Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy A9 ‘mid range’ phone is more powerful than most flagship phones out there, including the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium – which costs about twice as much as the Korean phone.
According to a test on Geekbench — which measures processor and RAM performance — the phone scored an impressive 1,446 points on single-core mode and 4,134 on multi-core mode.
Most flagship phones typically score around 1100-1200 points in single-core mode and 4,000-4,500 in multi-core mode.
The newly launched Sony Xperia Z5 Premium too scores only around 1,300 on single core and 4000 on multi-core.
The primary reason for the jump is the use of Cortex A72 technology in the phone, which is built around the high mid-range Snapdragon 620 platform.
However, leaked specifications also suggest that the Samsung Galaxy A9 — to be launched in the next 12-15 days with a sticker price of around Rs 35,000 in India — will not have a QHD display.
Going by an official listing of the smartphone on Samsung Iran website, the Galaxy A9 will sport a 5.5-inch full-HD AMOLED display.
The phone, which will be available in India at an effective price of Rs 34,000, is therefore unlikely to be a major step forward when compared to the Galaxy A8 (currently selling for the same price.)
Hopes of seeing Android 6 Marshmallow have also been dashed and the device will come with Lolipop 5.1.1, with a possible upgrade path left open.
In fact, the only advantage that the A9 will have over the previous generation A7 (Rs 21,500 on Askmebazaar.com) and the A8 is in terms of processing power and LTE configuration.
Of course, here, the jump is quite substantial. Thanks to 3 GB of RAM and a much more powerful processor based on the Snapdragon 620 series, the overall power of the phone would be higher by 50-60% over A7 and A8.
Similarly, the LTE configuration is category 6 (300 Mbps) vs Cat 4 on the A8. However, given that Cat 6 requires two big chunks of 4G spectrum to be implemented, you are unlikely to benefit from having the feature in India where so much spectrum is not available with any operator.
Almost everything else in the A9 is what you get on the A8 already, whether we’re talking about the 32 GB of internal storage memory or the 16 + 5 MP cameras.
We do expect a bump in the battery capacity, which was 2.6 Ah in the A7 and will be at least 3 Ah in the A9. That detail, however, has not been given on the Iranian website.
It should also be kept in mind that Samsung will also launch the new Galaxy A7 next month. That model will also have 3 GB of RAM, but the processing power of the device will be about 30-33% less than that of the A9, and you get a 13 MP camera instead of the 16 MP unit on the more expensive device. In compensation, the new A7 is expected to be priced around Rs 27,000.
The revelation of the A9 specs also put paid to hopes that Samsung would introduce a true flagship class device under its affordable A series.
It would also be difficult to justify shelling out Rs 33,000-34,000 for a full-HD phone when Gionee Elife E8, which comes with a 6-inch Quad-HD AMOLED display, is available at just Rs 34,999.
To read the original listing, click.