot horizontally when the phone lies flat.
I got really excited when, for that brief moment, I thought this was 6.7″ with a 4:3 aspect ratio.
I quickly realized you meant 2400 x 1080. Fun while it lasted…
> The Galaxy A80 features a 6.7 inch, 2400 x 1800 pixel AMOLED display
Very impressive…shows sammy is going to fight back against the Chinese, good news for everybody. I hope the A80 is coming to Canada for a reasonable price…also would be nice if the set a policy of 3 full years of software support for such great hardware, anything less is basically make the problem of electronic waste worse than it already is!
Samsung does not have a very good track record of providing updates to phones not part of their top of the line “S” series. No chance of an Android One phone from Sammy. Too bad. Stock Android with Samsung hardware could be a winning combo…if they kept the microSD card slot and headphone jack.